ALIGNMENT Sales: A B2B Sales Method

Introduction

Before we begin, I want you to think about your sales goals.

• Are you learning the fundamentals of selling?
• Are you trying to connect with customers?
• Are you seeking to generate a more reliable sales pipeline?

Over the past 15 years, I’ve researched and reviewed thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles, books, online resources, videos, and webinars on the topic of sales and customer success. At the end of each review, I found myself blending and bandaging techniques, tips, and tricks to create a successful, winning formula. Whether I lost or won a deal, I always tried to crystallize my learnings, which brings me to you, the reader.

Welcome to ALIGNMENT Sales, a new method to consider for your sales organization. After reading this, you will either confirm your sales knowledge or learn something new.

Let’s get started!

Donuts — Oh, Sweet Donuts

The roots of ALIGNMENT stretch back to my childhood. As a kid, my mother would shake me out of bed around 3:30a.m. to make the 33-mile drive to a Krispy Kreme factory near Birmingham, AL. Timing the Krispy Kreme “hot light,” the light that indicated when fresh baked donuts were ready, wasn’t so easy back then.

We would pick up between about 400 boxes of freshly baked donuts, and carefully Tetris them into the back of her 1976 Datsun station wagon.

Krispy Kreme donuts; Image courtesy of Krispy Kreme/Facebook

We did this several times a year to help raise funds for my Boy Scout troop’s experiences. If you’ve never sat in a car with a few thousand fresh, Krispy Kreme donuts, you’re missing out.

During those car rides, my mother would instruct me on how to sell donuts. I asked, “Why do I need to know how to sell donuts, mom? Don’t people just like them?!”

She would tell me how people did not like to be rudely interrupted, and how common courtesies like using “Yes, ma’am” or “No, sir” promotes both respect and sales. If they seemed rushed, tell them you’ll be there all day, have a good day, and hope to see them again soon. If they seemed disinterested in donuts, ask for donations to support the troop. If they wanted more than one box, take their money first and then deliver their extra boxes. Make them wait for you to run back or risk losing a high-value customer.

The bulk of her feedback was about the buyer and their needs; not about the technique of asking the person for money in return for a product.

I still remember selling box after box not letting anyone escape earshot. Persistence, grit, determination, and a never-give-up attitude were ingrained in my early sales DNA. I would not realize this until much later in my career that the hunt of selling the next box of donuts is just as exhilarating as closing some of the biggest tech deals of my life.

My Earliest Experiences

My earliest sales experiences came as a result of being in an entrepreneurial household. My father owned his own plumbing company. My mother was an at-home mom with incomes generated from antiques, arts, and crafts such as band boxes (a.k.a. hat boxes), painted figurines, patching overalls for blue-collar workers, pouring homemade fishing lures for the local tackle shops, and countless other oddities.

My father would allow me to join him on house calls to fix toilets, unclog drains, replace sinks, auger sewer lines, and other dirty work. I know Mike Rowe made it seem glorious on Dirty Jobs, but it wasn’t. It was filthy.

My mother would take me to arts-and-craft fairs to sell her antique hat boxes. She would spend weeks making hundreds of hat boxes in a variety of shapes and sizes for the fair. One art fair could gross the house over $3,000. For a household of less than $30k/year in the state of Alabama, those shows were well worth the time, effort, and tears.

It was through both of these vastly different experiences that I learned the value of hard work and salesmanship. Hours upon hours of my father’s and mother’s time were dedicated to making the almighty dollar. The exchange of money from their customers and the way they treated customers intrigued me. Their struggles and advice set me on the ALIGNMENT path.

These lessons served me well beyond sales too. My professional history weaves in and out of technical roles, creative roles, and sales. Throughout my career in business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) in the entertainment and high-tech industries as a an entrepreneur, sales director, audio engineer, store manager, global account executive, director of demand generation, senior webcast engineer, and sales development manager, one principal became abundantly clear after thousands of interactions; people care about themselves, their goals, and their needs.

You will win less if you do not focus on the buyer. Put your needs aside and listen to the customer. This underlying principle should be the basis of your sales philosophy.

What is ALIGNMENT selling?

ALIGNMENT sales is a method I’ve created and used successfully to close some of my largest high-tech, SaaS, and services deals while maintaining client friendships along the way. We’re not selling to robots; we are selling to people.

“So what does ALIGNMENT stand for,” you ask?

• Attitude
• Lead
• Implications
• Goals
• Needs
• Milestones
• Earn
• Needs-Fulfillment
• Timing

For a moment, think about why you chose to read this article. There is a need. A need to sell more. A need to understand sales. A need to manage pipelines. A need to win meetings. Needs drive the conversation, and a conversation leads to understanding.

