What if the CIA were in sales?
Written by Nick Caruso and originally posted on LinkedIn.
On a pipeline call, I asked my sales rep how confident he was at closing a critical deal for the quarter. He gave me a 100%. The next day, that company filed for bankruptcy.
I used to work in the Intelligence community, both in the Marine Corps and as a contractor. I won’t reveal any secrets, but it taught me several things I’ve used in sales, from how to interrogate a prospect (sorry, I mean understand their business pain), to how to leverage technology to get critical intelligence about my prospect.
But back to the subject line… think about it for a minute… as a sales professional, what sort of intelligence would you want to know, not just about your competition, but about your prospects? If you had prospect intelligence, how could you leverage that information to increase your chances of winning a deal, or appropriately focusing your time elsewhere (i.e. not wasting time on a losing bid)? Once you have those questions, what are you going to “legally” do to find those answers?
Here’s my wish list of insight I’d contract to the CIA (or, for that matter, any mind-reading technology):
1) Sincerity. Are they serious? Am I in a fair competition, or am I just “the other bid”? Has my buyer already made a buying decision with my competitor?
2) Committed. Are they very excited but are keeping their enthusiasm reserved to try and secure a lower price?
3) Decision Maker. When I send information to my prospect, how effective are they at disseminating that information? Are they communicating effectively to the ultimate decision makers?
4) Captivated. Am I focusing on what they are most interested in? Or am I going down the wrong path, and missing their biggest pain point?
To everyone reading this post, I’d love to read your comments? What would you task the CIA to do to help you close a deal?
I don’t work for the CIA, but I do know how to help you find these answers to help you win more deals. I co-founded a company — Illumineto Spark — to address many of the questions posed above. One of our customers recently said:
“this is awesome…I feel like James Bond”
That statement inspired this posting, because he’s absolutely right — we give you incredible tools to help you win more deals. If you want this same power of prospect intelligence, sign-up for free at http://www.illumineto.com.
