S5E29 – How to Win Large B2B Contracts: 5 Essential Sales Tips With Mike Lander

• (00:36) – Show intro and background history
• (05:45) – Deeper into his career journey
• (12:28) – Understanding his business philosophy
• (17:04) – Commercial break (TYKR mobile app)
• (17:46) – Deeper into his marketing strategies
• (18:17) – How to qualify to better sales opportunities
• (24:59) – Deeper into his sales strategies
• (29:46) – How to negotiate a more profitable deal
• (32:23) – Guest hot tips
• (37:38) – One more key takeaway from the guest
• (40:11) – Guest contacts

Transcription

[00:00:00.000] – Show Intro

Introducing Payback Time, the podcast for entrepreneurs looking to build and scale their startups, gain access to actionable tips, proven strategies, and valuable data that can help you avoid mistakes, skyrocket sales, and optimize profits. Your business breakthrough may just be an episode away.

 

[00:00:17.430] – Guest Intro

If you’re building an enterprise SaaS business and want to close more contracts, this episode is for you. My next guest breaks down five tips on how to close more large deals so you don’t waste 3, 6, 9, or even 12 months or more on bids that don’t move forward. Please welcome Mike Lander.

 

[00:00:36.490] – Sean

Mike, welcome to the show.

 

[00:00:38.320] – Mike

Sean, thanks for inviting me. I’m really looking forward to this.

 

[00:00:41.050] – Sean

Appreciate you joining me. Before we dive in, could you tell us something about yourself that most people don’t know?

 

[00:00:47.020] – Mike

I’ll tell you two things, if you like.

 

[00:00:49.290] – Sean

Okay.

 

[00:00:50.240] – Mike

One of which is I’m an avid vinyl and audio collector. I love old-school vinyl. The second thing is, as you can probably see from my T-shirt, I’m a big jazz fan. So Blue Nurt Records, very old school, jazz from the 1950s and ’60s, Miles Davis, John Coltrane. I find it just a great place to go mentally to listen to them and get inspiration.

 

[00:01:13.930] – Sean

Very relaxing My wife and I do enjoy nice jazz after a hard week, grab a glass of wine, throw on a little jazz, and chill out.

 

[00:01:25.580] – Mike

And one other thing. An American guy, on Friday this evening, we’re going to see Niall Rogers. Now, there’s a guy who is unbelievably talented. Un unbelievably talented. Our son’s 11. It was his first concert ever in the outdoors, and he saw Niall Rogers and Sophie Alice-Bexter. It was amazing.

 

[00:01:46.760] – Sean

Nice. Absolutely. It was amazing. Yeah, that’s awesome. All right, let’s get into it. If you could take a few minutes here and give us your career background.

 

[00:01:56.200] – Mike

Sure. If anyone looked at my LinkedIn profile, they’d look at it and go, There’s no linear progression here. There’s no line. There’s no path that you would obviously see. I’m very proud of that, actually. And it’s part of who I am as a human being. I have a big thing for anyone listening that’s younger in their teens or 20s. I’m a big believer in learning pathways. People find their way based upon who they meet, the influences that they have, the ambitions that they set, and Just because you’re doing one job today doesn’t mean you won’t be doing something completely different tomorrow. Where I came from, I left school at 16. I was an apprentice. I did my degree when I was 21. Normally in the UK, you do it when you’re 18. I then worked as an engineer for many, many years. I used to design safety systems for offshore oil rigs. That’s something unusual. Then I did an MBA. Back in the day when it was a popular thing to do and a career-changing thing to do, I did an MBA. Then went into banking. I went from engineering and technology into banking and marketing.

 

[00:03:06.560] – Mike

It was brilliant. Complete change, different perspective. I was trained by some of the best consultants in the world when I did that. I was trained by McKinsey and PricewaterhouseCoopers as they were then. That’s an important footnote because that consultancy training has stood me in massively good stead for the last 30 years in business. Teaches you rigor, discipline, analysis, logic, and it’s been a foundation for me. Then if you wind it forward, I ended up buying a consultancy business that I worked in. I worked as a freelancer, the guys were selling it, and I said, I’ll buy it off you. I raised a lot of money, bought it off them, and then ran that business, doubled it from about 10 million turnover to about 20 million turnover, 120 odd people, really, really strong EBITDA, like it was over 20% EBITDA at one point. Brilliant business. Then ended up going on a voyage of diversification, which for the entrepreneurs listening, do not diversify too far away from the core. A very basic lesson. Follow Warren Buffet. If you don’t understand it, don’t invest in it. It’s a bad idea. Then ended up selling part of that business.

