Selling in a Time of Corona – S2E4 – The Deal Maker

Game show host:      Welcome to Deal or No Deal……………… <music>

Elliot Epstein - intro: So, someone ate a bat apparently and the world turned upside down. Hi, I'm Elliot Epstein. And I’ve spent the last 20 years of my life coaching, consulting, training, and speaking about all facets of sales development, pitching, presentations, negotiation, the C-suite sales calls and all of the various components in the sales cycle in between. And now we find ourselves in a world that's very foreign. Welcome to Selling in a Time of Corona.

Elliot Epstein:             Welcome to the Dealmaker episode, where we go way beyond the traditional sales approaches to a land far, far away – New Deal Land.

In the midst of Covid-19 you may have found that your standard sales process has been performing as well as a Victorian security guard managing quarantine.

Let’s face it, if you look at the typical stages of

Build rapport

Ask some questions

Present your proposal

Overcome a few objections

Push for an order

Well, that’s as tired as the same security guard who’s been shagging the quarantined guests.

By the way, how does that actually happen?

‘Hey Mister, I may have the coronavirus, but would you like to have sex?  ‘Sure, let me grab my PPE and I’ll see you in 5.’

Anyway, back to the sales process, it’s actually more stale than the sour dough recipes of Lockdown #1 and how do you build the same level of rapport over Zoom anyway.

But, do you know who is winning? – The Dealmaker.

A dealmaker is someone who eschews the 7-step sales framework foisted on them by some over enthusiastic sales trainer with shiny teeth and a 90-page formulaic training manual.

The dealmaker looks at the whole picture and assesses three key things:

• What’s happening in their client’s industry and company right now?
• Who do I need to negotiate with internally to craft a great deal for my client?
• If anything at all could be done to win, anything, what would we do?

Grab a coffee and let me tell you a story:

It’s 1978 and America’s Boeing Company is the globally dominant manufacturer of aircraft.  Boeing isn’t overly concerned by its smaller rival, a somewhat convoluted consortium of European entities that created the company we know as, Airbus.

Airbus focused its pitches on its advanced technology like; lightweight construction and cost saving benefits like greater fuel efficiency – very rational - sound familiar to your presentations?

But, whilst it picked up a few orders in France, Thailand and Korea, it was yet to crack a single sale in Boeing’s stronghold, the United States of America.

Most of Airbus’s pitches were met with polite agreement about the slightly better forecasted fuel efficiency, a few new gizmos in the cockpit and a cheaper price per aircraft.

But no airline wanted to rock the relationship boat with Boeing or face the disruption and cost of significant pilot re-training in a new aircraft.

And when Airbus’s Bernard Lattiere went to pitch to the debt-ridden Eastern Airlines and its CEO Frank Borman, he received the same lukewarm response. Borman had also done what good clients always do – ‘research’ and added ‘I know Airbus hasn’t got a single airline customer in America and so you’ve got no support on the ground either.’

But Airbus wasn’t going to give up that easily just because its standard tech pitch hadn’t worked.

Lattiere, who had also done his research and knew of Eastern’s cash problems said, ‘Look, here’s the deal – we will give you 4 Airbus aircraft for free for 6 months – you can’t lose – you get 6 months of free revenue at a time when you need cash and after that, if you’re not convinced it’s the best aircraft, simply give them back.

Eastern Airlines took the deal and six months later, ordered 23 more.

Airbus had landed in America.

Some years later, in 1986, Airbus’s star head of sales, John Leahy pitched against Boeing at North West Airlines with the deal, ‘We’ll reserve 100 Airbus aircraft, but only deliver and charge for 10 …but at the discounted volume price of 100’. If you only keep the 10 for whatever reason you’ve got a bargain for those planes. If you do like them however, there’s 90 more allocated and waiting to be delivered just when you need them. North West didn’t buy the 100 – they bought 145.

John Leahy went on to sell over 1 trillion dollars’ worth of aircraft.

