Next week is an exciting week for us, as we are releasing our new book, Breaking the Rules: 111 Tips for Selling Value in the Era of Procurement, on September 4th. If you've been following these Tips for any period of time, you will understand the essence of this book - that the rules being implemented by Procurement are taking commoditization of what we sell to a whole new level, so we need to change or break the rules and fight to get credit for our value.

Imagine how we felt a few weeks ago, when we were in the final editing stage of the book and received an RFP for sales training services. Many of you can relate to this RFP: it was unexpected; it came from an RFP administrator (not the Sales organization); it required a quick turnaround (2 weeks); and it asked for an email response that included "an overview of your company; description of your sales process offerings; and a pricing schedule". The irony was perfect - this is exactly the type of situation we were writing about in Breaking the Rules! So what should we do?

Of course we wanted to compete and win the business, and felt that our sales process and our implementation offerings might be a really great fit for the prospect. Yet we didn't feel like we had a good shot at winning if we simply followed the rules and replied reactively via email. Not only that, but we really didn't have time to pursue unqualified opportunities. So what did we decide to do? We decided to "practice what we preach" and:


Quickly gather available data on the company
Conduct a LinkedIn search and other networking efforts to see who we were connected to in and around the prospect.
Connect with a couple of people that came up in our networking to conduct efficient phone research meetings
Qualify the opportunity (we decided it was worth additional effort, as we had previous experience with several executives at the company)
Reach out to the RFP administrator directly, recognizing their role and requesting an opportunity to present our response (instead of emailing it in)
Get in front of the key players and make a stand-up RFP finalist presentation that positioned the business fit and solution fit between our companies.


The jury is still out. We don't know if we will get the business but we know we gave it our best shot and fought to win based on the value we could bring the prospect. We differentiated ourselves and did it efficiently - using the process and taking about the same amount of time that it would've taken to respond to the RFP. Oh yeah, and we had fun. This is the best part of selling!

So the Tip this month is "practice what you preach". If you say you sell the value of what you can do for the customer, then do it and do it well. Create a collaborative relationship with Procurement or find a way around the vendor grids and endless RFP responses to get in front of the real decision maker and position the value you can bring them!