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

Not All Competencies Are Born Equal

When we complement this data with insight from the competitive deals we have coached, three of the seven competencies emerge as most critical. Based on what you know so far, can you guess which ones? They are Political Advantage, Value Creation, and Competitive Differentiation, all nontraditional sources of relative superiority.

Political Advantage provides enhanced access to key business information that is important to Value Creation, in terms of providing customers with Unexpected Value. At the same time, Political Advantage and Value Creation drive Competitive Differentiation because both are nontraditional in nature. In this way, all these elements work as a single, interconnected system in which the sum is greater than the parts.

We also uncovered a fairly surprising fact from our research: it appears that there was little or no improvement in how sellers perceived these three competencies over time—despite the obvious change in the general business market.

Figure 2.11 shows the results of these three competencies. Because sales complexity and number of customer individuals involved in the buying process increased from 1998 through 2011, we expected to see an improvement in Political Advantage during these years, yet there was no substantial improvement. We also anticipated enhanced awareness in the area of Value Creation, given the increased customer scrutiny and need to justify all expenses; however, there was none. Finally, we expected ...