RSSThe Internal Customer: Is It A Sales Job?
Jul 24, 2009 Decisioning & Change Management
What is the difference between selling to an internal customer and selling to an external customer?
Nothing.
At the end of the day, there is the buyer, the seller, and the solution. The influencer, the influenced, and the idea, or request. Regardless of the moving parts, one person wants another person to buy in to something that represents some sort of change.
Whenever we are responsible for having someone else buy in to an idea, change an opinion, help us on a project, we have a sales issue.
But it’s not the sort of sales issue we’re accustomed to. It’s a change management issue: after all, if the Other can’t figure out a way to add our request to their daily activities, their beliefs about their job, their feelings about what is being asked of them, they will do nothing. If we force them to do something they are not internally comfortable with, we’ll have to manage their sabatoge.
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Tags: Buy-In, buying decisions, customers, management tools, teach
Presentations: How To Compete When In Front Of A Prospect
Jan 3, 2008 Decisioning & Change Management, Top Posts
Your last presentation was great and seemingly well-received. You addressed the prospect’s needs, positioned yourself and your product just right, used the right language and visuals to assure that you were a caring, smart, professional, and had a product that would obviously be the right solution. The price was right, and you clearly had a leg up on the competition in terms of fit. And, the prospect liked you a lot.
But you didn’t close the deal.
Later you heard lots of conflicting stories: they already had a preferred vendor, the CXO had a friend in one of the competing companies, their inside folks were going to handle it, they decided to do nothing, you were too expensive, the competition came in lower than cost just to get the deal….
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Tags: closing, decision criteria, decision making, information, presentations, prospects, questions, teach
