You Have to Draw the Line Somewhere

Продажи
	Sales.com
		Questio...

by Miller Heiman

Great expectations. All of us have them. We hope every call will end in a sale, and every sale will lead to a repeat sale. But great expectations can often lead to unrealistic expectations, and that can derail a potential sale by causing you to press too hard or skip over important steps. Conversely, you can blow a potential sale by going into a meeting without any expectations. Sometimes, successful selling hinges on setting a minimum result that you can achieve and still consider a sales call a success. We call that the Minimum Acceptable Action. It’s something you should consider before your heading out for you next call.

The Minimum Acceptable Action is just what it says: the minimum that your potential buyer must do so you walk out of that call satisfied. It’s the least commitment that you will settle for, because it’s the least he or she can do to indicate to you that there’s still a mutual interest in carrying the sale forward.

In defining your Minimum Acceptable Action, be specific. Focus on what the customer will (and can) do (not on what you must do). The outcome of the action should still be measurable by you, and it should be realistic.

One more thing. The Minimum Acceptable Action for a given sales call should also be related to the best possible outcome for that call. Relating the high and low ends of the “acceptable scale” helps to keep you focused on your overall selling objectives, and saves you from the kind of “sales drift” that can happen when you don’t go in with a clear focus. Tying together the best possible outcome and your Minimum Acceptable Action makes it clear to you that, even if you don’t get the best possible outcome on this call, you will still get something that’s moving you in that direction. You won’t be in the sorry situation of the person who sees any positive response, any time, as acceptable – and so ends up with bones from the table.

Let’s say your best possible outcome for a call is to get your meeting contact to identify and introduce you to the person who makes the final decision – the person who can release the money. The Minimum Acceptable Action you choose for this call should point to that same final decision-maker. Maybe your contact will agree to explain to you in detail how decisions are made in his company for your type of proposal. Maybe he can bring your proposal to the head honcho himself. Whatever you determine to be the minimum, the action that your contact will perform must move you closer to your best possible outcome, and it must verify his or her commitment.

So what if you can’t get the Minimum Acceptable Action? Most sales pros have little difficulty understanding the concept of the best possible outcome, but the idea of having a “floor” under which you won’t go seems unrealistic to some and threatening to others. “If I walked away every time I failed to get the least I wanted,” we sometimes hear, “I’d be out of business tomorrow. It puts too much pressure on everybody to demand an outcome like this. Sometimes you just have to settle for nothing, and come back to fight another day.”

That argument is superficially convincing – it sounds solid and realistic and flexible – but it can easily serve as an excuse for letting both buyer and seller off the hook. It can be a disguised way of saying, “I haven’t done my homework on this one, and I’m afraid to be turned down, so let’s let it slide and hope it feels better next time.” Which it seldom does because unless your buyer can’t live without your product, when you shirk your responsibilities for moving the sale forward, your buyer’s natural tendency is to follow suit. And “sales drift” soon sets in.

One thing should be made clear. We assume that you are going for Win-Win, long-term relationships in which you get the best possible results from every sales call. When those results aren’t happening – you’re willing to say, “This isn’t Win-Win” and bow out. We don’t introduce the idea of Minimum Acceptable Commitment to browbeat or intimidate anyone, and certainly not as part of a pop-psych, upbeat, “You can do it!” philosophy. We mention it because to gives you a handle on where progress is being made in the sale, and where it isn’t. If your customer is unwilling to meet your lowest expectations for the sales call, there’s something seriously wrong with the selling process. When that’s the case, you need to immediately find out and confront why the buyer’s moving at a snail’s pace, or not moving at all.

If you can’t get your Minimum Acceptable Action there are really only three things you can do:

1) You can ask basic questions. In other words, cut through the garbage and get straight to the point, “You seem concerned about me meeting this guy, Jim. Could you explain to me why that’s a problem?”

2) Revise your Minimum Acceptable goal downward. We don’t heartily recommend this, but there are situations where it might be warranted. Generally you should consider revising downward when you walk into a meeting and you find that the situation is significantly different from what you had thought it to be. If you walk in the door and find that your contact has been promoted (or demoted), then obviously it’s time to rethink your tactics, including your Minimum Acceptable goal.

3) Walk. Walking out is a last resort, but it’s not one you should avoid at all costs. If you set your Minimum Acceptable targets realistically, there should be very few sales calls where the customer will balk at the “floor.” If he does, is he really committed? Does he really want to play Win-Win? If you can’t answer “Yes” to both questions, you might be wasting both sides' time by pursuing him.

By establishing a Minimum Acceptable Action, you’ll be able to keep the sale moving forward. And as long as your heading in the right direction, you’re heading toward success.