Your customers have needs, and you need to understand them.

You are reading this to become a better sales professional, right? If you are searching for a way to close more business, decrease your sales cycles, increase your numbers, or make President’s club, the first thing I want you to do is turn off the ego so that you can tune into the customer instead of yourself.

Sales isn’t about YOU. It’s about the customer. Rapport and professionalism go a long way, but so does common courtesy.

ALIGNMENT focuses on the customer by aligning with them and leaving your desires at the door. Flipping sales on its head is not easy to do, but when you’re fully aligned with your customer — you win and your customer wins.

As you continue reading, we will review the following:

• The ALIGNMENT Sales Method
• Sales Activities to Accomplish ALIGNMENT
• Sales Tools to Use to Achieve ALIGNMENT

Successful Selling is Risky Business

Successful salespeople read the room, virtual or live, looking for clues and subconscious decision-making cues. We are also great caterers of content because conversations twist and turn like Lombard street in San Francisco. One minute the prospect is talking about the perfect use case, and the next minute they are taking you down a road of what-ifs and use cases that may not even align to your product.

By the way, this is a great opportunity to build rapport. Saying no and recommending other products are great ways to earn trust.

Salespeople take risks all the time. Taking a chance is what we do best. As they say, “No risk, no reward.”

To showcase your product, convince another person or team this product will solve their need, prove the value of that solution, work through information security audits, execute paperwork, maintain long standing relationships, and renew interest year-over-year all while keeping competitors at bay is very hard work. Closing one deal may mean we lose 2, 5, 11, or more along the way. It never feels good to lose deals after spending months working on them but take those losses and analyze why. Why did you lose? What was missing? Did you truly align with the customer? Questions like these should be answered before you head off to the next prospect.

Remembering Your Experiences

Do you remember your first sales experience? What was your earliest sales experience? Why was it memorable? What were the qualities of the sale? Did you chase it? Did you make a mistake? Did you embarrass yourself? Were you told “no” before you could begin selling, and turn that “no” into a “yes” somehow?

These are important questions to ask yourself as you evaluate your experiences against ALIGNMENT selling. The advancement of your sales abilities starts with you. If you don’t understand your ego, experiences, failures, successes, and general capabilities, how can you grow as a salesperson? Mistakes and the past are life’s greatest teachers. You’ve already been graded so there really is nothing to lose except a little piece of your ego. Let’s be real. If you’re that worried, maybe you need to take the ego down even more than you think.

Whether you’re a start-up organization or a Fortune 500 company, customers fuel success; sales is just the first step. If your organization is not focused on sales or sales training, you may want to realign priorities. Yes, marketing and products are important, but without an efficient and productive sales team, investors will flee, your business will fail, and all the marketing and product development you undergo will be rendered useless.

Take your experiences and make them work for you.

Customers First

Many business leaders have forgotten the customer-first mentality because of their egos and illusions of grandeur. It’s unfortunate because customers are going to pay for your product, fund your business, and provide insights as well as evangelism.

https://webwriterassociates.com/blog/customer-service-1st/

Think about A-list celebrities and how the world caters to their needs because of the value they bring to their sponsors.

Shouldn’t customers be treated with the same authority?

In the sales cycle, let’s face it, nobody cares about your sales goals, projections, or needs. Customers care about their priorities, projects, and most importantly, time.

In some cases, the best and seemingly easiest sales opportunities become long arduous journeys spanning weeks, months, and even years. In other cases, bluebirds land on your shoulder and give you the opportunity in days or a few weeks. Note: If you’re not familiar with sales bluebirds, they are the type of sales that make team members jealous. They seem very easy to close and require very little work.

Managers, directors, and executives often think they can replicate these quick closes. However, do not be fooled by thinking this can be done at the onset of every customer engagement. Bluebirds fly in when they want, and close when they please. Celebrate your quick wins, but do not force your teams to adhere to bluebird expectations.

ALIGNMENT Sales Origins

ALIGNMENT is the evolution and advancement of a collection of methods I’ve implemented throughout my career, including but not limited to:

• The Challenger Sale by Brent Adamson and Matthew Dixon (2011)
• Sandler Enterprise Selling (Sandler Training) by David Mattson and Brian Sullivan (2016).
• SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham (1988).
• MEDDIC model by Dick Dunkel and Jack Napoli (2020).
• BANT, lead scoring methodology developed by IBM
• Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff (2011).
• Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer’s (2004).
• Secrets of Closing the Sale by Zig Ziglar (1985).
• How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie (1936).

