Your best sales coach may be your client

Any lawyer who develops new business with Fortune 1000 firms knows that the process of getting a new engagement can be a long and winding road, with many false starts, dead ends, and rapid mood swings. That’s just the nature of dealing with large organizations: there are many people on the other side of the table, and they don’t always agree. In fact, they may be competing with each other for the power to make a particular decision. So whenever one of them tells you something, it must be weighed against what the others may think.

Robert Miller and Stephen Heiman are pioneers in the consultative selling movement, and they developed a system to help sales pros build consensus in this volatile environment. In their 1985 classic Strategic Selling, they identified four distinct buying influences in large and complex sales:

The Economic Buying Influence is the alpha dog who controls the money, and is the ultimate decision maker. This buyer may or may not want the lowest price, but is always looking for the best return on investment.

User Buying Influence is exerted by one or many people who will actually use the product or service. Sales beginners often deal only with users, and are surprised when they learn that these users don’t have the power to buy what they want.

The Technical Buying Influence concerned with measurable and quantifiable standards and specifications which the organization may have. This group has the negative veto power to prevent purchases that don’t conform to company standards, but rarely has the positive power to force a purchase.

The Coach is an insider who can help a sales person build consensus by providing information and interpreting events as the situation develops.

In legal business development, the importance of understanding these categories is going up, because large companies are changing the way they purchase legal services. (For example, see my blog about the increasing role of procurement professionals.)

Miller and Heiman list four main ways that a good Coach can help build consensus by helping you:
Figure out who are really the real key players in this buying decision (in a large organization, they may be different from the people who believe they are the real players)
Identify which of your strengths will have the biggest impact in this situation, and help you avoid red flags
Predict how different buyers may react to your proposal, based on their different perspectives
Understand the results that each buyer needs to see your proposal as a win-win

Why should the Coach help you get the work? According to Miller and Heiman, there is only one acceptable reason: “It’s in his or her own self-interest for the buying organization to accept your solution (page 85)” They argue that when it comes to Coaches, you should especially avoid the ‘friend’ who ‘likes you.’ Don’t confuse liking you with liking your proposal. (page 211)

So if you want to find a Coach to help get that next engagement, you must find someone whose interests are aligned with yours, and build the role. Nobody said this would be easy. For specifics, see The New Strategic Selling : The Unique Sales System Proven Successful by the World's Best Companies, Revised and Updated for the 21st Century.

Is it worth the trouble? Only you can answer that for a particular situation. But a Coach who believes the sale will benefit both her company and herself will be an enormous help in building consensus not just for this new engagement, but for the next one.