For over forty years The Fortune Group has been helping businesses succeed, and managers manage. In that time we've seen just about every kind of business situation imaginable however we’ve also learnt that the future is not what it used to be. And after all these years in the trenches, solving real, not textbook, problems, we’ve discovered that companies fail primarily because managers fail. And when managers fail it is not because they cannot master numbers, but because they try to master people, or manipulate them or ignore them.

To our mind, the quality of management and leadership is the single most important ingredient in the recipe for business success.

So how would you like to sharpen your leadership and managerial skills by avoiding the common mistakes managers make with the people they manage? We're going to give you the truly classic mistakes. Indeed, managers have been making the same ones since the dawn of human history. And they can prove fatal – if not for you, very definitely for your company!

But you don't have to perpetuate any of these common defects of managerial character, habit, style and judgement….if you know what they are. And, luckily for you, there are not many. Over succeeding posts we are going to discuss the 12 that we’ve scrupulously catalogued as the most common managerial mistakes that occur in business situations that have gone sour. In the thousands of companies that The Fortune Group has served throughout the world, we’ve had the privilege of having managers privately share with us, their mistakes and their failures. The words to describe the situations may differ, but the underlying problems seldom do. Our next series of blogs will highlight the common traps, so that by being aware of them you will be less likely to fall into them (again!).

As Steve Brown, Fortune’s Chairman and Founder, highlights in our multimedia training programs, Practical Sales Management and Leadership In Action, the true art of management, lies not in the art of winning, as so many populist business books often characterise it; but rather in the art of winning assent. It is the art of clearly communicating purpose and expectations, and diligently monitoring objectives and tasks, then fairly rewarding the people who achieve them, because they have made a commitment to them on the basis of corporate good and personal interest.

Leadership and management, we believe, is the art of winning assent to meaningful corporate purpose and objectives, and of reaching them through others.

In our second post in this series we'll discuss Major Mistake #1 "Failure to Accept Personal Accountability".

So far in our series on how to help your prospect sell internally, we've covered three steps in the process:

1. The purchase cycle – Where is the organisation in the buying process? How close is the prospect organisation to a purchase decision? What steps do they still need to go through? At what stage are you entering their process?
2. The buying team – Who are the three types of people involved? What roles do they play in contributing to the purchasing process? What are their motivations and what kind of information do they need?
3. Defining objectives – What action(s) do you want the various members of your prospect's buying team to take?

Now that you've built this platform of knowledge and have a clear sense of purpose (why you’re doing what you’re doing!), you can work on developing your sales strategy and tactics, which must consider three key factors

1. Size and complexity
   This relates not only to the size and complexity of your product or service proposition but also to that of the purchasing organisation. The greater the size and complexity of either, the more you'll be working through a series of developmental sales calls, which we discussed in our last post on defining objectives.
2. Change
   How much change will your product or service require from the organisation? And what is the organisation’s tolerance for change? Does the organisation and buying team perceive (widely/deeply) that they're getting a poor result from their current course of action or do they think that their existing situation is good or good enough? If its tending toward the latter then there will be limited motivation to act on a solution and bear the pain involved (time, cost, etc), no matter how compelling it may be.
3. Relationships
   What's your relationship and that of your prospect/champion with the various members of the buying team? How might you/they be able to leverage a preexisting relationship to aid your cause? And what's your relationship to where the organisation is in the purchasing cycle? The earlier you enter the process, the more strength you'll have.

Of these three elements, the organisation's tolerance for change is the most important factor in determining how quickly it will move through the purchasing cycle. That's why salespeople must be change agents; you/we are in the business of inducing people to change. For much more on the mindsets of change, the motivations of change and how to implement change, see our page on how to manage organisational change.

As we stated in our first post in this series, you always want to try and communicate directly with the purchasing authority, no matter what stage of the process you're in. But since reality often dictates otherwise, you must be prepared to work through your primary contact who becomes your champion for selling internally on their own.

Dealing with this task can be challenging. First most competitors, other than an incumbent, will be in the same situation and facing an equal disadvantage. This is one reason why it is so advantageous to get into an organisation’s purchasing cycle as early as possible, particularly if you can work with them to surface a problem, and then help them define and solve it. And second, you can actually apply many of the same principles and processes that you would use in a normal sales situation – and that's much of what we've covered in this series. So no matter what the situation, stick with this proven framework and you'll find that your chances of success will be significantly enhanced!