There are many other great methods, many other books, and many other philosophies on selling the buyer to win big. Becoming a successful salesperson means the absorption and recall of all methods you can get your hands on.

Every sale is different. Every engagement is different. You need to be able to pivot your way through the conversation or risk losing the opportunity.

The modern buyer’s journey outlined by Forrester according to Wizdo (2015), includes Discovery, Exploration, Buying, Asking, Usage, Engagement, and 74% of business reported conducting research online before making a purchase. I recommend researching this topic further on your own. The customer journey has evolved, continues to evolve, and as a result, customers are more intelligent buyers due to the abundance of available content. Therefore, you must evolve your process along with the customer’s journey.

ALIGNMENT Sales Method

A sales method is simply the steps taken to win business from a customer. Whether you are in B2C or B2B sales, selling is selling and you must choose a method that works for your line of business. I believe ALIGNMENT sales fits both B2C and B2B sales teams. The only glaring difference is that in B2B sales you deal with a greater amount of red-tape, legalese, and committees before the sale is made.

ALIGNMENT selling trains sellers to focus on the customer to win their business. It is worth distinguishing B2B from B2C in this case:

B2B — Term ALIGNMENT

This style of ALIGNMENT is an engagement that lasts a long period of time. For example, enterprise sales reps know that major enterprises take more than one person and one meeting to close a deal. Enterprise deals will often take 9–16+ months and sometimes even multiple years before a full commitment can be approved, budgeted, and executed. Navigating B2B deals can be roller coasters, arduous treks, difficult to manage, and sometimes disappointing, but when managed appropriately can lead to happiness for everyone involved.

B2C — Snap ALIGNMENT

This style of ALIGNMENT is instantaneous. The B2C salesperson has a few seconds to react to the customer’s needs. Unlike B2B sales, B2C sales is done by the buyer, without a committee, and typically with preconceived notions. Unfortunately, traditional brick-and-mortar retailers have taken major hits from Covid-19 and e-commerce retailers such as Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Alibaba, and others but the art of selling retail is just that — an art. The need to personally buy things will never go away. The selling organization must evolve to win.

Wondering how someone can align with clients in a few minutes? It’s easy but requires a specific sales mentality that forces the seller to leave their own beliefs at the door. Why? Leaving beliefs at the door of Snap ALIGNMENT opens the seller to the customer’s socio-historical, geographical, and cultural individual development that creates their view of the world. Step into the customer’s shoes to sell them what they need, when they need it.

Note: Snap ALIGNMENT may also be used in B2B selling for outbound meetings, but we’ll discuss this a bit later.

Breaking Down ALIGNMENT

The following outlines each letter in the acronym ALIGNMENT to help guide your success. If customers do not align to any of the following segments, there are risks in your process that should be addressed without hesitation.

That’s right. You need to understand the root(s) of risk(s) even when the customer is giving you all of the proper buying signs. Risks are the greatest pitfall for sales organizations. It’s easy to hide your head in the sand and get “happy ears” when customers act like they are in alignment. Think about your last sour experience. The customer was happy, giving you excited buying signals, but you missed important clues that they were not really interested despite being impressed. Ever heard the infamous line, “let us sync internally, and we’ll get back to you?” That phrase is like nails on a chalkboard for me.

An effective sales team and leader should analyze team risks in weekly sales meetings versus positive, optimistic updates with no real outcomes or learning moments. Without handling the risks, sales will suffer, and morale takes a hit when those positive vibes turn to nightmares. Align with the customer and be prepared to take their journey, not your journey.

A is for Attitude

The attitude of your prospect is all that matters when they take the first call. Are they in a good mood? Have they had a good day? Are they dealing with anything personal? Are the interested or disinterested? You may not discover these answers. You must listen closely to their voice, their body language, and their choice of words.

Emotional intelligence plays a major role in winning the conversation and alignment to their attitudes and beliefs. Emotional IQ, EI or EQ, is the ability to recognize personal emotions and emotions of others and use them to navigate, evolve, and adapt emotional information to achieve a specific goal (Bradberry & Greaves, 2009). In this case, alignment with your customer.

If you align with attitudes early, the next phases are easier. If you are misaligned, it depends on how disinterested the customer has become in you or your product. Your product may be life changing, but if you are not liked the customer will turn down everything you have to say.

Discover your prospects’ attitudes as fast as possible to ensure you can have the opportunity to properly pitch and review your customer needs.

L is for Leading

Sometimes salespeople make critical, unknown errors during the sales cycle. One of these errors can be avoided in every engagement. Asking prospects and customers, “what they want to do next” is easily avoidable. This one, seemingly simple question can derail all of your sales efforts. Customers don’t know what they want to do next. They know what you want to do next, but how can you get them there without forcing a selling conversation?