 

[00:04:21.130] – Mike

Then started another business with a mate of mine where we ran procurement for private equity-backed companies. Where we’d go in, we’d be the buyers. We’d buy direct services, indirect services, and we would help drive EBITDA improvement. Again, any listener that’s out there that has worked in the private equity environment, it’s about driving sustainable high-quality EBITDA improvement because you get this massive leverage effect on the EBITDA. So I did that for a long time. What I do now is basically I’ve turned from being a buyer into being an advisor to sellers. I help salespeople see sales sales through a buyer’s lens, and that’s quite unusual. Most sales consultants and sales advisors haven’t been a procurement director. I’ve bought over half a billion dollars worth of goods and services, so I see things through a very different perspective. And that’s what I do now.

 

[00:05:15.790] – Sean

Awesome. And how long have you been doing this right now, this new business?

 

[00:05:19.260] – Mike

About four years.

 

[00:05:20.320] – Sean

Four years? Okay.

 

[00:05:21.450] – Mike

And it’s slow growth, Sean. It’s slow growth. It takes time. Every time I do any business, it just takes time.

 

[00:05:28.450] – Sean

Absolutely. Yeah. It’s It’s always slow, whether it’s a service or product, whether it’s B2C or B2B, even enterprise. Yeah, it does take time. Be patient. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, folks. You’re right.

 

[00:05:39.940] – Mike

You got to put the yards in.

 

[00:05:41.220] – Sean

Yeah. Well, let’s get in some of the questions. I did some homework on you offline, and one of them was, who are procurement people and what do they want?

 

[00:05:53.810] – Mike

Let’s do a couple of things, first of all. Let me characterize the profession. I I don’t believe in generic statements. I think they’re bad, but there are themes that run through procurement people. First of all, what do they do? They buy goods and services on behalf of organizations. Really important point for your listeners is they run the process of buying, they don’t own the budget. Let me say that again. Let’s say someone, a marketing director, is going to run an advertising campaign. Big. Say it’s a $5 million media campaign across all medium. The budget, belongs to the marketing director. Procurement would run the process for the marketing director to find the right supplier to do that work. It is not procurement’s money. That’s really important. Because some people think they’re the police and you have to do what procurement say, and it’s not true.

 

[00:06:49.070] – Sean

To take a step back, I’ll give the audience a good example here. In my case, because I did project management, some program management with a large corporations, I remember a project. We were Doing a migration to a new server platform. We’re looking at AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and I think one more rack space, multimillion dollar project. I was the procurement guy. So there were people at each of those companies selling to me, I owned the process, but you were 100% correct. I did not own the budget. Exactly. It was like the director level, VP level, and even the CTO that were like, Here’s our estimated budget. It is your responsibility, Sean, to run through an RFP process. That’ll be three to six months to try to negotiate the budget as low as possible. And I own the process. And hopefully at the end of that six months, we get a deal on a new server and the whole deal in the set of process. So anyway, that’s a good example of what procurement… They were selling to me, essentially. I was the person they were selling to.

 

[00:07:56.570] – Mike

So let’s just rip off that for a second. So for example, let’s say you get to the back end of the process and you probably got down to three potential suppliers. Yes. Let’s say the CTO wanted supplier A, but supplier A was at the midpoint of the price. You said supplier B is at the bottom of the price. Good quality product, good provider, good service levels, not quite the experience we wanted in the sector, but it’s got decent capabilities. Do you think you could override the CTO?

 

[00:08:36.210] – Sean

100%, and we did. You want to learn how we did that?

 

[00:08:40.300] – Mike

Yeah, because normally the procurement person will try and override the CTO’s decision, and the CTO would often say, My budget, my accountability, my neck on the line, my choice. And that’s the interesting dynamic.

 

[00:08:54.030] – Sean

Yeah. In order to… We wanted to put the weight not on the CTO or on me, but on the entire engineering team. In order to do that, what we did is we created an Excel sheet, or I did. And with every line of what… Okay, the timeline, the budget, the features will get all the little things we wanted. And then we went through line by line, and how would we weight this? Is this right on a one to five? Is this a five? Is it heavier or is it lighter? Exactly. And then based on the weights, you’d give scores. And then at the end of the sheet, you’d see, okay, so right, you’re laughing, right? Yeah.

 

[00:09:38.050] – Mike

All right. That’s exactly what we used to do.

 

[00:09:40.690] – Sean

Yes. Vendor A gets an 89 out of 100. Vendor B gets 87. And that’s how we did. So if anything fails or goes wrong, which we knew it wouldn’t, but it’s like everything, then we can point not to the CTO or me, it would point to the entire… Well, the team as a whole decided on this, and that’s why it’s like, Oh, okay, so we can’t throw anybody under the box.

