Last week I alluded to a future blog post wherein I would outline circumstances that indicate that a deal is going south or was never a real opportunity. To be perfectly honest, the comment just popped out of my head as window dressing around three funny stories I wanted to tell.  Sort of what I call a “California yes,” as in “yes, I’ll come to your BBQ this weekend” when in fact I’ve already got six other commitments. Or registering and logging in to a webinar at 10AM on a Tuesday (or anytime, really).  Sure,  I’m taking in all this valuable info about “using Twitter as a platform to run marketing communications and business development “ as I talk on the phone, respond to email, IM our Idaho office, switch around my fantasy baseball team,  and do whatever multi-tasking type non-activity I can to feel productive.

However, Steve Gershik called my bluff in his comments, and even did me the service of naming two great examples of when he realized revenue had passed him by. So now, with my full attention engaged ( as far as you know), here are a few more conditions to be on the lookout for  to help you sniff test whether or not you are chasing your tail.

Useless Coach: this is by far the most common time waster for salespeople. It happens to the best of us once in a while, mainly because speaking to the coach is a crutch- they’re friendly, they take your calls and respond to emails, they tell you positive things, and they get just enough done for you to rationalize (to yourself and your unwitting sales manager) that you’ve got a big fish on the line. Except produce substantial results- the meeting with the DM, a contract, any money changing hands.  This is why any manager worth his salt implements hard and fast stages for each opportunity that require tangible and recordable actions.  Unless you want to go into business development, you eventually have to put Mr. Congenial into a headlock and choke out the money.

Education Degradation: this is when the customer is taking advantage of the salesperson’s willingness to provide endless “education,” complete with presentations from executives, subject matter experts, and other highly valuable resources, but has no intention to buy anything. The worst result of this is when the customer “goes to school” on you and then builds a subset of your product on his own or worse yet goes with a competitor. If you’re going to be the teacher then make sure you’re the tenured professor who gets paid for guest lecturing and writing books, not the TA b^tch for an online school.

The Reversal: we get this one at Jigsaw all the time, because we sell to salespeople. Basically while you are trying to move your sales cycle along, the prospect is trying to sell your company. This can be a very tricky proposition, because you want to show good faith and help the company in any way you can without getting your deal tied directly to their success selling their commodity widget. The last thing you want to do is waste time sitting through their sales meetings with your surly CIO with whom you had to burn a favor in order to get him to not summarily declare that their product sucks. Also, check your comp plan because many times a services trade is a wash and you don’t get paid.

Board Room End around: this is when you’re doing everything right, but at the 11th hour some random executive appears and trumps your deal , either by outright killing the project or awarding it to another (usually much larger or the incumbent vendor). This condition is very hard to sniff out, as most of the time your customer doesn’t even see it coming. The Data Dinosaurs rely on their age-old connections to try and squash Jigsaw deals instead of improving their product to compete- that’s why they’ll end up in the tar pit.

In general, the way to avoid all of these pitfalls is to:

a) Always expect them

b) Require a return value for every action you take. (e.g. If I bring my expert then you bring the guy who signs the check)

c) Get as many points of reference from within the organization as possible. Talk to everyone that will listen.