I had a very interesting conversation with a sales person recently. He was bemoaning the state of his pipeline, and how he would engage deeply with prospects, follow his sales process yet things would go south for apparently no reason. After a detailed discussion trying to understand what he was doing and why this was happening it occurred to me that most sales people (myself included) hear what they want to hear.  We spend a lot of time seeking out prospects and when someone finally agrees to talk to us we don't really hear what the prospect is saying, we hear what we want to hear.  In the course of our discussion I noted the difference between what he heard from the prospects statement and what I was hearing. Here are some examples:

Example 1:
Prospect (P): We are very interested in looking at this
Sales Rep (SR): Really thats great, when do you want to move forward?
P: As soon as we can work out the details, we have a working solution in place so its not urgent.
SR: Great lets look at your current solution

Example 2:
P: We are looking to switch off of our current supplier
SR: Really, thats great lets talk about my product

What is wrong with both these scenarios? Well my rep in both these cases saw a great opportunity, while I saw a whole lot of work with a very low probability sale at the end.  Here is what I heard:

Example 1:
P: We are really interested in looking at this
SR: Really thats great, when do you want to move forward?
P: I don't..I am really just wasting your time because I have no compelling reason to change. If you give me a really good quote I will take it to my CFO and try to look good by saving the company some money. But I wont push too hard if people are tied to the current solution...if it ain't broke don't fix it.

Example 2:
P: We are not really looking to switch off of our current supplier but I don't have any leverage given that our contract is coming up. The best way I know to get our price down would be to get a couple of competitive quotes. So I will do what I need to do to get some pricing (wasting a ton of your time in the process) then I will take it back to my current supplier who I have a relationship with and beat him up a bit, and then never return your call.
SR: Great lets get started....

Its critical as karmic sales people we look to only work with prospects where our solutions transform the clients business. How do you do this..only seek out engagements where there are real difficult business issues that need to be solved. This of course assumes you are not selling something like consumables which are highly commoditized. The natural output of a sales process that focuses on transforming the clients business is that you will never have to play games to build urgency, never have to chase a customer down to have them get back to you, and your pipeline will be filled with only the gold standard of opportunities. So check your babelfish (wikipedia it..if you are unsure what it is) and listen carefully for what is not being said during your qualifications and your pipeline will be stronger for it.

Moment of Zen
"It takes time for a fruit to mature and acquire sweetness and become eatable; time is a prime factor for most good fortunes.”-Vedas

P.S. If you are interested in leveraging the karmic philosophy to accelerate your career or business please check out my website http://www.karmiccoach.com , and get Karma working for you!