the customer trigger point - norsightnorsight.com/.../04/the-customer-trigger-point1.pdf · the...

The Customer Trigger Point (Engineering winning Best Practices into your Selling Process)

Norsight Consulting, Inc. #315, 17200 Chenal Parkway

Suite 300 Little Rock, AR 72223

March 2011

© Norsight Consulting, Inc. Page 1

“The pursuit of opportunities should be governed by how well your sales forecast is

aligned with your customer’s buying triggers.”…Craig North

Every customer follows an internal buying process that engages

multiple individuals and departments at different points along the

way. Successful sales teams know exactly where their sales

process intersects a customer’s buying process. These

intersection points are known as trigger points…what we commonly

reference as go / no go decision points.

Best Practice Insight

Have you clearly documented your customer’s

trigger points for their buying process?

Can your sales team articulate what trigger

points are their opportunities?


Trigger points are not the same for all customers. Each sales

opportunity may require a different strategy and different process.

However, there are predictable points that we can clearly identify

that are crucial to executing a sales campaign or sales strategy.

Moreover, it is a sales manager’s (e.g. a first line manager’s) job

to test these trigger points as part of their regularly scheduled

opportunity reviews.


Best Practice Insight:

Sales managers are intentionally focused on

testing opportunity progress against customer

trigger points.

What happens when the trigger points are not analyzed?

Mistakes will occur. Most sales people don’t realize they are

making mistakes until after the opportunity is won or lost. Or, as

opportunities are forecasted to close, a purchase decision is

delayed without clarity as to the decision date. Let’s take a look

at some of these mistakes.

Mistake #1 - Entering the sales cycle late in the customer’s

purchasing process

Customers go through three primary phases to purchase:

1. initial interest (phase I)

2. solution definition (phase II)

3. project authorization (phase III)

Many sales teams seek business by qualifying opportunities that

have been authorized by purchasing. Usually this authorization

occurs in the form of an RFP or a call from a departmental leader

communicating they have just received funding for a project. If

this is the place our sales professionals enter the buying process,

we are late. Some other group has helped create interest and a


reason for pursuing this project, and most likely this group has

helped shape the solution to the problem.

What happens when we enter late in the buying process?

The decision process becomes driven by price, and it’s a highly

competitive scenario with little differentiation amongst the

vendors. Moreover, it becomes a commodity purchase with little

senior level support. Unfortunately, the price pressure from

entering late often ends up with forced discounts to buy a

purchase away from a competitor.


Mistake #2 - Entering the sales cycle with no “real” customer decision

authority to sponsor the purchase.

Customers typically have three categories of decision makers:

1. Executives

2. Middle Management

3. Staff / Doers

If entering late in the buying cycle is not enough to create

problems for us, the second mistake creates additional trouble.

Most sales people quickly find the individuals who will talk to us

about their needs and projects are the staff personnel or middle

management. They know the projects they have funding for and

are actively looking for vendors who are qualified to win the

project bids. If we enter late in a sales cycle, projects are already

identified, and our sales efforts are focused on qualifying the

project opportunities that have been funded and budgeted.

What if we run into trouble with the decision process?

We have no executive support to publicly navigate us internally

through the challenges. Over and over, Norsight sees customers

who have experienced disruption in the sales process especially as

client’s navigate the final negotiation phase. At this point and with

no executive support, we have no ability to correct or control a

decision process should it go awry. We are at the mercy of the


individual relationships we have developed and can only hope

these relationships have political weight to overcome any decision

barriers.

Best Practice Insight:

Develop an executive or highest level support in

the organization who publicly sponsors us

through the customer’s buying process.

Gaining executive support early in the buying process is a clear

trigger point. If we align with an executive who owns the

problem, we will have more strategic relevance than a tactical

vendor who interacts at a customer’s departmental level.

Mistake #3 – entering a sales cycle without knowing where we are in

the buying process.

While this mistake seems impossible to many, I find it is very

common. Being lost doesn’t just happen but rather occurs from

not knowing if we are entering low or high, early or late, with

executive sponsorship or not, and so forth. Each opportunity we

pursue requires careful analysis to determine what actions we

should take. If it is still unclear, you have another trigger point

and should not proceed until sponsorship is gained.

Pursuing sales opportunities requires an investment of time and

resources. If we are lost, these investments will be wasted. Sales


managers should investigate and coach their sales people to

clearly articulate where customers are in their buying process.

Recently, I listened to an example where a sales professional from

a software technology company thought they were late in the

buying process; however, that turned out to be incorrect. He was

called on a Friday afternoon to attend a presentation meeting the

following week. To make this happen, he would have to engage

sales support resources and industry marketing team members to

meet over the weekend to prepare a response to the questions and

package a demonstration for the meeting. Much time and effort

was spent in preparation for the presentation meeting.

