“I have a career here, you don’t.” is a particularly straightforward sentence I heard from one of my Clients. And I’m a fan.
It happened pretty late in the negotiations. My company was shortlisted after initial presentation and deep-dive technical meeting. The offers were handed, the architecture concept delivered… we were getting to the PoC phase.
We noticed everything was very well organised, usually during sales process I was adding value by helping to move forward, highlighting do’s and dont’s of purchasing process. Here it was simply not needed. And so at one sit-in with the CIO, I said – „you really care about your tech stack and how it blends in” – observation, not question. Then the reply was – “I have a career here, you don’t”. Truly memorable.
He spoke further about adoption of new product, not my product, just a product in general. What salespeople tend to forget is, that it is not only the product you change. It affects corporate behaviors and require people and resources to manage. Here are the three biggest impacts he mentioned to me.
- at least X people needs to be trained (efficiently!) and successfully take on new responsibilities
- processes need to be put in place and organization needs to understand and “ingest” them
- every mistake related to new product impacts the trust put in IT Team
All of it costs something.
For us, the person strong in favour of our product is a Champion. The one who defends decision internally with all the convincing and defending. And this work is being done before and after the sales representative is present. What we tend to forget is that it requires special currency… favors, truces and politics.
Morals are two:
- If the buyer will need to use too much of this „currency” e.g. make a bigger ask on another project later, or if he’s burning too much goodwill in the process or the other product is generally favored and it takes too much convincing (“No one got fired for buying Microsoft”)… you might lose despite winning it.
- They will be associated with the choices they make long after you are gone. If you ever feel there are risks you need to highlight or scenarios that require additional testing – DO IT.
Despite growing population, the IT world is still small enough to see same faces around. Each of us has one reputation and while going for quick-wins can make You some cash, it is helping others grow that makes a fulfilling career in tech sales.
Play the long game.