3 Problems with a Predictable, Scalable Sales Model

Nice article by Lee Bartlett, I recall working on a deal back in the days when our biggest competitor at Oracle was Ingres based systems.  I was selling Oracle Financials against Radius which was an accounting system based on Ingres.

I recall doing something and the competition reacting.  In this case we actually found we had a mole in pre-sales at Oracle which was telling the competition our sales plans.  But we ended up telling the person the wrong information deliberately, so they would pass on fake data and we won that bid.

Graham Hawkins talks in his first book about how buyers he interviewed would guess which sales methodology was being used by the salespeople as a laugh, when they had back-to-back sales presentations.

Ever since then, I've always tried to find out which sales process people used so that you can use that against them.  Or understand a company's vulnerabilities so you can "press the buttons" and the opposing sales people spend their time running around wasting time.  I once set up a bid process that only I could win, but I needed other companies to bid.  I recall hearing about 4 organisations that spent the weekend replying to that bid that they couldn't and didn't win.

More detail in Lee's article.