My name is Power, and I approve this message...

According to a little background research I did on the phrase at Wikipedia, "I approve this message" is spoken by candidates for federal office in order to comply with the so-called "Stand by Your Ad" provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) enacted in 2002.'

By now you may be asking, "Where is this all going, and how does it apply to sales?" Well, 'tis the season for election after all, but no, I'm not going to get into politics here on the blog (or in any other public place for that matter). I'm also not going to try to further link sales to politics, because as sales people we often have a hard enough time trying to get people to like us as it is.

The sales tie-ins to the politically influenced title of this blog are two-fold:
1. When you get to Power, you must have a message to communicate that is directly meaningful to that individual. A message "Approved" by Power.
2. It is critical that you find a way to establish credibility and some form of sponsorship at the Power level before committing further resources dedicated to engaging that prospect at the operational level (working under Power).

Since we already covered the topic of authoring a message that is meaningful to Power in our blog on September 22, today I want to focus briefly on the later of these two worthy sales-topic candidates.

If Power agrees that you have a compelling value message, but delegates a person or team working under him/her to continue working with you, this is good because it indicates the deal has Power-level sponsorship, but it is also critical to make sure you keep Power involved in the process for the following reasons:

1. This is the only real way to make absolutely sure you are in a good position to win the prospect's business
2. Failing to stay involved with Power leaves you vulnerable to being outflanked by a competitor
3. Avoid the biggest competitor at all: APATHY... the deal moving into non-decision mode.
4. It assures that your resources are only committed to working a buying cycle on a deal where you actually have a shot at winning.

How to make it happen
In the first meeting with Power, you position that the end result of your partnering process will be to present the "co-authored" results back to Power. These results are "co-authored," because your team has partnered with Power's team to verify the value that your solution would create. At the end of the buying cycle, the results gathered by partnering with those that Power trusts are coauthored and presented back to Power. As such, we've closed the loop on the buying cycle by starting with Power, and we ended at Power... the only place where a deal can actually be won.

Your sales target's name is Power... and they will DEFINITELY approve this message!