 

[00:10:03.750] – Mike

Correct. And it’s a panel. So what you’ve described is when we were in procurement, we would have a spreadsheet with all the scoring criteria in it, and everyone would get their chance to score the CTO and the head of development and the developers themselves and the maintenance team that would do the BAU and the procurement person. We’d all get to score it, and then you would look at the comparisons and work out where the balance is and what priorities are. And that’s exactly what happens. And sellers need to understand the buying process is complex, it has criteria, and it’s not only about price. You wouldn’t believe how many entrepreneurs say to me, Oh, procurement are just there to beat me up on price. And I’m like, If you let them, they will, for sure. But that’s because you’ve let them.

 

[00:10:51.470] – Sean

And I… Yeah. This is really good to speak to, or I like to break the fourth wall here to speak to the audience. What we’re talking here, what Mike and I are getting into, this is really applicable for enterprise sales. So if you’re building an enterprise sales SaaS and you’re selling to bigger businesses, you want to set expectations that your sales cycle is probably going to be over three months. If it’s less than that, it’s like, Wow, Now, you really snuck through the gates there, the gauntlet without a lot of friction. But it’s usually three months, could be a year, could be even longer. But you’re selling to that procurement person, which, again, that was my role in multiple companies. And you got to sell more. Price may be one factor, but also the removal of headaches and pain and also case studies of, We did this with other companies. And those things I’ll factor it in because I’m not a price guy. There are some people, you met those types. It’s like a care of price, right? Correct. No, I’m looking at the holistic story of, Can we get from A to Z with the least amount of friction and get something that’s producing results?

 

[00:11:57.680] – Sean

To me, I’m willing to pay a little more for that.

 

[00:12:00.240] – Mike

Correct.

 

[00:12:00.960] – Sean

Right. So how do you sell all those little individual levers, if you will?

 

[00:12:05.300] – Mike

Absolutely right. I also built something called a procurement success equation. If you think about the buyer, what does success look like to us? To follow on to that point, Sean. Well, if you think of a simple equation, procurement success equals I need to see savings, an ROI, I need to see innovation, I need to make sure that you’re reliable, I want to know that you’ve got a high-quality solution, I want to know that you’re inclusive, and that you’re sustainable. But also, if you divide that by risk, I want to know that it’s a lowest risk solution or an optimized risk solution. If you’re a supplier out there and you’re selling to bigger companies that have a procurement person, talk to the procurement person about risk. Now, most entrepreneurs out there are going to be hiding in the corner at this point, saying, Why would I talk about risk in a sales cycle? That’s going to put people off. You got to flip your mentality and go to a procurement person, the fact that you understand risk, you know how to manage risk and mitigate risk, now I start to listen. Now I’m interested because you’re talking my language.

 

[00:13:12.800] – Mike

So understanding risk and talking about risk with a procurement person is great because procurement success is those five factors divided by risk. Well, guess what? If you reduce the risk, success goes up. So reduce the risk.

 

[00:13:25.840] – Sean

So from your perspective, let’s start to get tactical here from the From a sales perspective, you probably want to approach your conversations already thinking about how to position the lowest risk possible because that’s what that procurement person is looking for. So you’re framing your conversations, your answers in that way. Can you give us an example of maybe something you would say to a procurement person to really give them more confidence in this situation?

 

[00:13:55.460] – Mike

During the negotiation cycle, cycle or the back-end of the sales cycle, or even the front-end. You might be saying, Look, we’ve worked in this industry for many, many years. We’ve worked with companies like yours. We’ve got a lot of clients in your sector. What we find typically is There are three or four big risks that those clients perceive in moving to a solution like this. For example, one might be data security risk, one might be operational risk of actual delivery, one might be transition risk, moving from the incumbent to a new supplier, one might be financial risk. Just out of interest, which of those four is most important to you, or have I got them wrong? What’s important, Sean, is you’ve not told them what their risks are. You’ve told them what their peers think the risks are. As you look like your peers, do these resonate? They’ll probably go, That’s really interesting, Mike. Ours actually is about transition risk. It worries the hell out of us that we’re going to switch, and in the switching process, things will go wrong. Talk to me about switching risk. How do you manage that? Great. Thanks, Sean.

 

[00:15:06.900] – Mike

Let me talk to you about that. You’ve just opened the conversation up very easily.

 

[00:15:10.730] – Sean

I love that. I was just going to say you open the door to that. Let’s say you listed three things, and where would you rank these or which is the biggest for you? Oh, interesting. Then you can dive into a case study of what you did for somebody else leading them on that journey. Like, Oh, we did this, this, and this to get them from point A to point Z.

 

[00:15:31.400] – Mike

Correct.

