What Happens When You Cannot Use MeasureMax?

Sometimes, in spite of your good efforts and intentions, customers do not conduct business within the framework of your sales process. They do not provide you with the specifics of their goals and filters. They are unwilling to make conditional commitments. Does this mean you walk away from potential business opportunities? No!

Yet, without this data, a significant number of goals and filters remains unknown and decreases the probability of successful outcomes. Therefore, your best course of action is to determine how much time, effort, and resources to invest with the risks involved. Obviously, the larger the business opportunity, the more time you are willing to expend—and the greater the risks of unknowns you are willing to accept.

Such risks are typical of bid sales. If customers' goals are low price or fast delivery, concentrate on making their other filters measurable. Benefit from having fewer unknowns with which to contend. Although, you may discover after MP 1 and MP 2 that customers' goals are still lowest price or fastest delivery, so be it. The outcome for these particular sales might not change, but your mind-set for other sales opportunities has in powerful and productive ways.

The challenge is to ensure that the majority of your sales opportunities do not depend on working outside known and measurable customers' goals, filters, and SOEs. If need be, invest more selling time with value-driven decision makers or market segments than you do with your current customers. After all, you did not invest all this time, energy, and resources to acquire a new sales perspective, tools, and set of skills merely to do the same type of selling as before. Ask yourself, "What new markets or customers do I pursue knowing I have value-driven business tools and sales perspectives my competition do not have?"