are everything. Even if you don’t think someone is going to buy from you this month – or this year or even next year – it’s nonetheless essential that you maintain your relationships. “People move around the industry, situations change, and, even if you don’t think they’re a customer for your product right now, stick with them,” says Manager #1. Case in point: shortly after losing the deal, he won a $3 billion engine order from American Airlines, beating out incumbent GE, but only because he had spent more than 12 years nurturing a relationship with them. That’s $250,000,000 per year in relationship building return. In later years, as CEO of a company
that provides outsourced expertise to airlines and service providers worldwide, Manager #1 spent at least 10 percent of his time maintaining relationships spanning his more than 26 years in the aviation industry. His efforts paid off: 100 percent of his company’s business came through his long-standing relationships and their referrals. “I credit much of our success to top-quality work and the time I spend staying in touch,” says Manager #1.
MANAGER #2 Sold IT systems integration solutions
The Sale: When one of the top sys- tems integrators in the world issued a request for information (RFI) to several leading technology companies, it wanted to create a new line of busi- ness for outsourcing – and it needed an IT solution to do it. Specifically, the integrator wanted to show a client – a start-up bank eager to get into the mortgage loan business but unable to capitalize its own system – that it could provide a turnkey solution on an outsourced basis to meet the bank’s requirements.
At first glance, this $3 million op- portunity looked to be a windfall for Manager #2, whose longtime client had issued the RFI. Her company had a product in development they thought could be modified to meet
the integrator’s requirements. “It was about six months from release and we thought, ‘Wow. If we could release it to these specifications, we’d have a successful first launch,” Manager #2 recalls. She and a solutions architect worked nearly full time to modify the new product. Yet, even as the technology began to align with the integrator’s specifications, a nagging doubt started to plague Manager #2. “I began to realize our focus was really more technical than they wanted,” she says. “We could make our technology dance, but they didn’t want that. They wanted basic technological capability with more of a marketing focus. They wanted a tool to make their business service look sexy.”
Unable to modify the basic phi- losophy of her company – namely, superior technology – she instead modified her sales approach. “We went through the presentation trying to convince the client they should have technology that could dance rather than just look pretty,” she says. It didn’t work. The client chose the competition. Worse, they liked the competitor’s product so much they bypassed the trial and went straight into a full-blown implementation for a whopping $23 million. The Lesson: If a customer wants apples, don’t try to sell them oranges. And, if oranges are all you have, be willing to walk away. “I can walk away much more easily now than I used to be able to,” admits Manager #2. “As a sales rep for a top company, I used to assume I could win anything and I’d stick with a sale no matter what.” She also spends a lot of time up
front understanding not only what the customer wants in terms of a technol- ogy solution, but how her IT solution will support the customer’s business model. She is diligent about making sure there’s a fit between the two. “I want to make customers successful in their business, not just in their un- derlying IT system,” she explains. The result: her sales funnel is smaller today
than it used to be, but those who are in it are far more likely to become cli- ents – making her more efficient and more successful than ever.
MANAGER #3 Sold Boeing combat helicopters
The Sale: At the turn of the 21st century, Manager #3 was tapped to head Boeing’s response to an RFP from a major Eastern European na- tion. The competition was for 15 to 30 combat helicopters with options for more – and a provision for some work to be done in that country. In all, the deal was worth almost $1 billion. Five manufacturers worldwide were competing for the win. With so much at stake, Manager #3 set up an office in-country. She brought over an integrated product team of 12 to 15 people who worked full time for more than six months with the government’s contractor to de- velop a solid proposal. “We invested millions in this sale,” she says. “We really felt we were going to win.” Admittedly, the RFP made some impossible demands. It required, for example, the transfer of nonreleas- able data regarding the helicop- ter’s development and design. But Manager #3 assumed these kinds of requirements were simply negotiat- ing positions and that she’d be able to negotiate them away in return for something she could legally offer and implement. “We took as many risks as we could and put together a very good proposal,” she says. But, as it turned out, a “very good proposal” wasn’t what the government wanted. Since Boeing wasn’t fully in compli- ance with every demand in the RFP, Boeing lost the bid. The Lesson: Manager #3 says she
didn’t fully grasp the ramifications of the government’s unyielding, military style. She thought that, by taking an untenable RFP and making it ten- able, she was positioning herself as the front-runner. Had she better understood the cultural dynam- ics, she says she never would have
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