Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play: Transforming the Buyer/Seller Relationship

by Mahan Khalsa

Move off the solution!

tip - move off the solution and focus on the problem what the solution is going to solve and its impact.

Evidence: How do we define the problem? How do we measure success? Impact: What are the financial and intangible costs and benefits? Context: Who or what else is affected by the issues and the solution? Constraints: What has stopped (or might stop) the organization from resolving these issues?

tip- to identify an opportunity, you should consider evidence of the problem, impact of it, context or who is impacted by it, constraints or who is stopping the problem.

“No, not exactly.” When we asked them how the client would measure success, they were not sure. When we inquired as to what had stopped the client from fixing the problem itself, the consultants had their own guesses and no client opinions. Often, they had not discussed the client’s views on time, people, and money. Decision processes were unclear or unfavorable. They did not have access to key stakeholders and thus could not describe what criteria those people would

tip- to qualify an opportunity, an opportunity should have a client stated problem, impact, clearly defined decision process, access to stake holders, time, resources and money defined.

talk to ten different CIOs, I get ten different descriptions of what data warehousing means in their unique situation. Do you mind if I ask: when you say data warehousing, what does that mean to you in the context of what you are trying to achieve?”

tip- to understand more, if the client says i need a solution, we should ask a question which would be can you explain what do you mean by dd solution and how it applies to what you are trying to achieve?

let’s deal with that head-on. What would you have to see, hear, or experience from us that would be so compelling that this would be at least a tough choice? With some time and skill, the consultant was able to elicit the details that would make a difference, demonstrate them, and win the account. The rule with yellow lights is: If you see it, hear it, or feel it, find a way to say it—tactfully.

tip- if you feel the client has competetion in mind, ask the question what do you see, hear or experience from our firm which tells you that the decision would be a tough choice?

“We should keep talking; that feature is not very important.” Red Light (from client): “If you don’t have that feature, it’s a deal breaker.”

tip- if you feel that the need has a yellow light meaning slowed down due to what ever the reason, state the concern and ask the client what should we do next? There will be a red light which means stop or green light which means move forward. Sensing the red light ahead means good because we cut down the expense.

context, the word “problem” is a synonym for pain; the word “result” is a synonym for gain. The

tip - to qualify an opportunity, first see if there is a pain or a gain. No pain or no gain does not create any opportunity.

helped many companies address business problems with (the requested solution) and each one had different priorities and objectives. Would it be okay if we started out talking a bit about

tip- before talking about the solution, ask questions.

What would that allow you to do as a business that you can’t do today?”

tip- ask one question on pain and one question on gain. The pain question is what kind of problems are you facing without the solution and what is the impact in terms of revenue, time does it cost? The gain question is that if the solution is their, what kind of things would it help to do which you are not able to do at the moment?

what bad things happen if there is no solution?

tip - pain question. what bad things would happen if there is no solution and who else is impacted by the problem?

Will you share with me some areas where you feel you are not as optimized or efficient as you could

tip- pain question- what are the areas where it is not working and what is the impact?

How would you expect that to generate better results with your customers?”

tip gain question- how would the solution generate better results with your customers?

clients facing issues like these have also been wrestling with [give examples]. Has that at all been an issue for

tip- before giving the solution , collect all the issues from the client. iF the client is done, ask him that other clients have the following issues and get a confirmation from them on the issues.

client may have trouble selecting only one issue and say that they are all important. You can respond, “They are all important. I’ll make sure we discuss them all. Which one would you

tip- once all the issues are identified, ask the client which issues are important to prioritize them first.

measure it? 2. What is it now? 3. What would you like it to be? 4. What is the value of the difference? 5. What is the value over time?

tip- roi question, what is the value now without the problem solved. once the problem is solved, what would you like the value to be? Also extrapolate it to in a 3 year time period, the what is the value of the difference to be? The key question is what is the value of the difference in solving the problem..

client do the math with you or for you—or verbalize the math you do and make it easy to understand.

tip- monetize the issue by asking the value now, calculating the percentage on the sales per year or costper year and take it to a 3 years from now.

when you can’t ____, how does that negatively impact your business? WHAT—PROBLEM EVIDENCE What lets you know ____ is a problem? What measures, if any, prove that ____ is a problem? What key performance indicators go up and down when ____? If we were doing management by walking around, what would convince us that ____ is a problem? And when you can’t ____, then what happens?

tip - to monetize the soft issue, ask a question. How do you know there is a problem and what measure helps you to judge that there is a problem? what measure goes up or down due to the problem? if you cannot prove the problem, how does the problem negatively impact the business?

be your punch list for success? And if you could ____, what would that allow you to do as a business that you can’t do today? And if you could ____, what would be the benefits? Questions such as these can get us started toward understanding the nature of the problem and the definition of success.

tip - if the problem is solved, what measures would tell you that the problem is solved? how would it impact the business in the future on what you can not do today?