 

[00:15:32.080] – Sean

That’s good. I like that approach.

 

[00:15:34.510] – Mike

Something else, something of your audience, you’ve got a big audience that listened to your podcast and are on your subscription email list. I reckon probably maybe less than 5% would know about this next thing. If you go online and you look up something called the Kralgic matrix, K-R-A-L-J-I-C, the Kralgic matrix. Your listeners are thinking, Why on Earth would I want to look that Well, it’s very simple. This guy, Kralgic, created this matrix which had two simple axes. Profit impact on the buyer is the Y axis, and supply risk is on the X axis. I’m not going to go through all of the elements, but the important thing here is, as a buyer, if you have a big impact on my company’s profit and the supply risk is high, it’s difficult to find companies like yours. There’s lots of risk attached with those companies. You’re what I would call a strategic strategic buy. I’m going to collaborate with you because I have to. Big impact on my company’s profit. Very few of you around. I don’t have many choices. I’m going to work together with you. I’m going to collaborate. It’ll be a tough collaboration. We’ll have some tough conversations, but I’m going to try and partner with you.

 

[00:16:48.500] – Mike

Take the opposite end of the spectrum. You have a very low impact on my profit. There’s thousands of you out there. I’m going to treat you like a commodity. In that moment, what Kreljic did was define why so many sellers get beaten up so badly when they’re talking to organizations.

 

[00:17:04.300] – Sean

Got it. Let’s take a quick commercial break. All right, the Tykr mobile app for both iOS and Android is now live. It includes all the same features as the web app, including stocks, ETFs, crypto, a watchlist, watchlist alerts, so if something changes, you automatically get notified, a portfolio tracker, and a confidence booster powered by OpenAI. Plus, it includes learning modules inspired by Duolingo, in this case investing, learning modules to help you get up to speed as fast as possible. If you’re interested, you can go to tigger. Com. You’ll see the Apple and Google logos right up top, or you can go to the Apple App Store or Google Play Store and download the app for free. All right, back to the show. I’m looking at a… I actually googled here at this. I see it popping up on Wikipedia, and it’s got profit impact on the vertical axis, horizontal axis as risk and complexity. Correct. Yes.

 

[00:18:00.080] – Mike

If sellers just think about that, when you’re looking at your pipeline of opportunities and you’re trying to work out where should you focus your efforts, focus your efforts on those clients where you’ve got a big impact on their profit, and there are very few of you around that can deliver that solution. That’s where the money is.

 

[00:18:17.260] – Sean

Got it. All right. Another question I have here is, how to qualify for better sales opportunities?

 

[00:18:24.960] – Mike

I do a lot of work on this with clients. In fact, if you look at how I enter Most client organizations as an outside advisor, a lot of it often is around either run a procurement workshop for me, tell me how buyers work, or the other one is, we seem to have a qualification problem, but not quite sure why. Again, tip for your listeners, any entrepreneur listening, any commercial director that’s listening, that’s leading an organization running sales. The biggest thing you can do to improve your conversion rate and grow your sales is qualify better. Qualifying opportunity What is better will give you a better end result over the medium and long term, but it will hurt you in the short term. Why? If you’ve got 20 things in your pipeline and I go, Here’s how you qualify really hard, but when you qualify, you’re going to win a lot more. I might knock out 60, 70% of your pipeline at that stage. People get terrified. You’ve got to hold your nerve and have a good quality pipeline, ideally, before you start venturing on this journey. Otherwise, your CEO or founder is going to go, It’s too risky.

 

[00:19:32.690] – Mike

Let’s just bid for everything we can get. Let’s assume we do believe qualification is critical to improving conversion rates and sales growth. Here’s how you qualify. You need to build a spreadsheet. I’ve got one that I can give as a resource. That’s one on my website, I think. But here’s some questions you should be asking yourself. Again, same thing as before, Sean. You said, Well, we built a spreadsheet to have some criteria to judge who we should pick. Build a spreadsheet with your own questions in it that you can use to score any opportunity that comes in. Here are some questions you can use. One, can we meet the economic buyer, the person with the money and/or procurement, for a discussion before we write a proposal. If they say no and you don’t know the organization and you’ve never worked with them before, don’t bid. You’re not going to get out of a piece of paper everything you need to write a high-quality winning proposal. You’re not. You need a discussion. Secondly, do you understand the business issue or problem really, really well? Have you solved this problem for them before, that organization? You must have solved that problem before or a similar one in a similar sector.

