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 it gets what they want.
- Influence is the ability to get things done without the use of direct authority.
- Many influential people are outside the buying organization (ED for example) and can be essential to winning the key votes of decision makers.
Good Selling!