Let’s put it this way. You are the expert. You are the salesperson. You are the leader of the conversation because you have done this many times before with other customers. Whether you’re selling an innovative product or a transactional product, the principle is the same. Asking the customer what they want to do is giving them an infinite number of choices of which you HOPE they purchase your product down one of these paths.

Don’t ask, lead. Develop a repeatable process of questions and answers that lead the customer to your next step. If it is a proof of concept, explain the process and next steps. Assume they are interested in meeting with you again. Ask for another meeting and calendar it on the call. Many times I’ve heard sales calls end with the expectation that communication through the email jungle will lead to the next call. Lead customers away from the darkness, and ghosting, of how to buy by carving their path forward with you.

I is for Implications

Customers and prospects have reasons for looking into your products and services. If they don’t choose a solution, what does it mean for their business?

Salespeople need to uncover clues to that question. If a solution is not implemented, what happens to their business. Is their time lost? Is their money lost? Do they run the risk of losing employees or the edge against their competitors?

The best salespeople take advantage of the pitfalls for not moving forward with a solution. You want it to be your solution if competitors are in the conversations but educating the customer on the alternatives for not moving forward at least guides them to make a decision.

It is easier for a customer to continue business as usual until they fully understand the implication of their no-action stance. Make it painful, make it clear, and give them choices even if that choice is not your product. Become their confidant and educator to clearly outline that in-action is not beneficial.

G is for Goals

Goals are everywhere we look in business. Whether it’s scaling sales or launching amazing products for customers, goals define action and actions lead to outcomes. Discovering the goals of your prospect are important.

Once you know the goals of your prospect, what are the department’s goals? After that, what are the organizational goals? Do these goals align to the mission? How does your product align to each level of the discovered goals? Do the customers have the ability to action these goals? Are they part of a committee to accomplish the goals, or are they experiencing the pain to achieve goals as an individual contributor?

A good salesperson knows a few of the goal levels; a great salesperson understands the micro and the macro goals in which to align their sales efforts. Maybe those goals don’t align with fiscal budgets or your quarterly goals, but that boils down to your short, mid, and long-term opportunities; a necessity for maintaining a healthy sales pipeline. Knowing goals will implicitly help you, the salesperson, win at the necessary time. Helping your customer achieve these goals will create customers for life.

N is for Needs

Persuasion 101 — know the needs of your customer so you can convince them they need your product. Customers want many things from a sales relationship; Defining needs is the most important element. Are the needs tied to the business, such as monetary limitations or are they simply seeking to be risk averse? Are the needs individual and tied to personal goals?

What are the customer’s needs & motivation to buy your product? All of my sales relied on a customer need. When you focus on this one element of ALIGNMENT, the customer feels you understand their situation. They feel heard. They feel connected. They feel like you are working for them. Then the puzzle pieces begin to fall into place for the process. The customer communicates with you more, meets with you more, introduces more people in the process, and so on.

Listen to the customer. Synthesize their needs. Leverage your learnings to keep the customer on track and engaged so that needs become a reality by using your product or service.

M is for Milestones

Closing isn’t just about winning deals; it’s about the next meeting, the next document, and the next gate you need to unlock to advance your sale. An important element often overlooked is the importance of getting commitments on communication styles, next steps, and keeping cadences going.

Why? Getting commitments on communication ensures you will get in contact with the buyer because it’s their approved communication style. Aligning and getting commitment means you can hold them accountable for next steps in the process. Often referred to as a sequence of events, defining milestones will ensure the process is on track.

For example, when closing a call, meeting, or demo, ask your customers to commit to a calendar invite two weeks later or at an agreed upon date so you have an alignment target for continuing the sales cycle. Many salespeople I’ve mentored often leave the calls or demos without a defined next step. Without milestones to achieve, sales cycles suffer and may ultimately fail.

Milestone planning is not just for projects and program management. Crafting a path forward for your customer will ensure you pass the right gates at the right time to continue the deal. This works well for marketing, product, finance, and other areas of the business; it works well with sales cycles too.

E is for Earn

Earn trust; earn deals. How many times have you been sold to and completely dislike the salesperson? Think about what it was that ruined the opportunity for you, other than not wanting to be sold. Did they try to get something from you before you gave them your trust or aligned to the pain-solution?

Prospects will eventually give answers to your questions, but it comes with earning the ability to ask the right questions. Would you ask a prospect who is responsible for signing contracts and aligning financing during the first discussion? Probably not unless the conversation went extremely well, and a bluebird landed on your shoulder. Some sales methods disagree with this. The goal is to find the buyer, the budget owner, the authority, and if the budget exists. However, without earning the right to go to this level, you might miss a great opportunity to align attitudes and discover needs.

