Having worked with no fewer than 12 of the most well known professional services firms in this industry, both large and small, we’ve had a unique opportunity to see the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to business development and selling effectiveness within these firms.
Category Archives: Sales
Practical Keys to Gaining Influence
Here’s some food for thought on this topic taken from the original Complex Sale book, “Hope is Not a Strategy”: Not all votes are equal in a complex sale. Identify power holders early and immediately begin building influence with them. People can be influenced to do what you want if you can show them how […]
Availability ≠ Authority
In general, for your solution to get funded in today’s challenging economy, you MUST have one or more powerful, credible champions who are willing to personally vouch for your solution. They can’t just be interested…they have to be committed. When the financial or operational executive questions the expense, your champion(s) must be willing to sometimes literally stand in the line of fire. If not, “do nothing” will win after you have spent lots of time in an account, utilized a lot of other sales-related resources and thought that you had a lot of momentum.
If the value isn’t quantified, it isn’t valuable
While ROI (return on investment) alone isn’t enough to get a project funded – it sure is better than not having one. The mistake many of our client sponsors make is that they fail to quantify the value of the proposed investment. Oh, they’ll identify the “categories” of value – improve turnaround time, reduce complexity, better serve our customers, etc. – but without a stake in the ground on actual targeted value (or pain) associated with the proposed initiative, in the mind of the CFO this becomes a “nice to have,” not a “must have.”