Avoiding losing (or avoiding making a poor buying decision) is often more important than winning, especially when doing complex megadeals.
As Kahneman concluded in his Nobel Prize-winning research (loss aversion), human beings have a 2.5 times stronger drive to avoid pain than to achieve pleasure. Still, sales and marketing people are trained to mostly talk about upsides, benefits and USPs. But if you think about what Kahneman stated, doesn't it make more sense to spend less energy on promoting the value and upside of a deal and instead put effort into mitigating risks in the deal?
Instead of avoiding talking about risks because it feels uncomfortable, bring up all the risks early. If you don't address potential risks from day one with your client, you can guarantee they will speak about those risks without you being in that room - which is a far worse scenario.
📌✔️ Checklist for risk management:
1. Introduce risk mitigation early in your sales process - before your customer does it
2. Make sure risk mitigation is built into your offering (product/solution/service) and delivery method (implementation/financing/contracting)
3. Trust = money. By lowering the potential risks for the client, you will add value and be able to charge more. And bonus - you become trustworthy!
//Melissa Mühlrad
