Sold Anything Lately?
by Paula K. Martin, CEO,
Martin Training Associates
What does sales have to do with project management?
Plenty. All Project Managers need the ability to sell. Some people think
selling is a dirty word, but we have to sell every day. We sell our
ideas. We sell our plans and the final deliverable. We sell ourselves
(not literally, of course). To sell is to convince someone else to accept
what we have to offer. There doesn't need to be an exchange of money
for a sale to occur. There needs to be acceptance.
All managers need to sell, but as Project Managers, we have an even
bigger need. Why? Because we have no authority. We have to rely on influencing
others and selling is one way to influence. Let's examine the stages
of the selling process.
1. Define Customers and Stakeholders.
You can't make a sale unless you know who you have
to sell to. Make sure you've identified all the stakeholders.
2. Manage Expectations.
The requirements elicitation process is your first opportunity to begin to crawl inside your customers' heads, to see the world from their point of view. Elicit the customer's requirements in the customer's language. Then work with the customer to analyze and prioritize the requirements. This begins the process of managing the customer's expectations. Next, explicitly define the deliverable you will be asking your customer to accept.
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