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Closing

Closing any deal is an event created by a process.

The event itself involves getting the deal over the completion line. It is no more than the summation of a process that starts once a degree of mutual trust and interest have been established. Opening is a fluid mix of sparking interest (i.e. potential but still unsubstantiated fit and benefit) and relationship building. Relationships matter as they create access and provide the agency that gets things done and the medium through which information and insight is channelled and processed. Importantly, they also allow us to understand first hand what is important to an individual and an organisation. That is where empathy starts. In dealmaking, to deal is to empathise; to be able to imagine things from your counterpart’s point of view. Empathy is not simply a matter of adding another invaluable perspective, it is that soft intelligence that can lubricate the process, help smooth the bumps, and resolve the thorniest of issues. While creating ‘an opening’ is a prerequisite to selling, it is not in my book selling. It is a skill apart and a high value one at that when there is a significant degree of complexity and multiple players involved.

Determining the degree of fit, and the business case that may emanate from it, is a critical stage. The more thorough the work here the greater the probability that subsequent activities will progress smoothly. This is an evidence-based stage characterised by information sharing. The more structured this process, the better. Have a plan of what to share, with whom, and importantly, when to share. Building the business case – the ultimate measure of fit – in particular should never be presented as a fait accompli. Rather it is a very deliberate process. Agreeing a methodology (i.e. how value can be evaluated) is important because sellers are often guilty of presenting benefit cases that underestimate adoption costs while buyers may try and inflate them. The best form of persuasion (i.e. selling) are ‘facts’ messaged and presented in a manner that is compelling by virtue of being irrefutable. That is the subtle art of ascribing meaning to facts.

The basis of all sales is arbitrage: the buyer pays x for something potentially worth a multiple of x.  For the buyer that is the difference between cost and value.  This is where IP based propositions that are a multiple better than the incumbent technologies should be at a major advantage. The higher the multiple the greater and more transformative the potential value. Of course, the imperative here is transparency. Indeed ’radical transparency’, to borrow an acquired phrase, makes absolute sense. No bullshit required. Just detailed hard proof that for many of the companies RIG works with can only come through a period of collaboration. To fall short of ‘showing the value’ is to sell your technology short. Falling back on persuasion, however articulate and passionate the advocate, is a poor substitute for empirical, substantiated, indisputable, shared and accepted evidence of value. In this stage at least, the best way to sell is simply not to.

Beyond the core challenge of agreeing a methodology for establishing value, there is always an extensive list of associated ‘issues’ (not least those related to IP) that must be worked through before a closing event becomes a possibility. Failure to identify or anticipate an issue will delay ‘the close’ or lead to premature attempts to close a deal that is not yet closable. An apt metaphor might be borrowed from my boyhood:  compare this final stretch to building a model airplane of the type that predate the machines that you can order on Amazon and that are ready to fly straight out of the box. For the plane to fly the build had to be completed to spec and the little engine perfectly calibrated. Everything had to be just right, which took a fair amount of checking and tinkering, otherwise the plane failed to take off or crashed shortly after take-off. The most important tool was a comprehensive checklist.

The critical challenge of agreeing commercial terms is the penultimate activity before ‘the closing event’. This essentially involves trade-offs between cost and anticipated value. The buyside argues cost (and if procurement gets involved it will almost inevitably try to divorce cost from value as is their brief) while the sellside must stick to the language of value. To fall immediately into a pricing dialogue dominated by arguments around cost is to be seduced by the dark side. Instead frame your arguments using the language of value. How challenging this negotiation is primarily a function of how well you have executed the preceding stages. Though you will be frequently told otherwise, there is little in truth that cannot be anticipated or established before the negotiation to ratify final terms. An agreed methodology to evaluate value will at the very least enclose the discussion within parameters that make reaching agreement easier. The result we get may in part be down to our planning and negotiation skills but in much greater part it is down to leverage. Leverage is power and that power is found, created, built, adjusted, and understood as the process unfolds from first contact. In sum, the most skillful closers are those who know how to create leverage and use it to shape their counterpart’s decision-making, so that they seek in their own interest, terms that closely resemble the ones the closer set out to achieve in the first place.