INKED

10Motivation

My client engaged us for a consulting project to help them develop an account management process for their growing sales team. Their field-based hunter salesforce had been gaining market share rapidly, and they’d become accustomed to double-digit growth.

Suddenly, though, growth had slowed, and there was a sinking realization that they had a problem. The sales team had sold so many new accounts that they’d become bogged down servicing them and had stopped hunting for new opportunities.

We identified a firm timeline for completing the project. That timeline was tied to hiring and standing up an account management team, training them, and integrating them into the organization. The stakeholder group had selected my company, Sales Gravy, as the vendor of choice (VOC). The contract was sent to procurement to get ironed out.

That’s when things bogged down. Procurement immediately asked us for price concessions. We refused, because we’d priced the deal so that we could deliver the business outcome required by the stakeholder group.

Procurement’s gambit at that point was to stall and slow down communication. They insinuated that they had other alternatives (a power play). They were counting on our side to be motivated to get the deal done because we’d naturally want the revenue to start flowing.

Weeks went by. But we were in no hurry. We had an overflowing pipeline, along with multiple projects already underway. We were more worried about how to absorb this new project ...