The best sales organizations typically have one thing in common – they have achieved internal stakeholder buy-in. For this post, I’ll write about the money people. Every week, I read the LinkedIn posts about sales vs finance and “negotiating with finance” or “getting finance on your side” and I just laugh. I promise, the finance team realizes more sales equals more job security.
Here’s the thing – as with any group – it comes down to building trust. When I led our small but growing team in London, in the beginning, we literally had no budget, no dedicated marketing experts, and no direct salespeople. It was the perfect recipe for success ….
All kidding aside, it just meant we had to get creative and find ways to earn some goodwill (and then hopefully some investment). At RAX UK, you started (and ended) with Finance and so I sat down with John Vernikos. To this day, I don’t know what he thought of me. He always did that half-smile thing and I couldn’t tell if he thought I was funny or an a$$h0le. If asked, he’d probably say a bit of both 😉.
To win, I knew we had to make some small promises and commitments and then deliver quickly. Like very, very, very quickly. Then, I could go ask for a little more – and then deliver quickly. And so on and so on. Those small commitments, and our consistent delivery, earned John’s trust. We grew the team, we found ways to win, and we helped others. In the story of my career, it is easy to tie the success of that division directly to John and earning his trust.
Want to know how to “win over Finance”?
Do what you tell them you are going do.
1) Tell them.
2) Do it.
3) Repeat.
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