The short answer is that HPS works very well in a complex sales situation.

I wrote an article describing how HPS is used in complex sales, titled "Closing High Tech and Complex Sales".

If you want to find more information, you can Google “High Probability Selling” and “Complex Sales”.

Currently I sell pipes, fittings, valves and pumps for water transmission projects.

There are four companies / organizations involved in the decision making.

1/ The client, owns the pipeline – mostly a govenement department or govenement company.

2/ Consultant, designs and oversees the construction of the pipeline.

3/ Contractor, buys the materials and builds the pipe line.

4/ The tender board of the government, decides which contractor wins the contract.

The contractor is free to buy from any vendor listed in the “approved vendor list” of the client.

How does high probability prospectng and selling work in this situation ?

It is very rare that anyone can design an effective prospecting offer without fully understanding the underlying principles.

When you do have an effective offer, it’s also important to know how to present it.

I’m constantly amazed at so-called salespeople that do not know their prospecting “numbers”. That is, the number of qualified prospects they need to hit the sales goal, the number of sales meetings needed to find the right number of qualified prospects, and the number of phone calls/e-mails needed to schedule the right number of sales meetings. This should be ever-present in your thinking.

With all of the technology today, I find it best to know EXACTLY how the customer will benefit from your product when you call the FIRST TIME. I’m not perfect on those assumptions, but I’m not picking up the phone unless I’ve thought for about a minute on exactly why I think they’re a good prospect. If I don’t have an answer for their situation, I don’t call. It’s that simple. I’d rather spend the effort contacting someone whom I can see buying our product.

A prospect who says “no” is a name on your prospecting list that cost you less than a dollar.

The value of your first phone call can only be estimated. It’s probably quite low.

Whether you call the prospect again, or not, is a judgment call. In general, disqualification is usually a good strategy.

Prospects who say “no” in any form disqualify themselves, and you should end the conversation quickly and respectfully. Whether you can call them again or not depends upon two things. The first question is how much of your business the disqualification covers. The second question is whether the disqualification is temporary or permanent.

If you used a broad prospecting offer that encompasses everything you sell, then the prospect’s “no” applies to your entire business. Unless you can offer something that is clearly outside of that scope, you have to wait a long time before calling the same prospect again.

If you used a very narrow and specific prospecting offer that covers a small percentage of what you sell, and the prospect says “no” in a way that does not cover other things you sell, then you can call the same prospect again with a different offer in 3 to 4 weeks. To make this work, you need to have at least 6 different offers.

Most of the time, “no” simply means “not now”. That is a temporary disqualification. When someone says they are “never going to switch”, then the disqualification may be permanent for everything your prospecting offer covers.

I will ask Jacques Werth to respond to this.

Carl Ingalls