When a bad thing happens, then what happens? What are the consequences? Who cares? For what reasons?

tip- for soft issues, ask peeling questions. if the problem persists, what happens? what is the impact and what are the consequences of the problem? where does it show up on the performance which gives you the number..

If a good thing happens, what will that allow them to do that they can’t do today? Who benefits? What’s the big deal?

tip for gain issue, peeling question is what would the problem gain be which they cannot do today and where does it show up on the bottom line?

waiting for you to discover it. Often they have not been through the intellectual or emotional inquiry to figure out the real consequence of their situation. Getting to the heart of the matter provides added value to the client, not just more information to you.

tip- always ask hard questions which would help the client to understand the impact of the issue.

can’t quantify (and even if you can), qualify importance on a scale of 1-10. A sample form of the question is: “On a scale of one to ten—with ten being that it is mission-critical and you have to do it, and one being that it’s irritating, but you can live with it—where are you?”

tip - if you can not quantify, qualify the issue. The question is on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being critically important that you should do it, 1 being irritating but you can live without it, ask the client to rate it. if the answer is more than 7 it is good. Less than 5 to 7 is yellow light which will not go anywhere.

does not have evidence, either someone else does or nobody does. If someone else does, the logical questions are “Who?” and “When can we talk to them?” This is an opportunity to move from people who do not know to people who do.

tip- if there is no evidence to the problem, ask who has the evidence. if they dont know how to find the evidence, there is an opportunity. If the evidence is there , i need to quantify or qualify.

When the impact is big, ask for the constraints. When the impact is small,

tip- if the impact is big, ask the constraint on who is preventing this from happening? if the impact is small, ask for taking away the solution and see what happens.

Who or what else is affected?

tip- before qualification, we need to understand how the project fits with the organization goals and mission and what other departments are affected by this.

constraints: things that have stopped success in the past, which if uncorrected, will stop it again this time.

tip- to identify bad constraints, identify what is causing them not to implement and figure out a way to remove the constraint.

start out with: “Given that you know you’re going with Product X, what are your criteria for an ideal implementation of X?” You would elicit a list of criteria (issues) and make sure it was complete. You would explore the evidence and impact of each issue, in order of importance, and investigate context and constraints.

tip- to identify success criteria, the question should be what are your criteria for a good implementation?

“What will be most important to you, in terms of the people you work with?” We would then proceed to structure a conversation, however loosely, around those criteria as well. Even though it is challenging

tip- instead of asking decision criteria, you can ask the question on what is important to you interms of the people whom you want to work with?

Issues: What problems or results is the client trying to address? In what priority? Evidence: How do we define the problem? How do we measure success? Impact: What are the financial and intangible costs and benefits? Context: Who or what else is affected by the issues and the solution? Constraints: What has stopped (or might stop) the organization from resolving these

Tip- for a first meeting, i need to identify issues, evidence, impact, context and constraints to complete the solution.

Move off the solution Get out all of the issues the solution must address Prioritize the issues by importance Gather evidence and impact for issues in order of importance Explore context and constraints

tip- To approach the solution, we should move off the solution, identify issues, prioritize them, gather evidence and explore context and constraints.

intended to resolve? 2. What’s letting you know it’s a problem (problem evidence)? 3. What is the impact on the business (problem impact)? 4. How would you measure success (result evidence)? 5. What is the payoff if success is achieved (result impact)? 6. Who or what else is affected (operational context)? 7. What is the big picture (organizational context)? 8. What has stopped the organization from

tip- key questions i should ask during a prequalification meeting with the client.

They do not believe that what we do will give them that value. 3. They believe they can get the same value somewhere else for less.

tip- during price negotiation, client has 3 beliefs namely belief in value of the solution, what we do will not bring value or they can get something for cheap.

don’t want you to show me anything proprietary. I just want to get an idea of the scope—what they say they are going to do and what results they will produce. If what they are going to do is the same as what we have in mind, I’ll advise you to go with them. If I see some radical differences, I’ll point them out. You might still go with them. At least you will be making a well-informed decision. Does that sound reasonable?

tip- when a client gets 2 proposals, ask for their proposal and tell the client that you would advise them to go with them if the proposal seems fair or you can point red flags so that the client can make an informed decision.

What are the steps you will need to take as an organization to feel comfortable and confident saying either

tip- instead of asking a decision criteria question, you should ask what are the steps needed for your organization to say yes or no?

various stakeholders, keep asking who they feel you should be talking to. In your Opportunity discussions, listen closely to what the client says about context (Who or what else is affected?) and constraints (What has stopped the organization from

tip- to get the stakeholders who make the decision, ask the question which group is impacted by the decision and who has stopped it from last time and this would get the stakeholder group.

