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Six Greatest Ideas for Selling Big Ticket Items - Business to Business • 87

seller is almost all the time proposing significant change and suggesting that a deci-
sion is made soon and urgently.

Have the key people agreed a decision date?
People are frequently reluctant to make a firm date on which they will make a buy-
ing decision. There is no magic answer. If in the end a customer decides to postpone
a decision or a project, that is his prerogative. All the salesperson can do is persist-
ently probe for the feasibility of a decision date.

In pursuing the timescale question, salespeople are also checking that the cus-
tomer is actually in a position to buy. The credibility of a sales forecast depends on
the degree to which the salesperson can convince his or her manager that the cus-
tomer is realisticallyin a position to go ahead.

Ask the question early in the campaign, for example at the first meeting. People
are happier to take a commitment when the date of delivering that commitment is a
long way off. It is easier to get an agreed date in three months time, than to try and
tie someone down to making a decision next week.

Is there an agreed implementation timescale?
However clever a product is and however much a customer needs it, the solution
suggested by the product must be buyable and implementable.

There is a great opportunity to get the competitive edge of being the first sales-
person to work with the customer to produce the outline of an implementation plan,
sometimes described as 'timetable' selling. During the opening call with a prospect
or customer on a particular campaign, a professional seller will try to get them to
assist with the creation of a bar chart identifying all the major milestones in the
implementation of the proposed project.

The modification of this forms part of all subsequent calls and, of course, the
requirement for a decision date to be part of the implementation plan is clear.