Change the Rules
The bid process distorts the sequence of the Measurable Phases along with your ability to sell value. With price being the main consideration, bids skip MP 1: Spark Interest and MP 2: Measure Potential, and instead begin the bidding process in the third phase, MP 3: Cement Solution. With bids, hard-fought, low-profit orders go to the last competitor willing to offer or match the lowest price. Everyone strives to be in a position to get the last shot at the order. Most important, if
owners
' goals do not consist of
lowest
prices or quickest deliveries, bids do them a great disservice. Many salespeople choose to play the bidding game, and take the risks that they will receive their fair share. Whenever possible, do not play along.
Act as if owners do not exist, and you play the price game. If you think owners
desire
no contact and do not influence purchasing decisions, you contend with bids. At least, until someone—make sure that someone is you—boldly asks if he or she really believes the following:
-
Strong-ego executives abdicate 100 percent of their decision-making authority to third-party intermediaries.
-
Owners buy products and services for the sole purpose of seeing how cheaply they can get them.
Of course not! They want to achieve specific goals that are cost effective but not
necessarily
in the cheapest manner possible. In fact, every sales opportunity—even bids—involves owners or beneficiaries wanting to discuss the best ways to measure and achieve goals. Great selling involves tapping into those discussions. Owners welcome discussions with professional salespeople who explain how to make their goals measurable. Do not disappoint them by making product pitches on the first call. If that is all you have to offer owners, the bid system works just fine.
Selling Measurable Value Is Habit Forming
Whatever sales techniques you
employ
become habit forming. The approaches you use out of habit in every sales opportunity become your overall mindset. If you mostly try to sell bid jobs, you tend to think that way. When you observe every opportunity through bid-
tinted
glasses
, measurements of success will focus more on price differences than on value differences.
A great sale occurs when only one dollar separates your winning bid from the
next
lowest
competitor's price. In bid lingo, you "left nothing on the table." You also received no compensation for providing a better table. In a bid-minded world, a Mercedes could be
considered
equivalent to a Yugo, and then judged only on price. So much for your opportunity to sell compensated value.
Nevertheless, one must
wonder
why companies with the fastest deliveries and lowest prices lose orders. Someone knows how to help customers select goals and measure value. Someone
knows
how to offer solutions whose value does not depend solely on lowest prices or
fastest
deliveries. Someone knows how to show customers that his or her solutions achieve their goals measurably better than do those of
competitors
. Someone knows that allocating selling time for maximum results requires thinking of Column 2 sales as the meat and potatoes with Column 1 sales as the gravy—not the other way around. Someone knows how to help customers fill out the measurable benefits of Column 2. The selling system outlined in this book will ensure that someone is you.
No Magic Wand
There is nothing
magical
about asking whether it makes sense for customers to conduct business with you and vice versa. When customers say yes to solutions that meet or exceed measurable expectations, it comes from logic not magic. The idea is to make a conscious decision not to waste
anyone
's time, efforts, or resources (
especially
your own). When you use a selling system like MeasureMax in your sales opportunities, you make that conscious decision.