In order for salespeople to help their prospect sell internally, they must understand the sales environment. Therefore, in the last two posts of this series we've covered two key components that define environment: (1) where the prospect is in the purchase cycle and (2) who is on the prospect's buying team. With a full appreciation of these, you'll be better positioned to develop the most creative and effective sales strategy.

But before jumping right into forming a sales strategy for your prospect to execute, there's a critical step that must come first: defining objectives. All sales calls or presentations begin in the mind of the salesperson with a clear one sentence statement of purpose. A sales strategy without objectives is useless, so skipping this step – a common temptation for many – is a colossal error.

Before you initiate any sales process, regardless of whether you have direct access to the buying team, ask yourself: What's my purpose? By identifying one, it forces you to think about your environment, drawing upon the knowledge outlined in the previous two posts, and what you need to do to transfer your belief in your solution throughout the rest of the target organisation.

In general, there are two types of sales calls, and a salesperson's objective will differ greatly depending on which one they're entering.

1. Transactional sales calls

   These are calls in which you expect a sale to take place at that time. They're going to be mostly simple sales that don't require a large investment of time or resources on the prospect's behalf.

2. Developmental sales calls

   These are the sales calls we engage in most of the time as a part of the overall sales process, those for which you anticipate you'll need to put in a significant amount of effort, working with many people over a long period of time. They require that you take a multipronged approach and lead, coach and counsel the prospect throughout the entire purchasing process.

When you're faced with the challenge we're addressing in this series of helping your champion sell internally, you're clearly dealing with a more complex sale that requires multiple developmental sales calls. Because of that, you should begin the process by defining not just one objective with a simple endpoint, but a cascading series of objectives, starting with a broad, overarching one and becoming more and more focused on immediate goals.

These objectives can be broken into four levels. For each, we've provided a generic example of what the actual objective might be:

1. Overall objective: What's your ideal end result?

   For example: Prospect organisation makes long-term commitment to your product or service.

2. Intermediate objective: What will help you fulfill your overall objective?
   

   For example: Prospect trials your product or service by investing in one part of it.

3. Short-range objective: What will help you fulfill your intermediate objective?
   

   For example: Your contact (within the prospect organisation) presents the case for trialing one part of the product or service to the buying team.

4. Immediate objective: What will help you fulfill your short-range objective?
   

   For example: Your contact arranges a meeting with the buying team.

As you consider each of these levels of objectives, it's crucial that you couch them in regards to the actions that the prospect must take. Too many salespeople concentrate on inputs, thereby framing objectives around what action they're going to do. But the purpose of a sales call isn't your activities. Instead, it's about getting the prospect to take desired actions that lead to a result.

What's your purpose? Regardless of whether you're entering a transactional or developmental sales call, you'll need to devise an effective sales strategy and tactics. And what makes for good strategy development? We will cover this next time, in our last post of this series.

How can salespeople help their prospect sell internally? As a salesperson, it's a question you will often face because, for whatever reason you simply cannot gain direct access to the purchasing authority: the person (or people) who have the economic power to make a purchasing decision.

In order to devise the best strategy and plan of action for your prospect/champion to sell internally, a salesperson must understand their environment. Last time we provided a basic outline of the purchase cycle. By understanding this construct, salespeople gain tremendous insights into an organisation’s current ‘state of mind’ and what kind of information it will most likely be seeking, both now and in the future.

But we don't sell companies or organisations – we sell people. So it should go without saying that the most creative of strategies and tactics are people-oriented. Therefore, it's crucial to understand the types of people that make up a buying team, in terms of the roles they play, and the forces impacting upon them. With this knowledge, you can create an effective sales strategy for your prospect that will address the different needs and motivations of the buying team members.

Regardless of however many people are on a buying team (3, 7, 12, 30…), its members can be distilled down into three, distinct categories:

1. Authority

   The ultimate authority is almost always one person. Although it may appear as if authority is vested in a committee or a group, this is very rarely the case. Within the buying team, they're often the person with position power (but not always!), and in most cases, they hold all of the economic power. In other words, without their final approval, the team will rarely make a purchase.

2. Implementers/users

   These are the people who will put the product or service to work within the organisation. Unlike the authority, they can't say yes and approve a purchase, but if they believe the solution won't be effective, they can certainly express reservations and say no. They can also be highly credible champions.

3. Technicians

   These are the experts charged with the responsibility of ensuring the solution will work. As with implementers/users, they can't say yes, but if they believe the product or service won't function as required, they can say no. Note that a "technicians" expertise doesn't necessarily apply to the ‘technology’ of the product/service. For example, a technician could be a lawyer advising on how the contract is written.