Earn answers to questions such as procurement processes, legal processes, is financing available to make a purchase this year, and what is the path to a business contract IF that bridge is crossed. Without earning the right to ask these questions, you’re not ready to receive the answers and proceed to the next steps in your sales cycle. If you follow all the other elements of ALIGNMENT, trust should be inherently gained which leads to information you need to win.

N is for Need-Fulfillment

Asking the prospect “perfect-world” scenarios is a great way to understand their end result. The need-fulfillment is the end result of their objective.

If the need is fulfilled, what is the payoff for the customer? Can they complete the same amount of work in less time and less headache? Is there a dollar return on investment they expect after using your product? If their “perfect world” is obtained, what makes life easier or better for them? This is the inspiration you need to push a sale forward. However, beware of change management. The less change involved from an implementation standpoint the better chance you have of closing the deal. Make sure this is addressed as well. Make it easy if you can.

This element of the sales cycle will tell you the picture you need to paint when you are pitching the final team who approves or denies your sale. Giving a clear picture of what their daily lives will be like after adopting your product will help accelerate the deal cycle. You’ve synthesized their needs so provide your customers with the business value on how those needs will be fulfilled.

T is for Timing

Problems with timing are many. Ever heard the phrase, “time kills all deals?” I half believe this phrase. I agree time does kill the deal when you are not aligned. However, I’ve been in sales cycles that lasted 21+ months that ended in large pay-days for the organization.

Time is the one thing you can never have enough of. They are on their time not yours. You have quotas to hit, monthly or quarterly goals, and are under pressure to close fast. You won’t make a difference by pressuring customers to commit faster than they are ready to commit. In fact, pressuring them to commit early is the worst way to end a sales cycle with a perfectly great prospect. Whether it’s a financing issue or a resource allocation issue, sometimes timing is the enemy.

Time is talked about in most, if not all, sales methods and books. Is it the right time? When is the right time? When is annual planning? When are budgets available? Is there a sense of urgency? To combat time, sales leaders and salespeople need a pipeline that consists of short, mid, and long-term opportunities.

Many of my enterprise successes were deals that started 9–12 months prior to the sale. ALIGNMEN(T) is there but T, timing, is not. We have to wait for some event to occur. We have to wait for financing approval. We have to wait for InfoSec and compliance approval. We have to wait for schedules. We have to wait for resource assignment. We have to wait for committee approval. We have to wait for the need to be greater.

I often play a hurry-up-and-wait game with customers. If my product can genuinely help a customer, I work on their timeline to garner interest and approvals until timing is right. This can often mean generating demand and interest across multiple departments, which slows the sale cycle down. This can hurt forecasts and company numbers when deals slip but slipping is better than losing.

ALIGNMENT — Sales Activities to Consider

Setting the Meeting

This is a step often left out of the sales process because it’s basic, but worth mentioning. Who your company targets is extremely important. There are several types of prospecting mindsets such as spray-and-pray, account-based sales, vertical alignment, geographical, and others.

In the ALIGNMENT Method, prospecting should be done to discover any company or person with a direct need for your product. If your product is industry-specific, identify it early. If your product is broad-spectrum, don’t force one vertical. Instead, address each vertical as they come while developing content that addresses a wider audience.

Start-ups will play the research game the first few years and then master data to understand where exactly the company fits in the buyer’s world.

Some companies decide the have sales teams prospecting to bring in leads alongside marketing efforts; others have adopted sales development representatives (SDRs or business development managers, BDMs) to generate outbound leads within a specific criteria and qualify inbound interests to ensure only the best leads are being passed to the sales team.

Whomever is chosen to represent the organization in the prospecting process must be able to effectively express the product value quickly and in relevant ways to the customer. This individual is the first point of contact with your organization so choose wisely and help them prepare. If the front end is broken, do you expect a better sales funnel?

Prospecting is key to the success of the sales organization. It can be done through a variety of tools and platforms such as social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, through Meetup style engagements and large trade shows, and with prospecting tools like automated messaging and named databases of people, emails, and phone numbers.

In this step, you should be able to determine three levels of ALIGNMENT for your inbound interested leads, including attitude, goals, and needs. Timing may be included in this segment, but if your product is in the early-adopter phase you may want to bypass asking about timing. For outbound efforts, you may only know needs based on other clients in your portfolio so tell the best story in a short-but-engaging way.

Inbound and Outbound Types

As mentioned, there are two types of meetings: inbound and outbound. Inbound meetings are developed by an outside interest from a prospect that may have a need your company can fulfill. Outbound meetings are developed by your SDR team by targeting the best titles, companies, verticals, or other factors that fit your product solution.

