Waiting to Exhale
OK. So I finally have a couple of nice proposals out and now all I can do is hold my breath till I hear back. It's sort of like the "quiet period" before a company has their IPO. Once you...

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Waiting to Exhale

OK. So I finally have a couple of nice proposals out and now all I can do is hold my breath till I hear back. It's sort of like the "quiet period" before a company has their IPO. Once you turn in your proposal, what's a salesman supposed to do? Unfortunately, there's really not a whole lot that you can do. Most of the selling has been done and the next few days you really need to be careful not to wear your welcome out by making too many follow up calls. Of course, depending on the relationships that you have with the prospect, you can try to surreptitiously find out through an inside "sponsor" or "coach" how your proposal is being received. A sponsor or coach is someone, typically inside the organization, that wants you to win the business. He may or may not have a stake in the outcome, but for whatever reason, he definitly wants you to prevail. A sponsor/coach is someone, in or outside of the organization that has influence on the buying decision. A good sponsor/coach can be your eyes and ears into the inner sactum of the buying organization, and if you've done the ground work properly, the coach is actively involved in the selection process.

In the book Strategic Selling, Miller-Heimman list the four "buyers" in an organization. The four buyers, in no particular order are, 1) the Technical buyer, 2) the Financal buyer, 3, the user buyer, and 4) the Sponsor/Coach. The one that I try to spend a disportionate amount of my time trying to develop a relationship with is the Sponor/Coach. A "buyer" as defined by Miller-Heimman can be one person or it can be a committe of two or more people. In small companies, one person may play two or more of these buyer roles. But in larger companies, the roles are generally more distributed.

The Technical buyer is charged with writing the specification requirements. The Financial buyer is the person who will actually approve the budget and perhaps even write or sign the check. This is typically a upper managment position position like a CFO or departmental manager. The user-buyer is the person or persons that will be using the product. These are obviously all important people to get to know and anyone of them can prevent or propel you to success. You definitly don't want to be on the bad side of any of these particular buyers, because one buyer against you can out-weight three buyers for you.

One of the points that Miller-Heimman makes is that the better you know all four buyers, the better your chances are at winning the business. Which means, of course, that the less you know the four buyers, the worse off are your chances of winning the business. Heimman-Miller even go as far as recommending that you make a "roster" of sorts and making sure that you at least have a name filled out next to each of the buyers positions. I promise you, if you cannot fill in all of the names of the people playing these various positions, you probably aren't as solid in the account as you think you are.

So once the jury is out, if you have your roster filled out, and you haven't gotten on the bad side of any of buyers, and you have a good sponsor/coach pulling for you and giving you inside information, you won't have to hold your breath till a verdict is annouced, because you have done your homework and you've done the groundwork and your chances of winning the business are better than any of your competitors.

Waiting to Exhale
OK. So I finally have a couple of nice proposals out and now all I can do is hold my breath till I hear back. It's sort of like the "quiet period" before a company has their IPO. Once you...