Political Selling could be heavens or hill

Well !   

This is a touchy subject and a bit sensitive to cover here.

From my past 30+ years in the field, I have formulated my own thoughts on lots of topics including successful selling and the various levels selling has to go through to be successful !

• Technical-Level Selling: 
  This is where you focus on thing itself that you are selling, what is it composed of, how it works, what it gives, what it required to work properly, what benefits it gives, ... etc.
• Business-Level Selling:
  This is where you focus on pricing, investments, cost analysis, discounts, payments, warranties and limitations, contracts and orders, terms and conditions, delivery and execution, competition, bidding, financial facilities, ... etc.
• Political-Level Selling:
  Usually done at the highest levels within the buyer and the seller organizations.  It focuses on relations, like and dislike, getting along together, trust and mistrust, confidence building, long-term relationships and strategies ,,, etc. 

Now let us look at this picture and see what it implies 

Yeah !  definitely, this is a highly political relation between two countries with  a heritage of common interests and a high level of confidence between their leaders ! 

But what is behind the picture in terms of successful selling ?

This is pure professional talk ... and while we are talking about "political level selling"  .. we will not get into politics

Can you imagine the results what this "political-level relation" between the leaders of these countries ?

Let us take one example ...

The Boeing-Airbus competition is a typical competitive selling case worth Billions of US $$$.
It is known that the   Bush-Abdullah personal relationship was the final decision maker in this competition

Check these links for more details 

CNN          50 greatest business rivalries of all time

France24    WikiLeaks exposes US-French ‘war’ over jet sales

In public or in Secrecy: you must know how good are you ?

This is the overall burning question for true professionals and for the organizations they work for. It is a global or canonical question that equally applies to managers and employees in all disciplines of life. 

Why is it a burning question? 

Simply because it says how good you are .. really, truly and honestly in what you are doing. This has lots of implications as you may imagine

- How successful you are in your profession
- The chances for having a professionally enjoyable life
- The potential you may reach in your current profession
- The market value for what you are doing and what you are really missing

We can take the concept and apply it to the subject of "successful selling" and I tell you ,, this may turn the excitement and curiosity levels to their max inside the individual himself or helerself as well as in the organizations employing these individuals.

The idea here is to explore strengths, weaknesses, limitations , excellence points and improvement areas for each individual and incorporate this assessment in his/her personal and professional development to reach the maximum of their capabilities and potentials.

How would you value such a topic ?

I have done a similar thing for project managers and I really do not care more or less if they are certified or not, and what kind of certification they may carry. Is it PMP for PMI, CPM from IAPPM or what so ever. 

The more important thing is what is the real competency level of this individual holding the position of project manager as project manager in real life.  This is a much bigger and more comprehensive model than the certification element which remains one element out of many in the overall assessment. 

Similarly, we can carry out a special assessment for "successful selling"  and we may call it "Sales Person Competency Assessment" (SPCA) for short,

Individuals taking this assessment in privacy may take it as a self-improvement exercise to know which important areas in successful selling they are weak, and what they need to improve in these areas.  Organizations (sales entities) taking this initiative across their sales teams will have the chance where to to focus in their continuous improvement programs.

In either case, dramatic improvements may be expected and this will reflect in the overall job performance, job satisfaction and in the overall financial performance of the sales teams and sales organizations.

Are you interested ?

Mastering the sales in highly competitive situations

In today's highly competitive marketplace, selling is becoming more and more challenging to most sales organizations.  The number of players is increasing everyday, the competition is getting fierce and severe, differntiators are vague and vanishing,  profit margins are continuously shrinking, ....

In this atmosphere,  the best recommendation is for every business to identify and focus on its target customers who really need/appreciate the offerings (products, services, solutions, systems, ...) these businesses have.

Furthermore, I would highly recommend every business entity to do a factual and honest assessment of its competitive status internally with some well-known and appreciated criteria in mind.   I may go further in detail, but unfortunately, the details vary considerable from one business entity to another, from one industry to another, and from one target market/territory to another. 

Secondly, business entities need to know and understand their target customers.  I am not saying that you should do this to all your customers. this is not possible.  So let us focus on the 20% of your customers that bring 80% of the business.  This is where the exercise proves its best value.

Thirdly, you need to repeat this honest and factual assessment for your "offerings portfolio" and see which ones really deserve your highest attention.

Last but not least, you need to do this kind of exercise for your top-3 or top-5 competitors for your "key" offerings and for your "key" customers/markets.

Need more ideas to implement this suggestion ???

You need to pass these 4 milestones to close the deal !