Typically, inbound meetings will have more information because the team saw their online activity and spoke to them about the interest. During that call there is a qualification process that takes place to ensure there is a fit to the criteria developed by marketing and sales. This process takes the prospect from Lead status to Marketing Qualified Lead and then over to sales for the first meeting. In the inbound meeting, salespeople can confirm their prospect’s attitude, goals, and needs while earning the ability to lead them through the sales cycle.

Outbound meetings are a little more challenging. Because the prospect is completely cold and accepted the meeting on a whim there is a need-fit for the solution, salespeople have more initial work to do. In this case, the sales rep shouldn’t prepare a long presentation nor a full demo. The sales rep should immediately address why this person took the call. You will need to assess their attitude immediately as well. Snap ALIGNMENT on these calls is even more important. After you know their desired level of interest, you can outline their goals and needs. From the point you’ve earned their trust to know their attitude, goals, and needs, you can begin leading them through the sales cycle and through Term ALIGNMENT.

Winning the First Meeting

Unless your product is transactional, don’t expect to get a signed contract on the first call. Instead, align your expectations by filling out your ALIGNMENT checklist with the customer. This first meeting is the most important because you’re defining the entire engagement through the sales cycle.

“How,” you ask?

A — Are their attitudes aligned to purchasing a product or liking you?

L — Are they willing to take your direction and get to close based on experience?

I — What will happen if they don’t implement a solution?

G — Are their goals short, mid, or long-term?

N — Is there a need? If there is no need, there is no sale. Align early!

M — Define communication, next steps, and milestones to close their business.

E — Did you earn their approval to move forward? Did you earn their interest and respect? What did you earn in the first call?

N — What is their “perfect world” scenario whether it’s with your product or not?

T — Pressing need? Can they move quickly or is this a long-term process?

Please note not every engagement will end in a sale of your product. However, if you can align immediately to their attitudes and needs, you potentially enable the ability to earn and lead them to a close. This can be done in both term and snap ALIGNMENT. There may be more meetings with more people. Do not be fooled by how great some interactions are because every person you meet needs to be in ALIGNMENT for sales success.

According to a Harvard Business Review article by Schmidt, Adamson, and Bird (2015), there are 5.4 people in the sales cycle that have to formally sign off on enterprise purchases. It only takes one of the buyers to fall out of ALIGNMENT to slow down or kill the deal.

Whether winning the next meeting or running straight to validation, do not rush your prospects. You may choose to create a sense of urgency to quicken the process, but understanding where the win will occur allows the salesperson to:

• Focus on immediate opportunities and place this prospect in the mid or long-term pipeline.
• Don’t frustrate the process and the prospect by forcing your company’s goals

Beyond the First Meeting

Now that the first demo or meeting is over, you should know the basics of your prospect, including their attitudes, goals, implications, initial milestones, needs, and potentially timing. If your sales team made the connection, they already know the details. If your SDR or BDM team made the connection, ensure this team includes a write-up of the most important details about the ALIGNMENT process. Don’t let the salesperson go into the second meeting with no details about the customer — this will only annoy and distant the prospect from the cycle.

During the follow-up meetings there are several outcomes, but obviously only one desired by you. You want to win. You want the contract. You want so many things. Poor salespeople will focus on their desired outcome. Winning salespeople understand the prospect’s current state and desired state to ensure sales mapping and value alignment.

Are they even a good fit for your product?

Many salespeople will attempt to fit a square into a circle hole in hopes of landing a deal. Don’t do this. ALIGNMENT is bi-directional. If you see that the customer isn’t a fit, be honest and open to build and earn trust. They may have a need later on down the line. They may move companies and be in a position to buy from you in the future. Qualify hard and qualify quickly so you have a good customer fit and reduce churn risks later on.

Scope & Proof of Value

If you’re in a RFI/RFP situation, find every angle you can to align with prospects to maximize your exposure to the purchasing committee. Companies don’t leave purchases to one person anymore. 5.4 people were stated earlier, but I’ve seen committees reach 15+ participants. You, the salesperson, need to know the scope of the project and scope of human capital required to make a deal happen.

The scope in this situation isn’t necessarily the scope of work provided, but more alignment with their business. For example, you will need to establish political alignment, business objective alignment, decision process alignment, and procurement process alignment. What is the scope you need to fulfill to ensure a smooth purchasing path is in order?

Proof of value is different for every customer, but the process should be clear and easy. During your first meeting, try to outline milestones and explain each step of your process. This includes establishing a mutually agreed upon end-state of the expected value even if it is estimated based on similar customers.

