When a Senior Manager Steps into the Driver’s Seat of Your Deal

Tell me if this story sounds familiar. It’s about a senior executive who can’t let go of a deal that someone else is responsible for.

I’ve been working on an opportunity for several months. My prospect is a well-known global brand with worldwide annual revenue north of $2 billion.

Our team did a good job of working with the prospect’s evaluation team, and finally we had our shot at meeting with the key decision maker to close the deal. It looked like it would be worth about a million dollars.

Fateful Scheduling Conflict for a Key Meeting

Our  meeting was to be with their senior decision maker (I’ll call him Sven), who’s notoriously hard to see because he travels globally. Unfortunately, the only time he could meet was in the middle of a week when I’d previously planned a ski vacation.

I’d booked a flight into the resort town using frequent-flier miles. Everything had been arranged months before. Flights into that town are hard to get during peak season.

I’d already bought two sets of lift tickets online. And we were staying at no charge with friends.

I didn’t like the idea of missing the meeting, but it didn’t seem sane to disrupt my vacation plans to attend a one-hour meeting for a deal where we already had so much momentum.

With Our Brass Lined Up to Meet Theirs, What Could Go Wrong?

We decided to hold the meeting without me. Jim, our senior executive, is a former sales guy who had closed very successful deals over many years. He was to meet with Sven.

Mike, another senior executive from our company, would also be in the meeting. Mike had built a strong relationship with another key decision maker in the account and had been involved in several prior meetings with the teams from both companies.

What could go wrong? I thought. We’ve got our big guns meeting with theirs. We’ve got continuity in the relationship through the presence of Mike. And Jim is not likely to screw up. He’s a highly experienced salesman who has closed dozens of deals much larger than this.

Report from Our Team: Thumbs Up

From the ski slopes I pinged Jim late on the day of his meeting with Sven. Everything went great, Jim said.  Sven unexpectedly gave them 30 minutes more than the 60 he had scheduled.

After discussing the terms of the deal, they talked about the state of the U.S. and global economies, the state of the industry, and future growth opportunities for each company.

A deal would be coming soon, Jim said. We just have to refine our most recent price proposal to meet a few objections that we can easily overcome. It can wait till I get back the following week.

Great, I thought. Good thing I didn’t change my vacation plans. My wife’s right. I’m too much of a control freak. This has been a good lesson for me. I need to let go sometimes and trust other people to do their jobs. Everything’s going to be fine.

Time for Me To Step Back In

But here’s what I didn’t expect: When I got back, Jim had taken over leadership of the deal. I was still responsible for its outcome. But I was no longer calling the shots.

Jim had all the pivotal information we needed to close the deal. He now owned the relationship with the key decision maker. He knew what items were on the next-action list. He was now my eyes and ears in the account, and I was dependent on his judgment for what to do next.

I could see that — consciously or unconsciously — Jim enjoyed being in the driver’s seat.

Wrestling for Leadership

We’ve all been in sales situations where we have to put up with some backseat driving from our management team. But what I experienced is the equivalent of having a passenger slip into your driver’s seat while you take a break in the restroom.

How did it turn out?

Four months later, we still have no deal. Our relationship with the account has gone from warm to cool. We think they’re looking at alternative vendors.

Or maybe they’ve put the entire initiative on hold because of the bad economy.

We don’t know for sure because they aren’t very communicative any more.

I think Jim believes I’ve dropped the ball on a good opportunity. I know otherwise, but I don’t feel comfortable telling him or anyone else in my company the whole truth.

But I’ll tell you.

Details in the next article.

Stay fresh.

– Scott Silverback