Afterwards, the customer thanked the sales professional for the

time and effort to prepare for the meeting on short notice and

promised he would have a decision in the next week. After not

hearing anything, the sales professional reached out to the

customer who would not return his calls. After four months, the

customer finally called and asked the sales professional to come

back and make another presentation, but this time to the

executive committee. AND…another questionnaire for more

information was provided.

As it turns out and not surprisingly, the sales professional did not

win the opportunity. He originally responded to a “request for

information” when he thought he was responding initially to a


“request for proposal”. The opportunity disappeared for some

time as the customer point person, who had promised decision

authority, was really just an information gatherer for the executive

team. And worse, another company was aligned with the

executive in charge and most likely was the author of the request

for proposal. Much time and sales resources were invested in an

opportunity that was never qualified against the proper customer

trigger points, and the opportunity was lost. Unfortunately, this is

an all too common example of entering a sales cycle lost.


Before pursuing any sales opportunity and

engaging extended team support resources, you

must know exactly where you enter a customer’s

buying process.

While sales professionals may enter a customer buying process

late, or too low, there is a larger business problem developing. In

all of these examples, the sales professional is chasing after

opportunities that are already defined.

Certainly we want to win our share of defined projects that go out

for bid. However, sales teams need to stop qualifying projects that

have been authorized and start “generating” opportunities or help

educate our client executives understand why they need to do

something different.


If we generate business, we enter a customer buying process early

at the “initial interest” phase. Next, make sure we enter at the

proper level to gain executive support, e.g. call as high as you can

to win sponsorship from an executive who will publicly support our

approach as at least one potential solution for their business

challenge. Generating new business, where we receive credit for

creating awareness, is another customer trigger point that we can

measure early in our sales cycle.


Sales managers must use customer trigger

points to review, validate, and test the true


status of each opportunity their sales team

pursues.

What happens when we enter early in the customer’s

buying process?

First off, our sales team can execute their sales process to lead a

customer through their buying cycle rather than follow the

customer’s lead.

To enter early, we target the customer from some research and

discovery effort, and the customer met some criteria used to

prioritize who we target. Then we identify the individual we want


to contact. Most often this is a key decision maker or influencer

with the potential to actively support our selling efforts. If we

make the right contact with the right supporter, and we do this

with the right sales messages, our chances for leading the

customer cycle increases exponentially. When leading the

customer through the selling process, we increase the strategic

value of our solution, remove barriers, minimize competition,

reduce discounting, and can overcome potential stumbling blocks

along the way.

Summary / Conclusion

Sales teams increase their chances for success when they enter a

customer buying process early. If they use customer trigger

points to determine exactly where each opportunity is within the

buying process, the selling team will make smarter investment

decisions for time and resource commitments. Customer trigger

points enable a sales team to more accurately predict their sales

forecast, and ultimately win more business.

Norsight works with customers every day to eliminate business

problems and operating inefficiencies with the goal of improving

sales performance and increasing sales revenue. Our initial

approach is simple and straightforward:


1. Norsight assesses and evaluates the people, processes, and

tools to understand the exact impact of the problem and to

develop a recommended improvement plan.

2. Norsight meets with customer executives and leaders to

review the recommendation and collectively formulates a go-

forward action plan to improve the issues discovered.

If you are interested in learning more about Customer Trigger

Points and how they will improve your business, please feel free to

contact me. I will personally respond to you and look forward to

learning more about your selling activities.

To Successful Sales!

Who is Norsight Consulting, Inc.? Norsight Consulting is a Business Process Management (BPM)

firm serving global clients with a specialization in Sales

Performance Improvement.

Our Improvement assignments are designed to propel clients to


close more profitable opportunities. Sales Messaging and

Outcomes will be improved when the entire Sales Process is

adjusted; a balanced Pipeline and more accurate Forecast are

crucial. Before we ever start an assignment, we listen. We are

especially interested in learning about sales communication issues,

the current sales process(es), the forecasting discipline and

success metrics. Once you are comfortable that we understand

your challenges, we finalize a course of action.

Since 1999, our founder, Craig North, has serviced global firms

grappling with the new realities of competition in a challenging

economy. Norsight has successfully served billion dollar global

companies in sales consulting since 2005. Our leadership team is

seasoned with over 100 years of market experience. Rest assured

that we only support clients in markets where we have experience

For further information or a discussion about your situation,

contact Craig North at:

Norsight Consulting, Inc. #315 17200 Chenal Parkway Suite 300 Little Rock, AR 72223 www.norsight.com (501) 247-3064 [email protected]

http://www.norsight.com/

the customer trigger point - norsightnorsight.com/.../04/the-customer-trigger-point1.pdf · the...

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