Sold Anything Lately?

by Paula K. Martin
Founder and an executive consultant for Martin Training Associates

What does sales have to do with project management? Plenty. All Project Managers need the ability to sell. Some people think selling is a dirty word, but we have to sell every day. We sell our ideas. We sell our plans and the final deliverable. We sell ourselves (not literally, of course). To sell is to convince someone else to accept what we have to offer. There doesn't need to be an exchange of money for a sale to occur. There needs to be acceptance.

All managers need to sell, but as Project Managers, we have an even bigger need. Why? Because we have no authority. We have to rely on influencing others and selling is one way to influence. Let's examine the stages of the selling process.

1. Define Customers and Stakeholders.

You can't make a sale unless you know who you have to sell to. Make sure you've identified all the stakeholders.

2. Manage Expectations.

The requirements elicitation process is your first opportunity to begin to crawl inside your customers' heads, to see the world from their point of view. Elicit the customer's requirements in the customer's language. Then work with the customer to analyze and prioritize the requirements. This begins the process of managing the customer's expectations. Next, explicitly define the deliverable you will be asking your customer to accept.

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