“Our goal is to come up with a solution that precisely addresses your needs. From what you described to me, these people are key owners of those needs. To make any kind of intelligent proposal, I’ll need to talk with them. You know the company better than I do. How do we set that up?”

tip to ask for decision makers, ask the question that to make an intelligent proposal, we need to understand the owner of these needs and see if the client guides us.

have about a thirty-minute conversation with him or her? At the end of our time, you can decide whether that time was well spent. If yes, you could extend it to another stakeholder. If not, all we risked was one thirty-minute conversation. Does that sound reasonable?

tip- if the client says i will do it, we would say, how about you and i will do it for 30 minutes for one stakeholder and you can decide on the rest.

We can ask our counterpart if there is one stakeholder with whom he or she feels comfortable and safe. Ask if the three of us can meet together. Only if our counterpart feels the conversation adds value will it be extended to another stakeholder. Our counterpart maintains control.

tip- if you dont get access to the stakeholder, we need to chunk it down and ask for the minimal stakeholder access and see if that works.

What are the key issues, evidence, impact, context, and constraints? We may start with something like “Thank you very much for taking the time to meet with us. On an initiative of this nature, it is critical we get your input and insight. From your

tip- on a stakeholder interview, always ask for key issues, evidence, impact of the issues, context and constraints from their side so that we can present the proposal better.

“What would drive your decision one way or the other?” What specific criteria will they use to decide between doing nothing or doing something? How will they decide whether to do it themselves or to do it with outside help?

tip- if we want to judge the outcome of the opportunity, ask for the key criteria on what would take the client to decide to do nothing or do it themselves and why?

smaller the number of competitors, the more likely the client has done due diligence and is ready to select; greater numbers suggest that a client is still in the information-gathering process. The type of competitor we are facing can be revealing. For instance, assume we are bidding on a process improvement initiative, and

tip- to judge competetion, ask for the number of bids. if the bids is less than 3, it is a narrow selection and if it is more than 3, then the client is in an information collection process.

What would be so compelling a difference that a client would actually kick out an incumbent? Let’s make sure we find out. ❖ If there is an incumbent, why change? Who Stands to Win/Lose?

tip- to find out about the incumbent, identify the reason for the change and act. also ask if anybody is going to lose in the deal and find out why they would lose.

What would clients have to intellectually and emotionally believe to be true before they could confidently make a final decision—one way or the other? What would they like to see, hear, or experience

tip- ask for the presentation and ask to find out what they would like to see, hear and experience during the presentation to find out steps on the opportunity.

They will have different perspectives on Opportunity (issues, evidence, impact, context, and constraints). They may have differing opinions and knowledge about Resources (time, people, and money). They may have a different understanding of the Decision Process (the decisions, and who gets involved).

tip- For any opportunity, always find opportunity, resources( time, people, money) and decision criteria which would sucessfully improve the win rate.

Failing that, try for a telephone review of the main elements with one or more key stakeholders—for the same reasons as above. 3. Failing that, gain agreement to present—not just deliver—your formal written proposal in person.

tip- at the time of presentation, try to ask for a pre presentation with stakeholders, a phone presentation or an in person presentation to understand the client response.

told the CEO that they understood and respected his priority; they would have made the same decision. They said that meeting with him and the leadership team together was a priority as well. They got on a plane, flew back to Chicago, and rescheduled the meeting. When they returned to London two weeks later, they were treated royally, had everyone’s full attention, and landed a very substantial new account.

tip- we need to present to all the stakeholders. some times it is hard to judge responses and win rate is very low. so ask for all the stakeholders to be present on the call.

know this is your top issue and I don’t want to proceed until you are comfortable that it’s been well addressed. What’s your sense?” Or,

tip - to ask for decision, check for a question on how do they feel on how we addressed the issue.

might have been: “We are a $__million company. I sense you’re asking for a reason. Is the size of the company important to your decision?” Or, “I’d be glad to talk about the size of our company and I sense you’re asking for a reason. Could you share the reason?”

tip - if the client asks how big is your company, we should answer it to find out the reason for the question. Based on the reason, we can provide an answer.

know what you think makes you the best company. CONSULTANT: I think what we do particularly well is .

tip- if the client asks a question, acknowledge and then follow up with a redirection question.

Gerry Spence (author of How to Win an Argument Every Time) tells the following story: “The Spanish matadors had a phrase for dealing with the onslaught of the beast—‘Ver llegar.’”

tip- we must read the book Gerry spence on how to win an argument every time.