That’s a dealmaker.

So, now you’re thinking – nice story, Elliot, but we could never do anything like that, head office wouldn’t approve it, we don’t have the cash, I won’t get my quarterly budget if there’s no invoice attached.

What are the other objections I hear? ‘My client wouldn’t trust it, our engineering team wouldn’t sign off on a creative solution, we couldn’t get the stock, blah blah, blah.’ Wow.

Back here in the locked down sunburnt country that is Australia I can tell you from over 20 years of consulting on pitches, companies are doing this, they have brainstormed creative pitches and they have indeed been able to offer clients deals like this:

12 months free software on a 5-year contract, where the client paid only for maintenance up front. I bet they kicked the opposition out.

A 2-hour meeting was offered with the global CEO, then blew the client away with his knowledge of their business and gave them a signed Director’s guarantee of performance.

Exclusive access was offered to a client, for the leading engineering team in the country that had just come off a project implementing an award-winning solution at a top ASX 50 company. The client loved it.

Pricing that is so compelling and cash flow positive for the client, it’s irresistible. Of course, backed up with a tight contract on terms, volume, breadth of services, exclusivity and ‘no tender’ clauses for 5 years.

And an agreement to pay out an opposition supplier’s contract in full in return for a Pay as You Go, Software as a Service arrangement. A much longer contract.

The options are endless.

It takes the ability to stop following the measly Hansel and Gretel breadcrumbs of day to day selling.

It takes a team to negotiate with itself internally to be open to new ideas.

It takes a mindset of ‘Hey, from what we know, what would really blow the client’s mind?’

It takes a Deal Maker.

The next 2 quarters could be critical to your success during COVID19. Call me, I can help you win in difficult times. Or, call the team together, and ask them.

So, do we want a Deal or No Deal?

Oh, and if you think this is only about million-dollar deals, it’s not – it’s really about sales leadership and creativity. With that in mind, let me leave you with the pitch of entrepreneur Mark Cuban when he took over ownership of the downtrodden Dallas Mavericks basketball team.

Interviewer:                    When you were doing that, when you were first starting out, what was it you were doing? What was the grind? Was it cold calling…..?

Mark Cuban:                   It was everything. All the above. Look, when I took over the Mavs, we got, we had been voted, the only award we had won was, we were voted the worst professional sports franchise of the nineties.

And we were really bad. We weren't marginally bad. We were really bad. You know, I was the new owner and instead of creating an office, I didn't have an office. And this was in January of 2000, there is a sales cubicle, there was a sales bullpen. And um, I moved everybody. So, all the sales group were in this like, little fishbowl that we called it. And I put my desk right in the middle of it. And I had a laptop and old school laptop from back then. And I had a phone book and I had a list of people who had bought tickets and were former season ticket holders. And I got on the phone and I started calling people. Because I wasn't going to ask somebody else to start making calls if I wasn’t, right?

And it was like, yeah, ‘This is Mark Cuban, new owner of the Dallas Mavericks. I know you've been to a game and I just wanted to tell you; we'd love to have you back. But did you know that going to a Mavs game is less expensive than eating at McDonald's. Do you know that we have tickets now that are less expensive than going to the movies and you'll get a unique experience that you'll never, ever experience anywhere else?’

‘Well, you guys sucked, you guys are awful….’

And I'd be like, ‘Do you remember when your mom or dad first took you to a game?’

‘Yeah...’

‘You remember how you felt?’

‘Yeah...’

‘Do you get that going to McDonald's? Do you get that going to the movies? No, we, we create special experiences. I can't guarantee you we're going to win or lose, but I can guarantee you we're going to make the entertainment, so when you look at your son or daughter's face, you will be thrilled to death and know that you couldn't get that experience anywhere else. And it's $8 a ticket.’

Elliot Epstein:              Stay safe.

Stay positive.

Remember, your ears are safe, I live in Victoria. What could go wrong?

Take care of yourselves…till next time.