Whether or not you can gain direct access to the buying team, it's critical to understand who the players are and the role each of them play. When you can gain direct access to the buying team, you can improve your chances of success by matching members from each of the three categories with members from your own selling team. For example, if you can get your engineers talking directly with their engineers, or your product specialist talking directly with the prospect's, communication can be more productive and effective.

But even in instances when you don't have direct access to the buying team, you can couple your previous knowledge of *where* the prospect is in the purchase cycle with this new knowledge of *who* your contact/champion needs to be selling to internally. This will arm you with a big-picture view of the organisation's environment and allow you to leverage as much creativity as possible as you consider your objectives, sales strategy and tactics.

Next time we'll look at defining your objectives, and after that we'll wrap it all up by discussing what to consider when forming your sales strategy.

"Creativity is nothing more than having the ability to understand the forces impacting upon us and then being able to utilize those forces as a means or a tool for reaching our objectives. It's the ability to understand our conditions and environment and then put them to work for us." Bear Bryant

In our last blog, we posed a dilemma often faced during the sales process: If you can't communicate directly with the purchasing authority in your target organization, then how can salespeople help their prospect sell internally? While there isn't a straightforward solution, dealing with this issue is very achievable using the framework we’ll outline in this and the next three blogs. It will help any salesperson support their principal contact and champion.

As we outlined last time, the culmination of the process is having your contact implement the right sales strategy. But before you can have them do that, you have to develop your sales strategy – and that starts with allowing for the creativity that Bear Bryant cites in the above quote.

How can you help yourself be creative? Like Bryant says, you must understand the forces impacting upon you. In other words, what factors shape the client's conditions and environment? What are the various influences and personalities at play?

When it comes to the sales process, there are two core elements that shape the prospect's environment:

1. Where is the target business in the purchasing cycle?
2. What is the make-up of the buying team?

Today we’ll look at the first of these two influences on the prospect's environment: the PURCHASE cycle.

When making a major purchase, the vast majority of organizations (public, private, small and large) go through a process that is comprised of a series of sequential steps that inform their decisions. Although much of the content of the process is unique to each organization, the structure of the process can be distilled to some universal basics that are shared amongst all. Even with a very general understanding of where the prospect's organization is in this cycle and the forces impacting upon them, you will glean invaluable information that will support and enhance your creativity.

We've captured the essence of each step in the PURCHASE cycle below:

P roblem identification
In order for any person or entity to undergo change, they must experience a problem that causes some form of pain. In this initial period, the organization identifies such a problem and acknowledges that they need a solution; this ‘identification’ can often be informal and unconscious.

U ncover various alternatives
The organization considers whether anything can be done to alleviate their dissatisfaction (pain). If there are no feasible alternatives, they'll live with it. But if they identify that a potential solution maybe available, they will move to the next step.

R esource identification
The organization considers how it can solve the problem: Can it be addressed in house or will they need to seek a solution from an external supplier?

C oncrete specifications
Almost always written, the buying team develops the criteria of what's required from a solution so that it can adequately solve their problem.

H old out the opportunity to suppliers
The organization reaches out to various suppliers seeking information about what's available in the market.

Note: This is often where many salespeople enter the process. However, as a rule, the earlier you enter the purchasing cycle the significantly greater strength you have with the prospect.

A nalyse suppliers
The various suppliers present their proposals to the organization. During this stage, it's not uncommon for the organization to determine that they need to rewrite their specifications, either because they didn't capture everything well enough the first time or because they've identified new opportunities.

S elect preferred supplier
The organization selects their preferred vendor and engages with them in a negotiation process. This is where you can expect your margin to come under the greatest pressure.

E ffect the solution
The organization implements the purchased product or service.

As we said at the outset, even though the content of this buying process will be unique to each organization, the PURCHASE acrostic acts as an informative pathway to guide salespeople. By determining where the organization is in the process, how close they are to a purchase decision and what steps they still need to go through, they afford themselves an invaluable snapshot of their environment; this enhances sales creativity, and allows them to develop and manage a more effective sales strategy.

But the purchase cycle is only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to understanding the prospect's environment. In order to manage it effectively, and therefore fully realize the potential of your creativity, salespeople must also determine who they're selling to, because we don't sell companies or organizations – we sell people. And we'll explore this topic in our next blog, when we look at the buying team.