You must take three essential steps to make the decision to stay or walk away.

Assessment: Is this truly a prospect? Determine if there is a need for your offerings through an assessment process. Assessments answer questions like: Are our business objectives aligned? Does the client truly want a consultative relationship or do they only want the lowest price? Assessments bring clarity to the situation. What we do with these answers is an indication of our level of conviction. If the prospect is looking for "apples to apples" comparisons and we want to work in a consultative manner, will we take the bait? Or will we walk away? If the prospect doesn't commit to the work necessary to improve the outcomes, are we going to commit our resources to them anyway? Or are we going to walk away?
Dialog: Dialog is defined as an exchange of ideas. It is a conversation, not a monologue. It is amazing how many producers think they are facilitating a conversation when they are actually asking the prospect to listen to a "who we are and why you should do business with us" presentation. When we try to be understood by the prospect, instead of trying to understand the prospect, we can never determine if there is a good fit. We assume that they want what we have because we know it's good for them. This false sense of security often causes us to stay in the sales process too long, when a meaningful dialog would have shown us if a mutually beneficial business relationship was feasible.
Commitment: An effective sales process requires commitments from both the buyer and producer. To obtain commitments from the buyer, producers must prove they have the ability to deliver capabilities. Likewise, for the buyers to commit, they must have clarity and confidence in the producer's ability to deliver.

Special Reports /

The reluctant producer, Part 2: When to walk away

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