 

[00:20:44.220] – Mike

If you haven’t, chances of success, very low. Have they told you who the other suppliers are? So who’s the competition? If they won’t tell you, so a frightening fact for your listeners, let’s say there are five bidders for an opportunity and you’ve received this RFP or a brief from a client, and there are five bidders, but they won’t tell you who they are. If the incumbent’s bidding, the one that does the work already, and they’ve done an okay job, their chance of winning the bid round, this retender, they win over 66% of that tender work. So your chance of winning as a supplier that doesn’t know the organization are less than 5%.

 

[00:21:26.400] – Sean

Wow.

 

[00:21:27.270] – Mike

Don’t do it.

 

[00:21:28.050] – Sean

Just to rehash these real quick. First The first one was, in the first place, are they looking for a proposal? Was that it at the end of the process? No.

 

[00:21:34.600] – Mike

The first one was, will they have a discussion with you? Imagine, Sean, you’re the marketing director, and imagine I’m the procurement director, and we’re running a process. If you and me aren’t prepared to have a conversation with the potential suppliers that are bidding for the work, it’s probably because you and me have decided, really, who we think is probably going to win. We’re just trying to do some comparison work. Now, most opportunities Priorities aren’t run like that, but some are. Because I’ve written down on paper, as your procurement director, I’ve written down what you want, and I’ve sent that out to all of my suppliers, five of them that are bidding for the work. The problem is, I interviewed you six weeks ago, and now I’m sending something out to all these suppliers. Your priorities may have changed. Your experiences may have changed. What you really want may have changed. You didn’t tell me a lot of things that you really want. You didn’t tell me what you tried already. You didn’t tell me that you want to experiment a bit before you leap into a big change program. All of that, you only get out of a discovery call with me as the Guardian and you as the owner on a call with a potential supplier.

 

[00:22:41.580] – Mike

If you can’t get that call, to me, you shouldn’t be bidding for the work.

 

[00:22:46.100] – Sean

If I’m pitching you and I can’t get a call with you alone, then don’t even bother bidding.

 

[00:22:53.240] – Mike

Correct. You’re making up the numbers.

 

[00:22:55.540] – Sean

Oh, yeah. Gosh, I can’t believe from my perspective Anybody would pursue that. Come on. I’m sure it happens, right?

 

[00:23:05.280] – Mike

In big bits, the process often says you cannot talk to a human being until you are shortlisted and presenting. I tell my clients, Don’t Yeah.

 

[00:23:16.410] – Sean

Yes, 100 %. That was one rule I always had from the seller’s perspective, is if I can’t get a conversation and really do some fact-finding, yet they want a proposal, it’s like carpa for the horse situation. Yeah, right. I’m shooting arrows into the dark. I don’t know what I’m going for.

 

[00:23:34.250] – Mike

I am shooting arrows into the dark. Correct. And then just even just one other criteria that I can think of. And again, it’s worth looking at the work from Tad McKenna and Matt Dixon on this. They wrote a book called Jolt. But why is the client considering changing from the status quo? Again, if you don’t know why they’re prepared to shift, if someone’s going to spend spend $100,000 on something. That’s to be a reason why they’re prepared to shift from what they do currently to where they want to be and spend $100,000. It’s got to be a reason. If you don’t know the reason, how on earth are you going to help them solve that pain point? You’d be crazy to bid.

 

[00:24:17.370] – Sean

Right. I’m making a note here on that. Why are you shifting in the first place? Yeah, correct.

 

[00:24:23.510] – Mike

But for your listeners, again, a reference point. There’s a great book called Jolt, J-O-L-T, written by by Tad McKenna and Matt Dixon, the names are.

 

[00:24:33.080] – Sean

Got it.

 

[00:24:33.830] – Mike

It talks about basically why buyers don’t buy, what happens when they ghost you. We’ve all been ghosted. What’s really happening? It’s a brilliant piece of work about what’s actually going on, probably behind the background. It’s based on 2 million sales interviews that they studied using AI. Wow.

 

[00:24:52.110] – Sean

Okay.

 

[00:24:52.510] – Mike

It’s a great piece of work. It’s a great piece of work.

 

[00:24:54.440] – Sean

I’m very intrigued by that. Jolt is the name of the book.

 

[00:24:57.410] – Mike

Yeah, J-O-L-T.

 

[00:24:59.000] – Sean

Awesome. Okay. This is a good one. We’re going to really start heating up here. When you’re in the RFP process and you’re shortlisted, let’s say they go from 8 down to… It never starts at 8, but maybe it does, but 8 down to 4. I typically down to 4, and you get to the top three How do you win competitive bid processes?

