“You got to be aware of yourself because a junior buyer or even a senior one that forgot, can invertially give away things that are super important. You can give away information that’s worth its weight and goal.” – Jonathan Gardner in today’s Tip 1773
Do you do backdoor selling?
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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 Jonathan Gardner. Jonathan is founder of J. Gardner Group, where he leverages his insider knowledge as a former mega-buyer to help mid-market companies land lucrative deals with Fortune 500 companies. He has negotiated 250+ deals for F500 companies including Starbucks (VP of Global Sourcing) and Albertsons (Group VP of Strategic Sourcing). Here he is:
Jonathan Gardner: Backdoor selling is what we call practices by a supplier organization by which non-commercial members of the supplier team gain critical information that increases the suppliers’ bargaining power or leverage. Often that works out when non-commercial members of the customer are asked seemingly innocuous questions by the supplier organization. A lot of times you have a non-commercial person. It’s like an engineer or R&D, as opposed to salesperson. We’ll be talking to engineering, R&D or manufacturing, as opposed to procurement person. Rest assured that a well-run selling organization is using what I’ll call the technical account manager to gain critical information from the buyer’s technical counterparts or non-commercial counterparts.
If you’re a seller, this is fantastic. You learn lots of stuff. You can find out how much budget there is, where other suppliers are involved, how to get themselves essentially spec in by having the specifications written in a way that leads to the choice of that supplier. Sometimes the suppliers are the ones that write the spec in the first place. So the customer specification is a supplier, and by nature, you’re in.
So there are all these ways to make the relationship more sticky and harder to change. And so procurement people refer to these activities as backdoor because you’re literally coming in the backdoor as opposed to sales talking to procurement, where everybody’s hackles are up. So it’s great if you’re a seller. If you’re a buyer, you really need to reverse the advice and be on the same page with your non-commercial people. You got to be aware of yourself because a junior buyer or even a senior one that forgot, can invertially give away things that are super important. You can give away information that’s worth its weight and goal. Basically, you get every button on the same page, commercial and the technical, as to how to answer certain questions.
Scott Ingram: For links to connect with Jonathan, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1773. Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!