308: Boosting Our Champions In The Sale

<p>Usually, we meet our contact in the company through a cold call, a referral or networking and we sit down and have a talk about the needs of the organisation.  If we are doing a professional job, we will have explained what we do, mentioned a client we have done work for and the success they achieved as a result. We will then suggest that “maybe” we could do the same for this company too, but in order to know if that is possible or not, we ask if we can ask a few questions.  Once we have received their permission to ask questions, we can go deep on the issues facing the company and they will tell us.</p> <p> </p> <p>In the next stage, we will start suggesting solutions which are matched to their needs or we will say we are not a match and go and find a client who is.  At this point it sometimes comes out that our contact in the company is all in favour of fixing the issue, but they are being hamstrung by others in the organisation.  These could be line managers or senior executives further up the chain. </p> <p> </p> <p>In Japanese organisations there will be multiple decision-makers. Each division which will be impacted by the buying decision will conduct their own due diligence to see what it will mean for them.  As each Section Head clears the decision, they will put their seal on the proposal document and it will move up to the next level, to the Division Head.  The Executive committee will review the Division Heads approval of the decision and then it becomes official and things can start happening.</p> <p> </p> <p>That is a tremendous number of people involved in the decision and the person we are sitting across from is just one individual in the chain of command, who may or may not even have the ability to put their seal on the piece of paper.  As salespeople, we may never meet anyone else inside the decision-making system and we rely on this person to help us steer agreement through the machine.</p> <p> </p> <p>The trust build with our contact that we are sincere about helping them is critical.  We hav