1) diagnose the situation

Is your sales force set up for success?

Start by making a business case.

The leaders of your village are not going to buy in to the Cindy and Steve story; they need to see some data. Help them "see" the problem.

If you are like most companies, this idea of "losing to no decision" is going to be more anecdotal from QBR meetings or forecast reviews.

Pipeline heath is a common topic. You probably know the multiple you need to be at for opportunities in the pipeline. You might not know where in the pipeline you are springing a leak. If you are losing a lot of deals to no decision, this is a late stage hole in your pipeline.

The negative impacts are tremendous because it means your sales people are having to work harder and harder pursuing more and more opportunities at the top of the funnel. It also means you've invested a lot of resources to get to this late of a stage and do not even know why you are losing.

We have a straightforward diagnostic that helps rapidly determine

• If you have a problem losing to no decision
• What is the economic impact to your business
• What are the root causes
• How are other groups involved or impacted

2) Model your Customer's World

Follow the money

Now that you've isolated a root cause problem, you need to create a common view point of your customer that everyone involved can agree on, accept, and understand.

The amount of variables sales people have to account for is overwhelming and without an organizing structure - uncoordinated messages create more confusion at the point of sale.

• What are the various business drivers and how do they decide to buy?
• How many different groups are involved and how complex of an internal sell is it?
• Where is there conflict between departments or functions that you should develop proactive strategies to address?

Sales organizations have patchworks of these models, but are often generic and the content and training they receive follow different structures as well.

The more you can organize information the way customers experience their decision-making process, the easier it is to tweak and align existing work.

We have an 11 point inspection process to help you identify the full texture of your customers world.

Our model:

has been built over the past 15 years and is based on researching:

• organizational structures,
• executive roles and responsibilities,
• cascading business drivers,
• and different patterns of initiatives.

is informed from survey data of over:

• 1000 executive buyers
• 400 interviewers

And field validated through

• over 50 different collaborating working sessions
• and over 200 field test results working with sales teams

The whole idea is to have a common design point to coordinate all of your messaging and resources.

3) Write the Possible Outcome Story

Your customer wants an outcome, let's write their success story

we've developed an elegant strategy to help organize information and provide tools to help sellers focus on the right messages throughout a selling campaign.

Based on the results from the customer modelling work, we help you organize an integrated story for your champion based on the definition of an outcome we developed working with over 400 executive buyers.

For easy digestion, we help you compose all of this information as an outcome story. You are selling possibility with your insight - your buyers want to achieve an outcome. We help you translate all of your innovation and details into a format that is easy for your BUYERS to consume.

4) design the Treasure Map

Create visualizations to help Steve share the idea

The POSSIBLE OUTCOME story is like your screen play - it is very important to organize all of the capability you can bring to your customers but framed in the way that matters to them.

It operates as the 'architecture' for all of the specialists that will be involved supporting sales; providing a way to help them create supporting material that "fits" with the way sales people will need to communicate value to your target customers.

The "treasure map" is a light weight way of creating diagrams that can be easily version controlled and tailored by clients. Think about it more like a "Whiteboard" that can be easily shared by your champion with other stakeholders.

This creates a platform for collaboration and allows your sales team and your champion to work together through any notes or corrections that will come up.

Your treasure map will be unique for your company because it encodes in all of your differentiation but in a simple frame for your customers.

5) Plot their Success Journey

All good stories have a plot

A plot is the sequence of events that that protagonist (your champion or STEVE) of a story goes through and the situations they experience along the way.

This is no different.

Through studying different management consulting techniques and emerging program management best practices from the Project Management Institute - we've developed a simple structure to help an executive envision a successful program in a light weight way.

It's very important to set expectations with leaders that can be comparable with the details of whatever type of project management method is required to realize results. In one visual we communicate the details that leader will need to feel comfortable pursuing an initiative and leveraging your structure to evaluate progress.

6) Storyboard the Process

Break down the journey into scenes

How do you bring the story and plot to life?

At each plot point, you can predict who in Steve's organization will be involved and what conflicts he will encounter. These are all predictable and the more your sellers are prepared to handle it, the better off they will be to provide influence.

Instead of making dense playbooks that provide a lot of information, think more like writing a screen play. Instead of writing specific scripts, focus more on describing the situation, who is involved, and their motivations. Prepare your sellers to be more like improvisational actors who focus on reacting to the situation rather than stage performers who are worried about remembering their lines.

Making the storyboard and writing it cross-functionally is not only fun, it allows everyone to reduce the amount of information you provide to sellers by a factor of between 50 and 100.

7) Rehearse; then take the show on the road

Learn by doing

The term "sales training" conjures images of lectures, tests, documents, guidebooks, and low engagement. The information your sellers require it too complex to learn in that format. Instead, create experiential type situation and programs: rooms to experience the information, team exercises, playing the roles of buyers. All of these are highly effective and far less expense to prepare.

Is helping your champions do the internal selling required to get buy-in required for them to get funding complex?

YES. It is

If losing to no decision is a problem for you - don't worry.

We can help you fix.

We have amazing tools to help with engaging techniques to get even the most difficult subject-matter experts on board. We also have a blended delivery model that includes a mix of:

• Research
• Advisory support
• Consulting
• Professional services
• Training services

We have different delivery methods to meet any budget or time constraint.

This is a simple problem to fix. It's just a different way to approach problems than you are used to following. Give us a chance to be your guide.