 

[00:25:20.450] – Mike

Let’s just take it one step before, which is you’ve got down to maybe five. They’ve gone to eight. Then it’s gone down to five because you often get an RFP followed by part two. The first part is qualification. It should be an RFI, really. But first part is qualification, shortlisting. You get down to five. How do you get from five down to being in the room with the buying committee, going to convince them, hopefully, that you’re the right supplier to work with? Because I’m not a pitch doctor, as in, I don’t do the jazz hands, how you stand, how you steady your voice. There are people that do that, and it’s very valuable. But that’s not what I do. What I do is say, How do you get to the shortlist point? How do you get to being, You’re on the list of people that we definitely, definitely want to talk to? Let me flip the question upside down. Here’s the reason why you don’t get through to the last two or three. So quick fire. This is what happens when it goes wrong, basically. Things like reasons for losing bids. So You didn’t answer all the exam questions.

 

[00:26:32.440] – Mike

Let’s say there’s 50 questions in this RFP. It’s an exam. If you answer 40 of them and leave 10 out, you won’t get through. You might not think they’re important. I do. You didn’t have deep sector knowledge and credentials. You’d worked before in retail, this is automotive, and you’re going to convince me it’s an easy read across. It’s not. You won’t win. Your services are not exactly in the client’s sweet spot. They’re close, but they’re not ideal at what they’re looking for, same thing. The insights you gave were based on your perceptions and your experience. They weren’t data-led. If you don’t provide data-led insights and show them how you’re going to give dashboard reporting, again, it will be a negative mark on your response. This is a really simple one. It used to drive me nuts. If there’s no executive summary and it’s really hard to read and there’s no the hyperlinks in the document, you’re just going to frustrate me. I am not going to plow my way through trying to think, Are you the right supplier? You’ll just get put to the back of the list. If I can’t tell how you’re different, if you’ve no differentiation in there at all, you look just like any other supplier, well, guess what?

 

[00:27:48.440] – Mike

There’s no way on Earth you’re going to win. If you can’t quantify the value and the ROI, same thing. The last one just to touch on is… Let’s see if this resonates with you Sean. There’s a guy called Blair Enns in the US who’s a very talented guy. He works a lot in agency world, and he runs a business called Win Without Pitching. He talks about three option pricing. We used to do this back in the mid ’90s, but it’s still as relevant today as it was back then, which is this. In your proposal, they’ll have asked you for a pricing framework. They may have given you a spreadsheet to fill in. You’ve got to fill in the spreadsheet or else you’ll be non-compliant. However, give them two other options. If you give a buyer three options to choose from, they have choice. Each option has got different benefits, different features, different risks, different deliverables. Make them differentiated. Give someone three pricing options to choose from. Do not call it bronze, silver, and gold, ever. No one wants to buy second prize.

 

[00:28:54.900] – Sean

No, no, no.

 

[00:28:56.310] – Mike

Give people three option pricing. A lot of people A lot of suppliers won’t do that. They’ll just reply with the spreadsheet they’re asked to supply with. Well, I’m like, Well, why don’t you just give them some more choices? Get creative.

 

[00:29:09.200] – Sean

Yes. Think outside the box. Yeah. That’s funny because my past I’ve experienced working for large companies, the vendors we go to, like the Amazons of the world and Salesforce and Adobe and whatnot, in most cases, I was surprised, their salespeople would give one price. They did not give you the options. Now, that’s a good call.

 

[00:29:29.680] – Mike

It also plays to price anchoring. There’s a theory called price anchoring.

 

[00:29:34.370] – Sean

Oh, yeah. Very familiar.

 

[00:29:35.990] – Mike

Yeah. Every salesperson should know. Is that if you fail to price anchor appropriately, then don’t be surprised if you get beaten up on price.

 

[00:29:44.760] – Sean

I love it. Here’s another good one. How do you negotiate the most profitable or a more profitable deal?

 

[00:29:54.870] – Mike

Sean, how long have we got? Let me give you a simple example. In fact, no, let me give you a bit of a framework. How do you negotiate the most commercially beneficial deal? First of all, think about your style. Two dominant styles in negotiation. Collaboration for bigger deals is always the best approach. First of all, big principle, try and collaborate with your counterparty. Don’t try and compete. Don’t try and be the master of the universe and compete because it’ll end up in a fight. The second thing is, go through a very simple It’s a full five-step process, and I’ll give you the steps now. Number one, first of all, write down what’s the context, what are your goals, what are their goals? What’s your BATNA, best alternative to a negotiated agreement? What’s their BATNA? If you can’t make a deal with you, who else will they do a deal with? Write it down on a bit of paper. Secondly, what’s the process and time scales you’re going to go through to get from where you are today to a signed contract? What are those steps? What are those milestones? Talk to your counter party. Is how they see it.

