“If you are allowing your champion, stakeholder, et cetera, to go to an executive and ask them for money, you are almost always going to run into some challenge.” – David Weiss in today’s Tip 1738
How do you convince executives to approve project funding?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from David Weiss. David is the Chief Revenue Officer of the Sales Collective and founder of DealDoc, and a quick note. When David sent me this tip it had a very different title, but I decided to take some liberties. Let me know what you think after you listen, here it is:
David Weiss: What’s up, everybody? David Weiss here with another tip. If you are allowing your champion, stakeholder, et cetera, to go to an executive and ask them for money, you are almost always going to run into some challenge. Here’s the reason.
Executives are tired of their team asking them for money and for toys and for shiny things. The easiest way I could relate it to you is think about the champion, the coach, the person going and asking for this as the child, and think about the executive as the parent. For those of you with children, I can tell you right now, my kid is constantly asking for new Nerf guns and new shiny objects and new toys and new stuffed animals. Almost every single day, he wants to buy something. And I’ve bought him things. And guess what? He doesn’t use them, and they go to waste. That is exactly the same with executives and your buyers. They are constantly being asked for toys, and those toys don’t get adopted. They don’t get used. The money gets wasted. They don’t have the outcome or the impact they said they would. And executives are sick of it, especially in economic climates like where you’re in, where discretionary funding has been cut and where budgets have been sliced, and where priorities are very, very specific for the money that’s being spent because new investment dollars aren’t coming in. So people have to manage their burn and their capital really well. You need to be conscious of all of those things. So the way that you do that, especially in these environments, is you have to have a business case.
If budget has not already been established for the project that you’re talking about, you need a financial business case for change. You also, without question, need to derisk it and show that this is a clear problem. These are all the people that are impacted by that problem, and our solution will solve it. And also it will be adopted. Here’s how we will drive adoption. And here’s how we will ensure that the problem actually gets fixed. And all these people use it. Because if you don’t do all of that and you essentially have what I call a sales process that hasn’t been fully buttoned up in all of those areas, and you try and elevate it too early without all of that buttoned up. An executive is going to look at it as just another child asking for a toy, and they are going to shoot it down and prioritize something else. So you have to go slower and you have to ensure you’ve done all those things. Otherwise, you will not get your projects funded these days. Hopefully, that was helpful.
Scott Ingram: For links to connect with David to learn more about him, The Sales Collective, and DealDoc, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1738. Once you’ve clicked over there, be sure to click back here for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!