When you sit in front with your customer trying to sell him something, there are usually 4 milestones that you need to pass before the deal can be closed.

1. Who are you ? and who do you represent ?
   This is the ice-breaker thing that serves as an entry point to make a brief self-intro and grab the attention of the customer.  Use things which are "relevant" to your customer and do NOT over do this thing as it may fire back on you !
   
2. What are you selling ? and how is it important/necessary to your customer ?Whether it is a product, a service, a solution, a total system, ..  you need to give a high-level description of what it is, focus more on what "benefits" it gives, and more specifically, focus on the results the customer may expect from it inline with what the customer wants to achieve.
   
3. What would it take (cost, time, effort,..) to successfully own/use this thing you are selling ?Good things do NOT come for free.  This is the time to outline to your customer what it really takes to successfully own and use the thing you are trying to sell to the customer.  Make sure that you are factual and honest in your description, stress what you can offer in this regard, but never try to give false promises or expectations about this aspect
   
4. Why the customer needs to buy this thing from you specifically ? and not from anyone else?
   This is the most important thing, and it is the "make-or-break" for all your sales effort.  It is crucial to fix in the customer mind why he should buy this specifically from you and not from anyone else !  Focus on your own (personal-level) differentiators and repeat  (why not?) the product and the company differentiators as well ! 

If you are successful in the above, you may take the contract/agreement out of your brief case and pass it to your customer for his/her signature. 

Selling is a daily life activity practiced by everyone

This is why I differentiate between "selling" as an  activity and "sales" as a profession.
Selling - as an activity- is something we do almost all the time, knowingly or unknowingly.
See, I am here trying to see you something through this posting and through this blog,  It is not commercial selling, and I an not getting any money from you in return, but it is still one form of selling.

In this daily life selling activity, we can see everyone trying to sell him/herself to the people he cares for in the family, in the community, at the job and elsewhere.  This is very often done by showing the good side in the person and the benefits he/she may extend to others.

Spouses do this to each other, children do it to their parents, even pet animals do this instinctively to get the food and care from their owners.

This is a bit different from commercial selling which people find complex and exhausting most of the time.  Sellers get disappointed when they are rejected, and buyers get offended by the non-stopping flow of sales attempts they get from people they know and mostly by people they do not know !

In fact, the feeling that someone is behind your money (bottom-line) is an annoying feeling.  and let us face it, sales people at the end are after your money, regardless of what they say.

SSS is about successful selling, not aggressive selling, not overselling, not selling what customers do not need, and certainly not about abusing customers confidence or lack of knowledge just to get the $$$ out from them.

To be continued !

Three Levels of Commercial Selling !

It  just grabbed my attention during my extensive experience with IBM in Saudi  Arabia and industry leaders like Saudi Aramco, that there are three levels of  "selling" that are needed to make the sales happen

1. Technical-Level Selling:  usually done by "technology guys" and focusing on the functionality, features and usage of the thing to be sold.  The target customers for this level of selling would be usually end-users, technical support people and operations people who would be involved somehow in dealing with the technology aspects of the product/system/solution/service to be sold to the customer.
   
2. Business-Level Selling:  usually done by "sales guys" focusing on pricing, financial and contractual aspects which serve as basis for acquisition of the subject product/service/system to be sold.  The target customers for this level of selling are usually "purchasing" , "contracting", "procurement" or similar functions. The focus would be on price, total cost of ownership, discounts, warranty, and other relevant things.
   
3. Political-Level Selling"  usually done by "executives" at the highest level within the two organizations.  The focus here may on "politics" internal and external, organizations partnership and long-term relations.  

Successful selling is required to cover all three levels in order to click. The entry/trigger point could be at any of these three levels and must move on to cover the other two before a deal can be concluded successfully.

Learn how to "SELL" from your "BUYING" experience

Strikingly simple ..

You may NOT be selling all the time, but for sure, you are buying all the time.

You buy food, you buy clothes, you buy furniture, you buy household items, you buy medicine, you buy cars or other transportation vehicles, and if you do not buy them, you buy tickets to go by plane, train or bus from one place to another place. You buy services, you buy comfort of life, you buy luxury items, you buy support and backing, you may buy your competition as well !

Well !   our life style seems to be centered around buying.

For everything you buy, there is on the other side, someone who is selling you, either with some effort or most of the time effortlessly !

It is not that he/she is so damn good in selling you and others. Furthermore, in many situations, he/she is not selling you at all. you just happen to be buying from him/her !!

Think about it and see what lessons you may learn from that when it is your turn to sell others something !