xselliot.com will bring your company closed deals because it focuses on avoiding the two failure reasons of +90% of international sales plans
+35 years of experience with mission-critical international sales in several fields:
IoT, IIoT, SCADA, GRC/IGA for top ERP systems... and more
No matter the business sector a company on this planet belongs to, that company will be either of three types, which I call them «Leader», «Challenger» and «Struggler».
Let me define each type as follows:
- Leader: a company with a market share (measured in sales volume for a specific period, usually a calendar year) much higher than all other companies competing in the same business field and market. In any market, there can be more than a single Leader, although there are very few (typically no more than two or three).
- Challenger: a company that reached a significant market share, though noticeably lower than the Leader’s, and showing a growing pattern in their positioning and sales in the Leader market, thus representing a serious threat to the latter. Typically, there are several Challengers in the Leader market, usually more than the number of Leaders in any given market, although not so many as the third type of competitors, described next.
- Struggler: a company with a much lower market share than Leaders and Challengers market shares, in any given market where these three types of companies compete to capture a market share. Usually, we see a lot of Strugglers in any given market, and they rarely represent a serious threat to Leaders and Challengers. As always, some exceptions confirm the rule. For instance, Netflix killed Blockbuster, Apple’s iPhone put Nokia and Blackberry out of the mobile communications business… and even before the iPhone, Nokia and other manufacturers of mobile phones equipped with built-in cameras ended the Kodak empire.
To better understand the interrelation between Leaders, Challengers, and Strugglers, and why it is relevant for understanding the value of my sales approach that helps companies like you to increase their sales volumes in markets where your company brand and products are unknown or barely known, I’ll next introduce the so-called Long Tail Curve, which looks like this graphic:
The curve is called «Long Tail» because of its «L-shape», hyperbolic pattern, where a huge number of occurrences (for example, number of customers in a market) are accumulated on a very narrow portion of the horizontal axis, thus reaching a big height on the vertical axis, and then the distribution of occurrences declines more or less sharply, resembling the horizontal segment of the «L» letter.
By following the definitions of Leaders, Challengers, and Strugglers and placing them in the Long Tail Curve, we get the following graph:
The interesting thing about the Long Tail Curve applied to the market share of competitors in any given market, is that it shows this same «L-shape» pattern regardless of the market and the business sector where we analyze the market share performance of competing companies.
Moreover, the Long Tail Curve appears in «hi-tech» and «low-tech» business sectors alike… see below:
Now, let’s tie these considerations with my value proposition to your company, which is to bring to your company closed deals from my core markets – LATAM countries, Spain (where I reside) and Portugal – in the short term, meaning 6 to 9 months from the date of launching a sales program that I will explain shortly.
If you’re reading this, your company most likely belongs to the Struggler type of competitors, at least in my core markets (LATAM countries, with or without Spain and Portugal), for if you were a Leader in these markets, you would have reached more than enough market share, so you wouldn’t need me to help your company in any significant way (although we never know). The same goes if your company were a Challenger: you have reached enough market share to invest more of your resources to increase it, so you wouldn’t need me either (although, once again, there are always exceptions confirming the rule).
So, to better understand the value of my proposed sales program, let’s assume the following:
(a) your company would like to increase its current sales revenue levels from markets that are highly potential for your products
(b) your company would like to explore ways to sell in these highly potential yet unexplored markets for your products
(c) your company is a Struggler, at least in the countries where I am working (especially, LATAM countries)
Based on these three assumptions, your company has two traditional ways to generate sales in these markets:
(1) to sell directly in these markets… i.e., to try to reach with your own resources prospects in these markets and sell your products to them; or
(2) to sell indirectly in these markets through local channels, you should partner with them to have them promote and sell your products in their countries.
Most often, both ways end up in a frustrating failure, and lots of your valuable resources are wasted after unsuccessful sales efforts.
Why?
The first option (selling directly) will fail because of what I call the «Know Who Barrier»: insofar as your company doesn’t know who’s who (prospects truly qualifying for your products instead of «false positives») in a market where your company and products are also unknown or barely known by prospects, then a «know who» barrier is built between your company and the targeted market.