 

[00:31:01.560] – Mike

Thirdly, prepare the deal using a template around what I call just variables. For example, in a deal we talked about before, there might be three or four key variables. Sure, there’s price, linked to features, there’s payment terms, there’s intellectual property, there’s all sorts. Write down the variables and work out, write two columns on a bit of paper for each variable. What’s your most desirable outcome and what’s your least acceptable outcome. You’ve now got two buffers. You can’t go below the least acceptable. It’s that likely you get above the most desirable. Now you got a range to negotiate with them. Third thing, when you get into the negotiation, fourth thing rather, once you get into the negotiation, a big thing is don’t discount trade. Those variables start trading the variables with each other, so you’re getting a more balanced deal. If you want that, I need this. Then the last thing is when you’ve come to a commercial arrangement, a negotiation that you can live with, then obviously make sure it’s contracted, that you’ve got service level agreements, schedules, transition documents, everything you need wrapped up into the contract. Preparation is really key.

 

[00:32:16.070] – Sean

I would almost call that organization, like being air tight as possible and streamlined.

 

[00:32:21.520] – Mike

Correct.

 

[00:32:22.200] – Sean

Yeah. Awesome. All right, we’re going to do a roll up here for the audience, and then we’re going to dive into the rapid fire round. So high level here, Mike is really talking about how to sell better to people who are in that procurement position. In other words, trying to look at the sales process from their perspective, which I always feel is a great place to be. So here we go. I’ve got five hot tips with a few bullets underneath. We’ll be here for a minute, but let me comb through. Number one is make an oppression, I’m calling this first one. Be upfront, be like, Hey, list the three risks we dealt with customers like you, and then ask the question, Which is the highest, which is the lowest on your end? That really sets the bar, You’ve been here before, you know what you’re doing. From my perspective, that’s what that says. Number two is this Kralgic matrix. Did I pronounce that correctly? Kralgic? Yeah. It’s a chart pretty much showing your profits on the left, which is your vertical axis, and then the risks on the lower horizontal axis. You’re going for, how can you make the biggest impact on profit with the fewest number of competitors.

 

[00:33:35.160] – Sean

In our space, like in a Tykr, our audience is very familiar with moat. You want a wide moat. You’re hard to duplicate. Correct.

 

[00:33:42.730] – Mike

Exactly right. Wide and deep.

 

[00:33:45.110] – Sean

Yes, you got it. Number three is improve the conversion rate. In order to improve the conversion rate, need to qualify better. And some quick tips in there are, if you can’t get on a call with your procurement manager, don’t even bid. Move on. It’s a waste of your time. Ask the question, why are you shifting? Get right to the point, why are you moving? Number three, bullets under this is you need to solve the problems. You need to go into this knowing you’ve done this before. If this is a brand new project, different industry, low probability of closing this one. You got to have experience. And then you got to ask the question, I love this one because the best of the best salespeople always ask me, who else am I competing against? And If one of those competitors is a current vendor, I love your percentages here because we like to get to hard numbers, there’s a 66% chance they’re going to get the project again. Correct. Very low percentage you’re going to close. So in that case, walk. Don’t even bother with the RFP process. All right, so that was all rolled up on number three.

 

[00:34:50.110] – Sean

Number four is how to win more bids. A lot of great tips in here. Here are the ways to disqualify you. So you didn’t answer all the questions on the exam. You didn’t have a deep sector experience. You don’t have deep credentials. Your services are not in the sweet spot for the customer. Your insights are not or your experiences are not data-led. I always say this, I compare data to emotions. People use theory, well, theoretically, and it should do this. I was like, No, I don’t want to hear that. I want to know real-life examples with a down. That’s going to give me as a buyer, confidence. Yes. Another point here. No executive summary with hyperlinks to key points, whether it’s internal or external links. If you can’t tell me, this is a big one, if you can’t tell me why you’re different or explain why you’re different than the other vendor is pitching, you’re out, you’re going to lose. Another good one is if you can’t qualify or quantify the value, again, that’s very much that data, get to the numbers. What have you done before? Show me real data. Oh, I love asking people that one.

 

[00:35:55.850] – Sean

When they think they’re smart, they think they’re owning the room, and I’ll be like, Okay, Give me the data. And it’s like the scratch record moment.

 

[00:36:05.280] – Mike

Yeah, absolutely.

 

[00:36:08.000] – Sean

Cue the crickets, if you will. And then I like this one. This is good. How to win more bids. This is the And then the last one under this point number four, which is provide pricing options. A lot of people don’t do that. They’re asked for one price. Don’t do that. Give your prospect three options to choose from and never call them gold, silver, and bronze. Even though we’re going into the Olympics here on the corner.

 

[00:36:32.800] – Mike

Absolutely. We’re on the cusp of the Olympics. We are.

