Sales Forecast Meetings Revisited

I had the pleasure of participating in a webinar with Gerhard Gschwandtner, from Selling Power and Greg Volm, Inside Sales Manager at InsideView yesterday. We talked about my very favorite sales reality topic - No-Po Reality. As many of you know, No-Po stands for someone who has No Power, No Potential and No Purchase order will ever come out of it.  There’s a lot of them these days, its an epidemic worst than the swine flu. Gerhard even suggested we call them No1Po1 after H1N1.

The problem is when salespeople get so paralysed by all their tools and data, they make bad decisions and chase people they believe have power. Gerhard refers to this as, “chasing garbage trucks instead of Brinks truck” which is a good analogy of chasing the No-Po instead of the Power Buyer.  No-Pos lack power internally so they exercise it externally with……vendors like you and me.

 We asked Greg to share with us how he prevents his teams from hanging out in the No-Po zone and he said the following:

1. Make sure you are talking with 6-8 contacts within the organization- This gives perspective and leverages your influence among more people.

2. No Budget Complaints- This is the biggest clue you are in the No-Po zone and I have said many times to not accept No from people who can’t say Yes.

3. Fuzzy Excuses and Stalling for More Time- Remember a No-Po lacks influence and they clearly cannot make anything happen so when calling on one who continuously stalls, be on high alert.

4. Use InsideView’s Smart Connection- This tool does some initial No-Po filtering as it searches through thousands of executive profiles and biographies from more then 20,000 content sources- including social media content.

5. Learn to spot Power Buyers- We glanced at a few sample profiles from LinkedIn to determine who might be a Power Buyer. Without revealing their names but looking at their career trajectory, we can see the choices they have made in their career and how it builds as a career of influence. 

6. 1:1 Sales Forecast Meetings Revisited- There’s a glut of new productivity tools that have transformed all the events throughout the sales cycle so when it comes to closing business, you have a different conversation.  When Greg meets with his team members on his 1:1 forecast reviews, he no longer asks questions such as “what is happening with this deal?” or “when will you close it?” or “how can I help you close it?” Instead he has a strategic discussion focused on how to socially network your way to that contact, how to become part of the conversation, how to listen for their trigger events and align your sales cycle with their buying cycle.

Stay tuned on our ebook- to be released next week.