I’m an avid reader of sales related blogs, and there are some very good ones out there. They talk about many things; influencing, demand generation, selling value, process (buyer and seller), differentiation, and so on. All good stuff, and also very important, however…
Isn’t it all about evidence?
All these blogs got me thinking, and I concluded that they overcomplicate things. To me it’s simple; it’s all about evidence (or proof points, as some people like to call them), creating certainty in the buyer’s mind that if they choose you, you will deliver. It doesn’t matter how cheap it is if it doesn’t work!
How do I know this?
I started out developing and selling automated operations software in 1974, and having convinced my first customer (a local council) to buy it (based on a free trial and a silly low price), I looked for other local councils to sell it to, based on the proven results I’d delivered to date, and so on. I then broke into other markets, using the same approach to gain a foothold and build the evidence. One good sales tactic was to leave the software on a free 28 day trial, after which time it expired. Very few trial expired before a sale was agreed, as the trail did the selling. Our product was the market leader in the 70’s and 80’s on ICL VME platforms, and is still running on mainframes around the world today.
Impressive examples of evidence based selling
Many years ago I did a workshop with Unisys, and we got onto the subject of evidence, specifically around running mission critical data centres. One guy told us how he’d just renewed their contract to run the Met Police data centre for a further five years (a renewal being perhaps the ultimate evidence). This was the data centre that ensured that policing in London ran smoothly 24/7/365. If you had to choose a supplier to do the same for your business, that evidence would surely be a big influencing factor, massively de-risking your decision, both personally and professionally.
A second great example was with Lambert Smith Hampton. I was running a workshop around developing win strategies for big deals (using a live deal), and one of the guys involved found a statement online in the annual report of one of their major customers stating that LSH had saved them £nn million pounds over a sustained period. They used that evidence to win the deal!
So, do we eat our own dog food?
The feedback that we’ve had about our new website (www.gettogreat.com) has been very pleasing. The common thread being that people like the fact that it’s evidence based; both qualitative and quantitative. As they say, ‘facts tell, stories sell’.
Whenever I go to meet a new prospect I identify a shared contact who we’ve done a successful project for in the past, and use that as the basis for opening the meeting, as in “I notice that we are both connected to person x”, which immediately leads to “Yes we are, how do you know them?” from the prospect. You can guess the rest. Evidence based selling.
So, what should you do next?
Start by checking your companies evidence. Is there qualitative and quantitative evidence, in the form of case studies and testimonials, that proves beyond doubt (in the buyers mind) that you can deliver the promise you are selling? If not, I suggest you start building the evidence quickly, before the next sale stalls or goes to someone who does have the evidence. If you want some good examples of evidence, take a look at www.gettogreat.com.