 

[00:36:35.040] – Sean

Yes, that should not be top of mind. Never gold, silver, bronze. And then the last point here is how to negotiate more profitable deals because RFP processes can really drive those prices down. You want to be careful with that. So you want to collaborate, don’t compete, work with your prospect. Another good point is five steps you laid out is lay out the goals, reiterate the goals to them, reiterate the process, your process. How are you going to Bring them in sales? You probably hear this all the time, zero to hero. How do you get them from zero to hero? Prepare the deal, which is essentially what is your most desirable outcome and what is your least most desirable outcome? Rephrase that back to the prospect. Don’t discount trade. I love that one. Okay, so you want this, we need this. And then the last one here is be organized. Be crisp, be crisp, Be organized. Don’t waste their time. If you’re organized, you’re efficient, they know what they’re getting into.

 

[00:37:35.860] – Mike

Exactly.

 

[00:37:36.510] – Sean

Awesome roll up here. Five hot points. Is there anything else I did not ask, any key takeaway before the rapid fire round you could tell our audience?

 

[00:37:45.790] – Mike

Two quick things. So one, when you’re preparing your deal, that most desirable outcome, least acceptable outcome, keep it to yourself. So always keep it to yourself. Play the game of poker with your counterparty, but Know yourself where those positions are. That’s one. Second one is what we didn’t touch on, price qualification. Qualify early. If there’s not a budget in the RFP or the client brief, find out what their budget range is. You can waste an awful lot of time and sales effort bidding for things where there’s no way in hell they’re going to buy it. It’s too expensive.

 

[00:38:23.000] – Sean

Good final takeaways. Love it, Mike. Thank you. All right, let’s transition to the rapid fire round. We’re going to have some fun here. If you can, we’re going to get to know you in the next few minutes here. But if you can try to answer each question in about 15 seconds or less. You ready?

 

[00:38:38.500] – Mike

Will do.

 

[00:38:39.200] – Sean

All right. What is your favorite podcast?

 

[00:38:41.470] – Mike

The Two Bobs.

 

[00:38:43.310] – Sean

Two Bobs. Okay. Next up, what is a recent book you read and would recommend?

 

[00:38:48.090] – Mike

It is Shane Parish, Clear Thinking. Nice.

 

[00:38:53.390] – Sean

All right. The movie question. What is your favorite movie?

 

[00:38:57.540] – Mike

Twelve angry men, the original from the 1950s?

 

[00:39:01.830] – Sean

I’ve heard of this. I like a good classic movie, but I have not seen it. So moving that up on the priority list here.

 

[00:39:09.220] – Mike

And there’s one other, if I’m allowed to, Glen Gary, Glen Ross.

 

[00:39:12.910] – Sean

Yeah, classic sales movie. Right on. All right. What is the worst advice you ever received?

 

[00:39:21.550] – Mike

Don’t do it.

 

[00:39:23.440] – Sean

Yeah, that’s a common… Other people have said the same thing. You had a good call. All right, flip the equation. What’s the best advice you ever received?

 

[00:39:31.270] – Mike

Best advice was probably, actually, think it through from different perspectives. Ask people for their opinion and their thought, but then you have to make a decision based upon your understanding of the situation.

 

[00:39:46.120] – Sean

Great advice. All right, next one is the time machine question. This can be a stumper for a lot of people, but if you could go back in time to give your younger self advice, what age would you visit and what would you say?

 

[00:39:58.290] – Mike

I’d go back to my 16-year-old self myself. And I’d say two things: believe in yourself because no one else will until you do. Second thing is, be a specialist, not a generalist.

 

[00:40:09.430] – Sean

Love it. Love it. Great advice. And last up here would be, where can the audience reach you?

 

[00:40:14.930] – Mike

They can find me on LinkedIn. So I’m Mike Lander on LinkedIn. Or they can go to my podcast, which is Higle, H-I-G-G-L-E, the B2B Sales Club podcast. Awesome.

 

[00:40:27.600] – Sean

Well, Mike, this was packed, full of a ton of value. Really appreciate your time. Thank you.

 

[00:40:33.040] – Mike

Sean, it’s been a pleasure. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And by the way, I love the guitars in the background.

 

[00:40:36.870] – Sean

Yes. A jazz fan? Definitely. You got it. All right, buddy. Good talking to you, and we’ll be in touch. Thank you. Cheers. Hey, I’d like to say thanks for checking out this podcast. I know there’s a lot of other podcasts you could be listening to, so thanks for spending some time with me. And if you have a moment, could you please head over to Apple Podcasts and leave a five-star review. The more reviews we get, the higher this podcast will rank. All right, stay tuned for the next episode. We’ll see you.