E-Sourcing Forum » Selling Your Sourcing Project

Selling Your Sourcing Project – Shell & Moussa Style

November 14th, 2007 at 03:23pm David Bush - Iasta

the doctor recently pointed out to me an article over on Knowledge @ Wharton titled ‘The Art of Woo’: Selling Your Ideas to the Entire Organization, One Person at a Time that nicely complements our wiki-paper The Quest for Purchasing Fire Develop the Internal Strategies for Selling the Procurement Tools Internally.

The article reviews The Art of Woo, the new book by G. Richard Shell, of Wharton, and Mario Moussa of CFAR, Inc. that provides a systematic approach to idea selling. “Woo” is the ability to win others over to your ideas without coercion, using relationship-based, emotionally intelligent persuasion (or, as other bloggers might say, EQ). It requires focussing on the person you are trying to persuade, and what they need to hear, and not your own goals, needs, and fears.

According to the review, the book presents a simple, four-step, approach to the idea-selling process.

Polish your ideas and survey the social networks that connect you to the decision makers.
Start with your peers, and when they understand why the plan makes sense, leverage that to get a meeting with your boss and proceed similarly up the chain.
Confront “The Five Barriers” – the five most common obstacles that can sink ideas before they get started.
Specifically, you must confront unreceptive beliefs, conflicting interests, negative relationships, a lack of credibility, and failing to adjust your communication to suit a particular audience or situation.
Pitch your idea in a compelling way.
You should be able to distill the business concepts into short, punchy presentations that get right to the essence of the proposal.
Secure both individual and organizational commitments.
Organizational commitment is good, but someone has to do the work. That’s why you also need individual commitments.

The article also discusses the “six channels” that can be used in persuasion: authority, rationality, vision, relationships, interests, and politics. The channels you focus your arguments in should balance your particular strengths with the temperament of the audience.

It concludes with a mention of the top three mistakes people often make in selling ideas:

egocentric bias
Focusing on themselves, and what they would want to hear, and not
the audience.
there is no system to persuasion
You need a strategy. You can’t “wing it” all the time.
ignoring organizational politics
Whenever a new idea might affect resources, power, control, or turf, you will need an idea selling campaign, and not just a presentation.

I especially liked the discussion of the “The Five Barriers”: unreceptive beliefs, conflicting interests, negative relationships, a lack of credibility, and failing to adjust your communication to suit a particular audience. I see it again and again at organizations where the more progressive purchasers want a sourcing solution but either the boss doesn’t see the value or finance doesn’t want to pay for it. The organizations that are successful in acquiring new sourcing technology to help them meet their savings targets are those that prepare an internal sales strategy to overcome the unreceptive beliefs, conflicting interests, and push-back relationships from day one.

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