This problem is worsened by your company’s limited resources to keep on in these markets until you surmount the Know Who Barrier, which usually takes a long time and ongoing people and money investment. Most often, companies trying this option give up sooner rather than later.
The second option (selling indirectly) will also fail, because of what I call the «Doer/Loudmouth Paradox». I’ll explain this paradox related to your company’s efforts to sell through local channels in targeted markets.
There are only two groups of local channels on this planet with which you can partner to sell your products through them: those who tell you that they will sell your products, and those who sell them at the end of the day.
I call the first group of partners the «Loudmouth» group, and I call «Doer» the second group.
The Doer/Loudmouth Paradox occurs because a Doer doesn’t really need your company and your products to stay and thrive in business, as they’re selling well what they’re selling before you offer them to sell you products, which for these partners are «question marks»… i.e., they don’t know yet if your products will sell well in their market, don’t know about your company’s pre and post-sales support quality in their market, and so forth (they just have no historical records on these issues because they haven’t sold yet your products).
Because of their success at selling their current products (not yours) the Doer has three things where they place their priorities in assigning their valuable, limited resources (people, time, money) in their daily agenda: (a) to keep selling their current products to new prospects by leveraging of good references from existing customers, (b) to upsell to existing customers by offering to them product add-ons or new modules or applications, and (c) to solve ongoing post-sale customers issues and/or to give them technical post-sale support.
Even if the Doer is enthusiastic about your company and products and genuinely wants to promote and sell them in their market, all too often the Doer finds no time to put their resources on pushing forward your products, of course, not at the rhythm and continuity your company needs to penetrate their market.
The other face of this Doer/Loudmouth Paradox – the Loudmouth – is simple: a Loudmouth is a channel that says they will sell whereas, at the end of the day, they sell nothing (or almost nothing).
A Loudmouth needs your company and products (after all, they have nothing to lose by giving a try to sell them)… but you had better avoid such a type of local channel, for if you partner with them and dedicate your valuable, scarce resources (your people, time, and money) only to find after long months that this local channel didn’t sell at all, or sold so few copies of your products that don’t even cover your expenses, your company will have wasted these resources and will get frustrated.
And, worse yet, if you partner with a Loudmouth that loses several deals to competitors while trying to sell your products, your company brand and products’ reputation in that market will suffer.
The rationale of xselliot… my sales approach
xselliot works because it solves at once the Know Who Barrier and the Doer/Loudmouth Paradox. With xselliot I have «one foot» inside your company (supply side) and «the other foot» inside the target markets (demand side). Let me further explain this concept.
Any deal gets closed when a product from a vendor meets a prospect’s needs and does so better than the competition.
We can represent this in a Cartesian axis chart, where the vertical axis is the «Supply» side from which the vendor’s product is offered to the «Demand» side (prospects) on the horizontal axis.
On the «Supply» axis, there are other products offered by the vendor’s competitors, and on the «Demand» axis, there are other prospects in addition to the one that buys the vendor’s product.
This is shown next:
If you choose to sell directly in a market to prospects you don’t know, who don’t know you either, you’ll most probably fail because of the «Know Who Barrier». This is graphically shown below:
Likewise, if your company tries to sell through local channels, chances are that you will fail, in this case because of the «Doer/Loudmouth Paradox». Graphically, this is shown below:
In the chart above we see that either if your local channel is a Doer or a Loudmouth, they will fail to promote and sell your product effectively, and – in the example above – Prospect «A» bought from Competitor «A», Prospect «B» from Competitor «B», Prospects «C» and «D» chose to remain in a status-quo position (i.e., they don’t buy anything), and Prospect «E» bought from Competitor «C». In this scenario, because of the «Doer/Loudmouth Paradox», your company will fail to sell to any of these prospects.
With xselliot, I get trained on your products to run presentations and demos in the same mother tongue, which is spoken in the target markets (no language barrier).
And because of my hybrid (technical and commercial) professional background, I’ll be able to address technical («how-type») and commercial («what-type») questions from prospects, which give prospects more confidence in your solutions by being more responsive to solve their eventual objections and doubts.