What is their present business value if not moving to your solution or product? How are you going to align to this business value before a purchase or shortly into the purchase? How are you going to alleviate their risks in the attempt of experimenting with your company? Proof of concepts are a great way to validate and justify proof of value.

Validation

When you’ve proven that your product or service is worth the time after the first meeting, second meeting, or 20th meeting, you can begin validation. This segment will help you align timing on the deal. What is required of you, the salesperson, to validate your claims of return on investment (ROI). Does your company offer proof-of-concepts (POCs), pilot periods, calculators, or other methods to develop the value of their purchase?

If your company does offer an evaluation, make sure a clear path has been established to a purchase. Too often do sales fail to understand the next steps if the evaluation proves successful. The ambiguity in the process will often slow down or even kill the deal. Find the value as quickly as you can.

The following image outlines a my simplified validation process framework:

POC / Validation Workflow.

Agreement

All of your hard work has paid off and now you’re in full ALIGNMENT. Time to celebrate, right? After all, you’re in ALIGNMENT and everything is perfect. I see this type of ego in internal sales meetings all the time. Everything is going well…until it’s not.

Do not be lured into a false sense of security.

Customers have the ability to break ALIGNMENT even in the final hours. How you handle disruption is extremely important. Even though you may have a verbal agreement, the sale is still pending.

If you’re intuitive and discreet during the first meeting when the honeymoon period is starting, understand or ask the customer how you should handle interruptions or issues in the sales cycles. You want to ensure you can react according to their desires, and really earn the right to push back, know how to, and get a response instead of darkness and silence across the channels of communication. Ghosting is an unfortunate product of the age we live in.

Of course, if you have real customer ALIGNMENT and are in-tune to the needs of the customer, customers typically move forward and genuinely help the process. Celebrate, make them feel like part of the family, and say cheers to their upcoming success with your product or services.

Congratulations — you just made another sale!

The Course of the Cycle

Over the course of the sales cycle, you have:

• Learned your customer’s attitude and adjusted to it
• Led them through an easy engagement with your organization
• Discovered the implications of in-action for their organization are risky and more costly than investing in your product or service
• Understood, synthesized, and proved their goals are achievable with your product or service
• Their needs are solved by your product or service
• Milestones were achieved, together, to ensure a successful purchase
• Earned the right to work with them, provide insight, and sell them
• Designed a perfect-world scenario to keep the customer engaged to ensure goals and needs were met
• Endured their timeline once a path was co-authored

ALIGNMENT Sales Tools

What good is a method without a toolkit? If this method resonates with readers like you, I plan to author a book with an implementation program providing a more comprehensive and product-ready version of the tools below.

The Value Pyramid

Understanding where your product or services fit in the customer’s business is very important. The following image outlines the areas you should consider when developing value for the customer. The objectives, challenges, requirements, and initiatives often reveal clues you need to develop the customer’s sales framework. Listen to the customer, ask meaningful questions, and tie value back to showcase time or monetary savings.

A simplified value pyramid for your consideration.

Org Charting

Better account understanding creates stronger, more concrete relationships with more engaged prospects. Better business opportunities emerge when sales know about key decision makers, line-of-business owners, and individual contributors.

Proof of Value Scoping

Understanding the value of your product and service will help the customers engage and work with you. What were first impressions? What is the perceived value it brings to their organization? What proof points would help them determine if their expectations are true? The latter typically leads to a proof of concept stage but isn’t always necessary.

Proof of Value Scoping Simplified

Proof-of-Concept Success Criteria

The criteria for your sales success will vary as will your proof-of-concept process. Below is a great starting point for your organization to define success criteria with your customers and prospects. Having measurable success criteria is ideal, and should be the foundation of your joint, co-authored charter with the prospect. It should also be achievable in the time frame allowed and with the resources available.

Some of the first questions to ask include:

• Product/Solution performs as the client expects (what are the outcomes?)
• Product/Solution meets client budget expectations or is negotiated to fit client’s expectations
• ROI is greater than the cost of your product/solution — aim for 5x+
• Product/Solution fits client’s abilities to implement (Does the client have sufficient resources for implementation?)
• Does your team fit the client’s customer success expectations?
• Why are we doing this and what are we trying to achieve?
• What are we comparing this to?
• Are we testing a specific business process?
• What other similar products or services are being used by the customer today, and why?
• What happens if we don’t deploy a solution for this issue?
• How do they do it today and why is a purchase better for their future?
• What’s right or wrong with the way we do it today?
• What’s the real value we are hoping to achieve (Money or Time)?
• Who will maintain this when it is implemented / are human resources available?

