Accelerate Winning Government Contracts by Building Your Own Team

We just love butt-kicking, independent spirit-types, don’t we? 

James Dean,  Rambo, the Rock, Rocky, Hammer, Gal Gah-dote, Jason Bourne, Denzel,, Sigourney Weaver, and my personal favorite, Furiosa. 

The list goes on and on of  real or imagined heroes who, despite overwhelming odds, dig deeply to overcome conflict and emerge with victory.  These cultural images spill over into our professional lives, with many sales people envisioning themselves as lone knights, shielded with a polished presentation and armed with a silver-tongue...single-handedly slaying fire-breathing dragons with names like Prospect, Target, and Doomsayers.

It’s no wonder sales and business development people feel this way. We hear it in sales meetings, books, movies, seminars, PODCASTS. We’re taught to pursue our work with all the finesse of a cock fight.

Independence is a generally a highly desirable quality for a sales person.  We like to see signs of it when we hire folks. However in government sales, that independence must be balanced with the fact that no other selling situation requires more teamwork than government sales.

Government selling is no place for loners. You probably already know this in your head.  Now you have to feel it (and practice it).  Stellar government sales people have learned to manage their egos and develop leadership and team-building chops.  

In fact, you may need another company as your partner...in addition to the team mates you need from your company..  In the world of government sales, few things are more important than good partners.  Customer solutions are often highly complex, multi-faceted, with lots of moving parts.  Your company may not have the skills to pull off the complete project on your own.  Even if you can do all the work, you may not be on the appropriate purchasing vehicle or contract.  You may need a partner for that purpose alone. Depending on where they are on their contract limits, and other things, they may welcome a chance to let you do all the work, and they collect a small percentage. 

Now, signing up a partner doesn’t guarantee the cash register will ring.  (Oh, wait, some of you don’t remember ringing cash registers.) However there are two things that will make your life easier. 

The first key to working effectively with partners is communication...diligent and constant communication.  With any collaborative approach, the amount of continuous and meaningful communications has a huge impact on success.  Think of your partners as members of your team.  Interact with them as you would team members within your company...with less gossip and grumbling, perhaps.  Get together often to talk about issues from general market feedback to specific potential deals. 

Make sure you understand what drives them. And, it may not be the revenue they can make from your product. I was involved in a partnership with a large telephone company whose sales people had annual quotas of up to 10-million each.  Our product would sell for somewhere around 150-K...hardly a big quota retirement opportunity.  Yet, their salespeople worked with us aggressively and took me into some nice...at least nice to me...deals, not big deals for them.  I didn’t understand it at first.  Then, I found out that everytime they sold one of our systems, it put pressure on the customer’s infrastructure...and, this company made boo-koos upgrading the infrastructure.  We took a little bit of a hit on margin in my example.  But, it wasn’t much...and, we more than made it up.  I loved this partnership.

Now, don’t expect a partner to do your work.  Do your part. Don’t expect money to roll in just because you’re partnered with a hotshot company. Support them. Work them. Work them like you would work an end user customer. Find out from them what you can do to help make them successful.  They are, after all, a part of YOUR team.

Oh, here’s another group you need on your team.  It’s the bus drivers.  Who drives the buses in your organization...ya know, takes the company where it’s going?  It  might be CEO, President or COO, the VPs, Directors, Managers. 

Learn to speak their language.  Consider profitability and the need to hold to pricing.  Realize they will want things like “business cases” and “ROI analyses”.  Even though you may not be dealing directly with these folks, someone up the chain is...so, you need to develop and communicate your understanding of all the “levers” in business – not just sales revenue.  You know, cash flow, revenue recognition rules, cost drivers, operating margins, net margins, etc.  Thinking from a broader senior management’s perspective will demonstrate you are more than a one-dimensional player...and, it may help you get closer to driving the bus yourself.

Then, there’s product management - the folks who  determine product direction and futures. (Yeah, as a salesperson, you may have influence...but, you’re not product management.) I’ve heard sales teams call product management the “S.P.T.”...the Sales Prevention Team.  They think, I’m bringing the company a great opportunity that will contribute to meeting the quarter’s numbers, only to have it shot down as being too risky, outside comfort zones, or too time consuming with so many other things going on.  

How do we collaborate with this group to build out our team? Why not take them on sales calls. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Are you kidding me? Do I want someone who keeps telling me no...and who has no sales skills...in the room with me.   Their techno-babbly answers to questions without sugar coating may deliver a fatal blow to the opportunity.  Well, Snap out of it!  This can work!  The product management folks, as it turns out, will appreciate it, learn from it, and you’ll be surprised how well they do...although maybe a bit awkwardly.  Prospective customers will be impressed.  Heck, some government prospects will insist on it.  

And, we’ve just touched the surface.  You need to be working with your marketing folks, your sales colleagues, your mentors, um, your boss and the network of industry contacts you’ve established. You have done that, haven’t you? And, from time to time,  you may need to get coaching guidance from a grey beard...you know, one like me.

Yes, maverick loners may make for entertaining movies, but they make for poor government salespeople.  Polish up your collaboration and communication skills and you’ll be much more successful over the long haul. Bottom line, you want to be successful in government sales, it may be up to you, but it’s up to you to build your team and use it.