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

Step 1: Determine the Entry Point

You begin your account penetration that leverages creating demand by identifying the right point of entry, that is, which business unit or functional area you should focus on within an account. It’s about knowing what doors to knock on as your initial penetration point. To sort this out, you take four factors into consideration:

1. Political connectivity

2. Business significance

3. Business impact

4. Supplier return

These factors work in concert to help you quickly and objectively determine where to start the process of displacing a competitor from a potentially important account. Let’s look at each one in detail.

1. Political Connectivity: Is there a Fox in a particular business unit, division, or department who has a relationship with a higher-level Fox? This is important because when you determine how to provide a specific business unit with Unexpected Value by moving up the Sales Value Chain, you will want to move upstream to the higher-level Fox with the support of the Situational Fox with whom you are working. This is why it’s critical to engage in intel gathering to discover this kind of Fox-to-Fox connectivity.

2. Business Significance: Which business unit or functional area is the most financially or strategically crucial to the company? Although the obvious choice is one that produces the most revenue or profit, sometimes it is one that has the potential to directly or indirectly drive revenue and/or margin in the future. In that ...