Simplify the Sales Process for Your Product

It’s challenging for individuals and companies to sell a product or solution that’s new to a market. Often, sales people end up over-delivering or over-educating the client base which artificially extends the sales cycle. An effective strategy for going to market with a complex new product or service is to create a simplified offering that introduces the benefits to a prospect.

Adashi Systems provides a great example of this strategy with their RollCall program. The CEO, Alex Menkes, outlines a plan to provide a simple solution for a prevalent problem they have identified rather than rolling out their entire suite of products. This simple sale is projected to cut an eighteen month sales cycle into a one month sale.
Effectively solving that one problem and setting next steps on how their entire suite of products can provide additional efficiencies for public safety agencies will open the door to additional sales as they become a trusted supplier.

We call this simple offer a Monkey’s Paw. A Monkey’s Paw is a simple seafaring contraption that’s built around a little rubber ball. That little ball is connected to a long piece of tough string, which is tied to the huge, heavy rope that docks a large boat. Instead of trying to throw that massive rope down to the guy who’s standing on the pier, you throw the little rubber ball. He catches it, and then he can pull the ball, the string, and the heavy rope to the dock.

If a big-ticket purchase is too intimidating to your prospect or creates a daunting sales cycle, you can use the Monkey’s Paw strategy to sell a small piece of the total sale. This allows the prospect to receive a small piece of your total prospect but they can then pull in more products or services as they acclimate to the small piece they have already onboarded.

Many companies become rigid in their sales approach and prolong their own sales cycle unnecessarily. Time kills deals, even good ones, so it’s advantageous to make the sales cycle as short and simple as possible.