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

Political Competition Is Healthy

One of the reasons that many people disdain “corporate” politics is because this term brings negative images to mind. Internal politics implies that people are competing within an organization, against one another—which must be bad. Except that it’s not bad. Competition is, in fact, healthy and natural so that a company can prioritize its resources and bring value to its customers. Since customers aren’t going to like every idea—and not everything you do will create higher company profits—internal competition ensures that members of your organization vet these ideas appropriately. For example, when launching a new product, it is a healthy dynamic for a company’s engineering and marketing teams to debate how the cost of innovation may impact the product’s price, and therefore, the customer’s elasticity of demand. Success is truly evident only when a company’s customers reward or reject the solutions that are a result of these earlier decisions.

Although the fight for personal advancement is an obvious political activity for sellers to observe, it’s important to note that people also compete for other, more fundamental reasons. For one, people must vie for influence every day simply to do their jobs. For another, the competition for precious resources is often the most intense, since no company has unlimited assets.

The annual battle of the budget usually requires every department to compete for resources such as money, head count, supplier relationships, ...