Running the Hurdles

My father was a track and field hurdler in college. Just thinking about the challenge of trying to go fast while staying in stride to cleanly clear each hurdle in sequence reminds me of the challenges of complex, multi-party sales situations like hospital sales and venture capital fundraising.

What makes a sprint easier than a hurdles race is the difference in the level of complexity. Sprinting involves a good start, good technique, and good fitness. Running the hurdles requires all of those things and adds a significant layer of complexity, balance, and coordination to clear hurdle after hurdle at a fast pace.

Selling to a single buyer is like a straightforward sprint – hard work but relatively fast. To get the sale, you need to understand the needs of your typical target, develop a clearly articulated sales story, and handle any objections required to convince your target to decide in your favor. The choice of which medical device to use is often up to each individual surgeon. The choice of which personal flow cytometer to buy is up to the individual research lab’s Principle Investigator. The choice of whether to invest their personal money is up to each individual angel investor. The key is that you only really have to sort through the perspective and concerns of a single primary buyer. It is often possible to develop a robust sales playbook that can be executed reliably for the single-buyer sale. 

Selling to a complex buyer that requires the consensus of multiple parties to make a decision has the added complexity of running the hurdles. Multiple parties’ involvement exponentially increases a sale’s complexity and timeline. Securing the investment of a venture capital fund requires convincing usually all of the fund’s partners to support a decision to invest in a particular startup. Landing a hospital-wide sale for a low-burden software medical device surveillance product that helps the hospital spot deteriorating patients as well as improves confidence in a patient’s stability requires the buy-in of multiple hospital leaders to decide to change the way things have always been done to realize quality, safety, length of stay, and throughput benefits. Selling a new operations improvement strategy to a large company requires buy-in from multiple functional leaders and the ultimate executive leadership.

Hurdles are such a vibrant image for complex sales because that is what the process feels like. The nature of complex sales is to require many steps, and at each step, you risk not clearing a hurdle and being out of the race. For example, if things are going well in venture fundraising, there are always a series of calls, meetings, information requests, due diligence tasks, legal hurdles, negotiating points, and partnership approvals. Every one of them has the potential to derail the process. In complex hospital sales like those Fifth Eye is involved in, we need to attract the interest of both the nursing leadership and physician leadership, provide a convincing clinical value/business case, clear the information security hurdles, gain the support of the endless committees and leadership team members who must align with new enterprise-level initiatives, navigate all the contractual complexities, and develop the momentum to get this project to be considered more vital than whatever else is competing for mindshare, resources, and priorities.

To navigate the hurdles of a complex sale, take advantage of some or all of the following techniques:

• Identify the common stakeholder types you will need to sell to and develop sales stories that address those audiences. Examples of what I mean by a stakeholder type would be clinical leadership of a hospital (both nursing and physician), IT and information assurance teams, contracting/administrative groups, and others. In a fundraising scenario, you will need to address the general partner who has specific industry or technical expertise, the financial analyst who will kick the tires of your financial models, the intellectual property specialists, the technical due diligence consultants, the market experts, and any number of other specialists.
  
  
• Develop or collect evidence and analysis to illustrate a substantial value or business case. Collect market research, testimonials, pilot results, potential customer interviews, clinical or performance data, and anything else you can assemble to create as convincing a case as possible.
  
  
• Find, cultivate, and equip an internal champion. This is perhaps the most essential piece of the complex sale puzzle. A strong, persuasive, and well-positioned internal champion is critical to navigating all the hurdles. After they have become a believer in what you are selling, they can help identify the path through the organization, identify who needs to be brought on board, make the case internally using information you provide, and generally push the process forward when obstacles crop up. Consider your internal champion your partner in accomplishing the sale and do everything you can to equip them to be successful as your advocate – and to make them into a hero for their organization.
  
  
• Expect to need to build a network of relationships at different levels and across various functions within the organization you are trying to sell. Most likely, in a complex sale, you will find that you need to connect with and build support with various people in various roles. This is often best accomplished by a team with different strengths who can interface with similarly oriented people at the customer. For example, technical people interfacing with technical people, clinical people interfacing with clinical people, and business people interfacing with business people. And overall, there needs to be a quarterback who provides continuity, overall strategic direction, and comprehensive positioning; ensures the right people are involved; and drives the process forward. Along the way, you should expect to find a spectrum of support ranging from enthusiastic supporters to skeptics and resisters. If you can neutralize those who are negative and arm those who are supportive, hopefully, you can build enough positive momentum to succeed. Figuring out the tactical steps to addressing each person’s needs at the right level is essential to successfully navigating a complex sales process.
  
  
• Work steadily to identify and neutralize objections and barriers to deployment. This is a constant struggle as you seek to reduce risk and make it easier to adopt your offering. Sometimes this means simplifying your product, automating some aspects of deployment, gathering data that overcomes objections, arranging reference checks, achieving certifications, and taking other steps to streamline the sales process.

While we would like sales to be easy, complex sales never are. And that also means that being able to close complex deals successfully is a competitive advantage as well. Go and run the hurdles!