Business Value Assessment

My favorite sales deliverable is the business value assessment. The Aspen Institute’s (2020) Business Value Assessments(BVAs) Toolkit is a great resource — here is the link to The Aspen Institute’s FAQ.

This assessment is essential because it focuses executive decision-makers on the business value and how it is created through your product or service. It helps the customer understand how it will help their business save or make time and money.

When you develop the BVA, make sure it can withstand the “coffee table” test. Are your documents, results, and recommendations able to sell themselves without you being in the room?

Imagine dropping your document off on a coffee table. If an executive picks it up, will the value be clear and concise? Would they want to purchase and implement the solution you’ve presented?

I’ve included my simplified approach below for consideration:

Business Value Assessment Short View (Typically provided in a long-format PDF to prove and justify the purchase).

Discovery

Sales Discovery Worksheet:

Create a worksheet or document, copy and paste the following segments into it to begin the discovery process immediately with your customers.

This document should be used to gauge interest and align with your customer. You may decide to limit the questions or create your own. Customize this to your own needs and sales efforts. Last, it’s your choice if you would like to share this with the customer or keep it internal only.

ALIGNMENT — Starter Questions

[Customer Name]

[Date]

[Participants/Departments]

Identify Needs/Challenges

• INTERNAL — What did the sales or business development team discover (Discovery)?
• What are a few challenges you’re looking to solve?
• Have you attempted to solve the challenges? If so, how?
• Why do you want to make a change at this point?
• What part of your job or team responsibilities are most frustrating?

Relationship Building

• What brought you to [Company]?
• Where are you from? Are you originally from there?
• Are you a sports fan?
• In case I ever make it to [City] what’s your favorite activity/place to do there?
• Got any big plans this weekend?
• What’s the last [Year, 2 years, Prospect’s time at company] been like?
• Note: there are many more questions so find your own flow.

Discovering Authority

• In addition to yourself, who else faces these problems?
• Are there any issues that other stakeholders may be concerned with?
• What’s your procurement process?
• Who decides which products and services are ok to use?

Budget Availability

• Are you responsible for budgeting a solution like this?
• Are you currently able to fund a platform or build a case to request more money?
• What are you ideally looking to invest from a solution like [X]?
• What are your budget cycles like at [Company]?

Generate Demand

• If money wasn’t a problem, what would your perfect world scenario look like for yours and your team’s day-to-day?
• What will you do with all your extra time/revenue after changing?
• What are pitfalls for not implementing a solution like this?

Competitors or In-House Builds

• Are there any other solutions you’ve found like this in the market?
• (IF NO) Are you building anything in-house like this?
• (IF YES) Have you had great experiences with other solution providers?
• What has been the positive outcome of others or your in-house solutions?
• How do you like our product in comparison?

Timing/Implementation

• In an ideal world, when would you like to implement a solution like this?
• Who is involved in that process?
• Do you have a current solution in place? (Contract renewal? In-House Dev? Etc…)
• Does your team have resources for implementation? If not, what’s preventing them from helping?

Following Up

• When would be the best time to meet again?
• Can we go ahead and put it on the calendar?
• Do you have any milestones we can achieve together if you like our product?
• Would you like to connect me with any other stakeholders at your company for another discussion/demo?
• When would be a good time to follow up with you about what we discussed today?
• How would you prefer me to follow-up? Phone, Text, E-Mail, or other form of communication?

Conclusion

Thank you for reading ALIGNMENT Sales. I hope you learned something new along the way. Whether you’re just starting your career or are a seasoned sales veteran, continuing your education and honing your craft is a lifelong journey. We all know that ABC is “Always Be Closing,” but don’t forget ABL, “Always Be Learning,” is just as important regardless of your skill level or age.

As we conclude, remember that dealing with customers is an art and a science. There is no one-size-fits-all, magic approach when it comes to winning your customers’ hearts and deals. You will win some and you will lose many more so don’t get disheartened along the way. By focusing on your customers’ needs, dropping your ego, and using ALIGNMENT to build rapport, you will win. Be patient and truly listen to the words and subconscious cues your customers offer. This will inevitably help you be the best version of you that customers need.

Share your ALIGNMENT successes using the hashtag #ALIGNMENTSales on your favorite social network.

Good luck selling!

References

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The Aspen Institute. (2020). Business Value Assessment Frequently Asked Questions. Retrieved January 25, 2020 from https://www.aspeninstitute.org/of-interest/business-value-assessment-frequently-asked-questions/

The Aspen Institute. (October 1, 2005). Business Value Assessment Toolkit. Retrieved January 25, 2020 from https://www.aspeninstitute.org/publications/business-value-assessment-toolkit/

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