Stop Collaborating. It kills deals.

II know, I know. You’re asking yourself,  “Why is he telling me to stop collaborating? Don’t you need to encourage collaboration and get ‘buy-in’ from several people when trying to close an enterprise deal?” Well, yes and no.  Sure, you can get others involved but that doesn’t mean you’ll close the deal. The key is to truly understand how decisions are made and executed within the company you’re targeting. Once you understand this and have confirmed it through several conversations, then you can determine whether you want to increase collaboration throughout the deal pursuit.  However, be mindful of adding too many voices during the pursuit phase. I’ve seen countless sales deals fall through because some well-meaning sales executive, Managing Director, Partner, etc thought it would be a great idea to involve the VP of Whatever or the Sr. Manager of Something. Their logic being that adding someone with seniority and/or authority would help close the deal.  However, if the VP of Something isn’t part of the evaluation and contracting process for the service/product you’re selling, then why involve her? Why introduce additional risk to the deal or lengthen the sales cycle by adding another variable? You can always engage this individual after you close the deal. So pump the breaks on your collaboration efforts during a deal pursuit...b/c in some instances collaboration kills deals.

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