During the first stages of my sales program, almost from Day One, I will perform continuous market prospection (and henceforth), addressing prospects that I know first-hand (no «Know Who Barrier») and will devote all the needed time to do this (no «Doer/Loudmouth Paradox»). I will ensure that your unknown or barely known products are perceived by qualified prospects as a solid choice and will show them the advantages and benefits of your products.
As a result, I’ll bring closed deals to your company.
This is graphically represented below:
I achieve the goal of bringing to your company closed deals in the short term by executing six activities, each with clear milestones to be reached throughout the deployment of my sales plan.
Next, I’ll explain these six activities and their milestones.
Stage 1 · Sales Program Kick-Off
Activities: (a) a work collaboration agreement is signed between Your company and me; (b) I get trained on Your company products to become able to run Spanish-based presentations and demos to LATAM prospects and customers.
Milestones to be checked: the work collaboration agreement should be signed within the next seven (7) days from my sales program’s kick-off date (hereinafter referred to as «Day One»).
Stage 2 · Partners’ Activation and Collateral Sales Materials Building
Activities: (a) I train my partners on Your company products to make them able to run Spanish-based presentations and demos to LATAM prospects and customers; (b) I make Spanish-written collateral sales materials about Your company products and distribute them among my local partners and previously qualified prospects.
Milestones to be checked: (a) partners’ commercial training is completed within the next 4-6 weeks from Day One; (b) Spanish-based collateral sales materials are ready and delivered to partners within 4-6 weeks, measured from Day One.
Stage 3 · Sales Pipeline Building
Activities: (a) I perform continuous market prospection in all five target countries mentioned above (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Ecuador and Mexico), in addition to the market prospection tasks of my partners; (b) Prospects’ qualification tools are used (i.e., an updated version of the classic BANT sales method originally developed by IBM in the 1950s) to bring to the sales pipeline truly potential customers rather than «false positives» (supposedly prospects that are not true prospects).
Milestones to be checked: ~15 to 30 qualified prospects in the sales pipeline within the next 12 weeks, measured from Day One.
Stage 4 · Selling to Qualified Prospects
Activities: my partners and I perform sales presentations and demo sessions of YOUR COMPANY products to qualified prospects to move them to a PoC (proof of concept) of them or a similar step in the presales cycle conducting to final deal’s negotiation and closing stages; (b) I make customized technical and budgetary proposals of YOUR COMPANY products to end customers or partners while selling directly to end customers or through a local partner, respectively. Such proposals include everything a customer needs to decide to buy YOUR COMPANY products, rather than buying from a competitive alternative; (c) no PoC is performed without previously agreeing with the prospect on the product’s acceptance criteria (success points) to be achieved during the PoC. If such success points are met during the PoC, the customer will buy the corresponding YOUR COMPANY product; (d) aspects mentioned in (c) will be included in a written document (hereinafter referred to as «SOW», short for Statement Of Work) to be signed between the prospect and YOUR COMPANY and/or me and/or the local partner, and will serve as a prior commitment by the prospect to buy the YOUR COMPANY product(s) to be tested during the PoC.
Milestones to be checked: ~5 to 10 qualified prospects ready to start the negotiations and closing stages within the next 20 weeks, measured from Day One.
Stage 5 · Negotiation and Closing Steps
Activities: (a) my partners and I negotiate the final deal terms with qualified prospects after they ran a PoC with successful results; (b) negotiated terms will be previously agreed upon with Your company and its written approval will be a mandatory prerequisite to consider a deal as formally accepted by Visuality Systems; (c) once negotiation steps are completed, paperwork steps with the respective prospect are conducted by my partner and/or by me to speed up as much as possible the completion of the closing stage.
Milestones to be checked: ~2 to 5 prospects converted to customers within the next 28 weeks, measured from Day One.
Stage 6 · Market Penetration and New Markets Development
Activities: (a) my partners and I leverage from the first prospects converted to customers of Your company products in the five target markets mentioned above as our «advocates» to sell them to more prospects in the same target markets; (b) based on the first success cases in these five target markets, I will deploy this sales program on additional target markets (i.e., more LATAM countries) where I will repeat stage 2 through stage 5.
Milestones to check: ~2 to 4 new target markets within the next 32 weeks, measured from Day One.
