Sales Professionals Beat Commoditization and Boost Sales by “Breaking The Rules”

WESTPORT, Conn. - Feb. 19, 2014 - PRLog -- Procurement specialists are invested in finding new ways of managing organizational costs and most sales professionals aren’t adapting fast enough. Requests for proposal (RFPs), Internet auctions and purchasing consultants are just some of the ways Procurement levels the playing field, commoditizing value, and trapping sales professionals on a vendor grid where low price wins over value. But sales professionals don’t have to just accept the new procurement rules that conspire to commoditize, say Mark Shonka and Dan Kosch in Breaking the Rules: 111 Tips for Selling Value in the Era of Procurement.  Their new book offers 111 bold new ways to avoid getting stuck in the procurement trap.

Breaking the Rules means changing the game, whether that’s elevating access within the Procurement department, driving “apples to oranges” comparisons or issuing our own RFPs (requests for presentation). Assessing the situation, including knowing when to walk away, begins the four-part process that outlines the book, keeping the tips easy to reference.  What are the rules we want to break?  Who made the rules (it’s not always the customer)?  Do we have internal coaches who want us to win?  Are we being set up to fail?  Getting the answers to these kinds of questions opens the door for selling value.

Developing a Procurement strategy that minimizes vendor relationships is the second step.  According to Shonka and Kosch, Co-Presidents of the global sales performance improvement provider IMPAX Corporation, many sales professionals operate too tactically.  They fail to strategize, trying instead to win the sale with persistence, personality, a winning product and a deep discount. The more we can learn about the issues Procurement faces, what it’s trying to accomplish, and how we can help it win, the faster we’ll be meeting with the CPO instead of the purchasing agent.

Developing the right sales strategy outside of Procurement is step three. This is a “win plan” for becoming a value leader with the innovative solutions and business-improving strategies senior executives need.  Tips include “Align with the Line”, which puts you in front of real decision makers and “The RFP Presentation”, which shows how to make a customer-focused business presentation in support of an RFP response.

The final step is execution, which focuses on driving action and executing these strategies in a professional manner.

Each of these steps is supported with case studies, real life examples and templates and tools to help the reader implement the right strategies at the right time.

Mark Shonka and Dan Kosch (Minneapolis, MN) are Co-Presidents of IMPAX Corporation, a top-rated global sales performance improvement provider for DHL, DuPont, Pfizer, US Bank, GE Healthcare, Dell McKesson, Volvo, and other leading companies. The authors of the bestselling Beyond Selling Value: a Proven Process to Avoid the Vendor Trap, Shonka and Kosch are authorities on a range of sales topics including selling value, strategic account selling, strategic account management, sales leadership and dealing with Procurement. If you would like more information contact Lyn Adler at ladler@impaxcorp.com, or check out our web site at www.impaxcorp.com.