Say the word 'No'

How do your salespeople spend their days? Do they spring into action at the behest of every prospect who shows the slightest glimmer of interest, buying plane tickets, doing research, writing proposals, wining and dining? Are most of these prospects really likely to say yes? And are they prospects whose "yes" you really want? This last question may seem bizarre to many 21st century professionals desperate for every scrap of business in a lean and mean marketplace. It's the one question that should guide every move your team makes.

You can't afford to spend your time and resources on the wrong types of customers. Don't just ask yourself if you could do business with a prospect. Ask yourself if you should do business with him. Will that customer advance your company in the direction you want it to go?

The truth is that you should be seeking to disqualify prospects up front so you won't waste time on someone who just isn't right for your company. There's a big difference between your next customer and your next best customer. Realize this and you'll see why success is not based on what you know; it's about what you no.

In other words, you should listen for the "no" at the earliest point possible so you can move on to bigger, better, more suitable prospects. Here are some tips.
 

Make the Pareto Resolution. You've probably heard of the Pareto Rule: 80 percent of your income will come from 20 percent of your customers. How would life be for you if ALL your customers were like your top 20 percent today? Well, your company would probably be leaner, more agile and more efficient. Instead of hiring more salespeople to get more business, you'd teach your current team to filter out the silt that comprises your current 80 percent.

You'd grow quickly toward your goals because every new customer would fit your predetermined parameters. There would be less wheel-spinning and more getting on with business. Life would be more fun. Making the Pareto Resolution simply means deciding to leave anyone who looks like your ho-hum 80-percenters behind in the creek while you continue your relentless search for gold.
 

Decide who you don't want. Here's where the rubber meets the road. You must set the parameters for identifying someone who is not worth spending your sales resources on. For a real-life example of this process, let me share a story.

Recently I had the privilege of working with the international sales team of Autodesk's Consulting Group in San Rafael, Calif. I was brought in because their vice president of sales has the challenge of raising the department's sales to $150 million and simultaneously improve its margins from the 15 percent range to the 30 percent range. Autodesk doesn't have a market penetration problem.

They are in virtually every Fortune company in the U.S. But the consulting group does have limited resources and they need to be able to pick and choose what business supports their revenue growth and margin requirements, and figure out what to do with the projects they choose not to undertake. After working with them for a day, they got clarity among themselves as to what was and what wasn't going to support the collective goals of the group.

For example, they decided what would never be acceptable business for them and what would always be acceptable business. That left a family of business in between that needed some filter parameters - such as "referenceability," "repeatability," "leading edge technology," etc. And they agreed that they would assign scores to these parameters and projects that totaled a minimum amount that would be accepted (on a case-by-case basis), and those that did not would be sourced elsewhere.

Prior to this exercise, the team would struggle to decide what to take and what not to … and what to do with what it did not take. At the conclusion of this meeting, it was now clear that 80 percent of the proposals would fall into either definitely yes or definitely no (and so required little or no analysis), and the remainder had clear parameters for deciding yes or no.

The author is the founder and managing partner of Power of No, a St. Louis-based firm specializing in improving corporate sales and management effectiveness.