Now!

The second that question begins to form in your head you should be prepared to walk away now.

That is not to say that you shouldn’t perform a thorough evaluation of options, examine how the deal can be altered or restructured, but once that question appears, no matter how faint, and how deep it is in the canyons of you subconscious mind(s) you have to confront and accept it. Sales people have a tendency to ignore the obvious and loud voices in their heads. How many times have you wanted to ask the obvious question but did not for all the wrong reason, and then have come to regret it. How many times have you taken a deal when you should have walked, and then have come to not only to regret it, but have it distract you from other successes?

To accept it does not mean you lead with it, but it does have to go at the top of the list. Every other option has to be weighed against it in the cold light of day. This is perhaps the hardest thing for most sales people and in fact most sales managers to accept.

To be able to do that you do have to have a process of evaluation, much like having minimum qualification criteria, you need to have minimum standards an opportunity has to meet in order to stay in play. What concessions are being asked to make, what impact on current margins and future margins, what resources will be consumed, what is the opportunity cost, were they a marquee account, how much of a drag on resources, and how distracting a client will they?

Even with that it is not easy, but consider the pain of the alternative. First and foremost, your time; any time you invest in chasing deals that are bad or weak or should not happen, is time taken away from finding alternative prospects, time from driving good proposals that will close. As we have written about in past posts, time is your capital for success.

One of the key reasons for ignoring the voice is the plain fact that most people do not have enough real opportunities in their pipeline. Most VP’s will tell you that even when the “quantifiable” prospects exist in a pipeline, their fear that the “quality” of those prospects is at a level where they can have confidence in enough actually materializing. So the decision becomes skewed by the fact that if you walk away from this one, then there is even less of a hope.

I ask people at this cross road a simple question: if you had lots of good prospects, more than enough to hit quota, would you be thinking about how to salvage a bad deal or simply move on to the next one. If the answer is move on, then I recommend you walk away and put the time and energy into finding a new opportunity.

One of the real upsides to deciding that walking away is an option is the clarity of thought it gives. Once you prepare yourself for life without this account, the process turns to evaluating whether they are truly worthwhile as an account. Because if it doesn’t make business sense, it surely doesn’t make sales sense.

This is a lesson I learned from a great sales person, we’ll call DN. I accompanied him on a renewal call to a globally known communications equipment manufacturer; this was an account I once had that he was now managing. Before the call we played out the scenarios, we agreed that the account had lost its lustre and profitability even with the amount of revenue they potentially represented. We both individually came to the conclusion that if the account was to go away, it would be better than having it under the terms they were proposing for the renewal.

The discussion with the client was cordial but not productive, they were making very unreasonable demands, threatening to pull the account unless we made concessions, and when the account represents over a million dollars, it is usually an effective threat. But DN had plenty of prospects, he had a clear line of thought and a sound plan as to how he would make up for the lost revenue if it came to that, and as such was not rattled by these threats. He had a plan, and he was confident in his stance. The client was puzzled; DN was not looking like he was going to capitulate as other sellers had, he was not even perspiring. About a half hour in to the meeting, the client almost frustrated that her bullying had not worked, asked DN “well if you are not prepared to deal under these terms why are you here today?” DN’s reply was straight forward, relaxed polite and accurate answer: “I am here to see if I can afford you as a client.”

From that point on the question was how well did the alternatives to losing the deal stack up against the other options. To DN’s credit, a deal was struck, a mutually good deal, but one that was struck because he was willing to walk away.

Walk Well,
Tibor Shanto – The Pipeline