Notes about the figure of above:
- This figure shows the deployment timeline of stages 1 through 6. The milestones mentioned above are approximate estimations.
- If your company decides to launch my sales program, I’ll know more details about your company, your products, your pricing strategy, and so forth, thus being able to adjust these milestones and their completion dates if needed. Still, timelines and milestones will keep a similar proportion as the one shown in the figure of above.
- The short time period from sales plan kick-off date (Day One) and negotiation and closing steps (activity #5) will remain roughly the same after I get trained on your products and other aspects that are relevant to my sales program’s execution. The proportionality between activities’ timelines will be also similar to that shown above.
- The above-mentioned notes are true because with xselliot sales approach I will not face the «Know Who Barrier», nor I will face the «Doer/Loudmouth Paradox».
- Wrapping up:
As effective partners are not ready to do intensive, continuous market prospection, I assume this time-consuming task, but execute it in a carefully, informed way: I have literally hundreds (actually, thousands) of companies in LATAM, Spain and Portugal that could be your highly qualified prospects. Moreover, I have direct reach to C-level and higher management persons working inside these companies, who are part of the decision process to buy solutions like yours.
Best of all, I already spent years in building mutual trust business relations with many of these companies and their relevant decision makers, which will shorten the presales cycles.
MY COMPENSATION MODEL:
I do not work on a «success fee only» basis.
My compensation in return of my sales work activities for your company is not based only on future sales commissions, which I get paid once I brought you a closed deal and after your company collected the customer’s money.
It is based on this variable income from my sales commission on closed and collected deals I bring to your company plus a fixed monthly fee at the start of my sales program and until the first closed deals generate for me an income that is equal to or higher than my initial, temporary fixed monthly fee.
In other words: with the first prospect converted to a customer – or the first few ones – meaning closed deals for your company, I stop charging this initial and temporary fixed monthly fee.
I purposely set this fixed monthly fee extremely low, as low as € 2,000.00/month (two thousand euro per month) … less than half of the average salary a 5-year experienced business development manager earns in countries like the US, the UK and most Western European countries.
As opposed to a 5-year experienced business development manager, I have +35 years of experience in international B2B sales, and – as you see above in Stage 2 – in addition to performing all the tasks a business development manager does, I also work as a content writer (I make customized collateral sales and technical materials). Therefore, if you take together the average monthly salary of a a 5-year experienced business development manager and the monthly salary of a content writer, my initial and temporary fixed monthly salary is even much less than the sum of these typical, average monthly salaries.
I highlight the fact that my fixed monthly fee, in addition to being much lower than most average monthly salaries of less experienced business development managers and content writers, is only applicable during a short initial period (until the first deals are closed and I get paid my variable income of them) and hence it is temporary, as once the first deals are closed, additional deals will be closed too, thus canceling at all my fixed monthly fee. I also highlight the fact that my initial, temporary fixed monthly fee is the only fixed monthly cost for your company: no Social Security insurance, no paid sick leave costs, no paid vacation costs…
If your company is interested in discussing a sales program applying my sales approach, xselliot, I can tell you the amount of this fixed monthly fee and can also give you several references – people – you can freely ask them about me and the quality of my sales work.
Fields where I’m an expert at selling solutions (non-exhaustive list):
- Industrial Internet of Things (I·IoT)
- Mobile applications
- Surveillance and homeland applications
- Smart Grid solutions
- ERP and multi-platform information security solutions (GRC, SoD, SSO, MFA, IAM, etc)
- Healthcare and education applications
- Smart City applications
- Legacy-related systems (COBOL/CICS, DB2, NetView, Natural/Adabas, Mantis/Supra, IDMS, Gener/OL, etc), to current, cutting-edge technologies, like wireless LPWAN data communication solutions, IA-based SCADA systems and IT/OT monitoring solutions, etc. legacy-related systems (COBOL/CICS, DB2, NetView, Natural/Adabas, Mantis/Supra, IDMS, Gener/OL, etc), to current, innovative technologies, like wireless LPWAN data communication solutions, IA-based SCADA systems and IT/OT monitoring solutions, etc
- Ethical hacking services on mission-critical systems
To get in contact with me for more details:
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