Give Your Dream Clients More Time

In sales, fast can be slow, and slow can be fast.

Even though you may be able to do the discovery work necessary to provide your dream client with the solution they need in a single meeting, the contacts you are meeting with may need more time to discover for themselves the compelling reason they should change and do something different. They may need more time to collaborate with you on what the correct answer needs to include to work for them. When you race ahead, you can leave your contacts behind.

You might believe that the stakeholders you have met with have a good understanding of their challenge or opportunity and the right solution, but other people within their company may not have the information to come to the same conclusion. More still, some may have options in direct conflict with what you and your key stakeholders believe to be good and right and true. Your team may need more time to help their peers buy into what they need to do. Pushing for a decision now means depriving them of that time.

The solution you want propose can be precisely right for your dream client and also absolutely wrong right now. It is possible that even though your initiative is what they need, they may not have the time, money, or resources to be able to execute it now. They may need time to put certain pieces in place, to acquire the budget, or to dedicate the resources to the initiative.

The Complex Sale

A complex sale is one in which the buyer makes the decision infrequently, and that decision is significant. When it isn’t often that you make a particular decision, you want to gather information, look at different options, explore varying perspectives, and increase the certainty that you know what you need to know to make a good decision.

When a decision is going to have a significant impact, it’s natural to spend more time making sure that you don’t make a mistake. The right decision can propel your results forward, and a bad decision can spell doom.

Stay Connected

You don’t want to disconnect from your dream client as you work through the sales conversation. If you go so fast that your contacts can’t keep up, you leave them behind. You are better off learning to control the process (See The Lost Art of Closing: Winning the 10 Commitments That Drive Sales for more on how to control the process).