Faster At What Cost

Most of the things that make sales go faster are bad for long term relationships–and longer term results.

Trying to close faster only creates resistance on the part of your buyer. Making sure that you take them through all of the stages of their process, even if it feels like it may take you longer, gets you to the final commitment sooner and with your relationships in tact.

Telling the client what they want to hear so that you can make a sale might get you the business faster than telling them the truth about what they really need, but your deal will be short lived. By trading time for what is right, you damage the long term relationship, and you most certainly leave yourself open to be competitively displaced by a truth-telling salesperson.

Avoiding consensus-building and collaboration because you fear it will take longer to strike a deal by involving more stakeholders might seem like a good plan to compress time and get the win across the line. But if for some reason your power sponsor gives you the green light, you will struggle with all kinds of execution problems because you didn’t really do the work to discover what your client needs and you didn’t allow the people you serve to collaborate on the solution. By neglecting and/or avoiding people, you damaged relationships.

If you feel like you have to race to make your number, it’s because you don’t have enough opportunities to reach your goals and you aren’t gaining all of the smaller commitments you need to move forward the opportunities you do have. To go faster, you have to take your time and do better work during every sales interaction. Fast is slow, and slow is fast.