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

When You Are the Installed Incumbent

Traditional Sources

The most common expression of the Direct strategy involves situations where you already have a strong presence in an account. As new sales opportunities arise with the customer, you may be able to gain relative superiority simply because of the strength of your installation, even if your products have begun to lag somewhat in sophistication and capability. For example, if you are selling business intelligence (BI) software to a customer who already uses your Customer Resource Management (CRM) system, you’ll have an advantage if the two integrate effortlessly. The customer will probably want to avoid spending time and money on a new system that might not integrate as well with the existing one.

Two things must be true for this version of the Direct strategy to work: First, the customer individuals must be satisfied with the product or service they’ve already received from you. Second, customer individuals must conclude, perhaps reluctantly, that their attraction to another supplier isn’t worth the drawbacks of having a multi-supplier environment. If it’s a toss-up, your presence in the account shouldn’t lull you into thinking you have an edge. Again, this is the traditional perspective, one that doesn’t account for the invisible factors.

Nontraditional Sources

Here, the barriers to entry go beyond the traditional view to include Unexpected Value that sits high up on the Sales Value Chain and has the support of the Situational ...