The heading here seems to suggest the person doing the selling should declare how much his profit, or commission check will be. Actually that isn’t what it means. How the salesman gets compensated is no more relevant to the buyer than his pay check would be to the salesman.What is relevant is the salesman has another interest over, and above just signing the deal.
In Selling is about People we discussed the buyer’s personal agenda – the dimension of the deal which is relevant to his personal, as opposed to the business’ interests. This never gets talked about in the open but we need to accommodate it in our campaign. In Ask the Hard Questions Early we briefly looked at the way the buyers’ emotional state moves through the sales process, from open, to guarded, to coaching us to win. One of the ways we can encourage the move from guarded to coaching us to win is to share our personal agenda.
When buyer and seller understand each other’s personal agenda, they can form an alliance in which they collaborate to deliver the business agenda. Naturally they also support each other in their pursuit of personal agendas. To an observer this closer relationship may appear as if the two have developed a friendship – the sales guys calls get put straight through, he can show up without an appointment and they’ll socialize out of work, maybe even including their partners. They may indeed get on well, but more importantly, they share their personal agendas.
Of course it’s possible for the talented seller to create this alliance by sharing his own agenda, fabricated to suit the circumstances. This can be an extremely powerful technique, but it’s also full of risk. If the buyer detects the device, the seller isn’t going to be forgiven his duplicity any time soon. This page should have a large USE WITH CARE sign.
A simple example may prove useful. Lets take a fictional project manager charged with selecting an expensive software package, and assume a successful implementation will guarantee his promotion to CTO. The seller can create the alliance by explaining this sale is strategic to him, because he gets much more than just a deal – maybe penetrating a new market, winning a high profile customer, establishing a customer reference in a new sector.
Now they have a common interest over and above the sale. They both have personal agendas which coincide with this project. If they collaborate through the sale everybody will be winners, both businesses and the buyer, and the seller.
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