There can be something new under the sun. A high level view and comparison of sales methodologies.

Let’s compare Five Opportunities to other sales methodologies and models, both past and present.  This research and comparisons are formed based on my own research and is not intended to include or exclude any one given product, solution or methodology.  The purpose of this report is to educate and inform on the Five Opportunities methodology and model.  It is a very high level overview and the use of a few pictures should provide a thousand words and are all property of Five Opportunities LLC.

Five Opportunities is all about the opportunities, identifying, generating and leveraging opportunities on a continual basis.  It addresses the process, the solution, the requirements, but most of all it is about the opportunities and continually sowing seeds.

As with everything, and with Five Opportunities, there is a timeline.  And on every timeline there is a today point.  If it is not happening today, then it must have been in the past, or is going to be in the future.  All decisions regarding opportunities are based on these three simple known statements. 

On every timeline lie customer or prospect opportunities along with associated timing to close. They can be easily classified as Immediate Need (>30 days), Short Term (1-3 months), Long Term (Up to 1-year or greater), and The Magic Wand and Identified, where timing depends on individual selling skills.

Each opportunity has a position on the timeline as shown in the timeline below.
 
 

Next let’s compare the three most common high level sales methodologies to Five Opportunities leveraging the timeline.

The first is Product Selling, which has been around for generations and is primarily a transaction based approach and ideal for Immediate Need and Short Term Opportunities.

Secondly is Solution Selling, which corresponds to, and addresses, Immediate Needs, Short Term and Long Term Opportunities and is a true process driven methodology. The majority of the current selling styles and processes stem from some form of solution or strategic selling.

The latest of the sales methodologies is Insight Selling.  The Challenger Salesman places much focus on Long Term Goals, The Magic Wand and Identified Opportunities.  Insight selling is requirements focused and sales process driven.  There is a lot of information available on what you need to do to be a Challenger but not a proven model to emulate it, until now.

That leaves us with Five Opportunities; an opportunity based selling methodology and model.  Five Opportunities encompasses all the opportunities and past and current selling methods, into a single, complete, easy to implement approach, including opportunities that fall past their due date.

This next chart provides a view of the methodologies from a timeline standpoint and where their strengths lie in relation to Five Opportunities. 

Let’s look at an example of some research from the CEB and Forrester for further comparison and clarification.  For the Challenger, 57% of the purchase decision has been made prior to the customer reaching out for pricing. This 57% falls under the Immediate Need and Short Term Goal opportunities.  The Challenger Salesman places focus on the Long Term, Magic Wand and identified Opportunities for success.  If you affect the sale prior to the decision, you then can own a lion share of the 57% and influence even more beyond that.



The Forester Enablement Focus states that 76% of the deals were awarded to those who engaged early.  These are Long Term, Magic Wand and Identified opportunities.  The other 24% were classified as bake-off-win deals, Immediate Need and Short Term opportunities. 

This final chart summarizes the different methodologies in a side-by-side comparison.  Prior to 1968, there seemed to be only one method for a man to jump over a high jump bar.  American athlete Dick Fosbury, whose gold medal in the 1968 Summer Olympics brought the “Fosbury Flop” to the world’s attention. It was the same bar, the same run towards the pit, but the approach was slightly different that made the world of difference.
 
  
So as time will continue to prove, there will always be something different under the sun.  People will run faster, computers will become more powerful, and the world will continue to shrink, so why shouldn’t there be something different under the sales, marketing and business development sun.