The New Power Base Selling: Master The Politics, Create Unexpected Value and Higher Margins, and Outsmart the Competition

Power Base Implications for Sellers

Stage IV Customer Advisors focus on people with influence—the Fox and Power Base members—for two main reasons:

1. To drive enhanced Value Creation and Competitive Differentiation. As a result, they are better positioned to improve their customer’s business and win more deals at a higher price. Again, this is due to the rich insight they develop from customer individuals who are “in the know”—or in the Power Base. This insight leads to enhanced value to customer and supplier alike.

2. To succeed while spending as little of their own time and company money as possible. Power Bases would not matter if you sold in a world without constraints. If you had the time and money to call on every customer individual before a decision was going to be made, you would. But you don’t. Time and money are real constraints. And this approach addresses them accordingly.

Working with Foxes and Power Bases not only helps you win more deals but saves you time and money in terms of shorter sales cycles and reduced cost of sales.

To elaborate on this point, let’s return to the example of the seller working on the account in the section titled Mapping the Power Base. The seller would make a huge error if he took direction from the West Regional Director, no matter how strong their relationship is. Even if the West Regional Director happened to be a formal decision maker on some matter, the real decision will be influenced by the East and Central Directors.

Imagine ...