It has been said that sales is either the lowest paying easiest job or the highest paying hardest job you could have. Over the last 20 years we have taught salespeople how to use sales process to control (as much as possible) competitive evaluations and major accounts.

Hunting salespeople use strategies to develop early preference for their solutions and their companies including: consultative selling to solve business problems, selling strategic solutions, building relationships, positioning, and differentiating. They know how to change issues and enlist stakeholders at the right time or quality out where yhey can't. Some salespeople make it happen, some watch it happen, and some wonder what's happening, is a slogan we've seen on motivational posters.  It's true.

In over 300 speeches to major sales organizations about trends and transformations in the world of selling, and despite extensive discovery and qualification, often we come across groups of salespeople who are really not expected to influence or control the customer's politics, decision-making process, or the competition.

When I speak to sales forces about the thirty or so strategies and tactics that "hunters" deploy to win competitive committee evaluations (where they don't tell you if you're not winning) we sometimes get a "deer-in-the-headlights" look. When we ask them "what are the cues you get when you're not winning and they won't tell you?" and all they can say is that "they don't return your phone calls" (there are actually 12 or more signals), you realize that these salespeople are not expected to influence the decision-making process at all.

At the account level we call these "caretaker reps". At the opportunity level, they are know as "quote and hope" salespeople. Some sales forces work through distributors, seldom see the end client, and are "channel cheerleaders." Some reps still sell commodities; althought many of these jobs are now either handled through call enters or Internet auctions and networks loke those provided by Ariba. Some salespeople just take orders for additional equipment or licenses.

These sales forces can become an endangered species if the CEO or CFO ever decides that they cost more than they bring in. Then we see companies go direct to the consumer through television or the Internet such as Progressive, Amazon, Geico, or Travelocity.

About 15 years ago, the consulting industry realized that it needed to be more proactive in its selling efforts and started developing better sales processes and strategies. People in this industry are very smart, collaborative, and service minded. But most of them do not come from competitive or selling backgrounds.

One of the first things we had to deal with in working with these companies is convincing some project and account managers that not only were they allowed to influence the client's buying process, they must do so in order to win the business because their competitors sell this way (assuming that they had a solution that was good for the customer). When we defined selling as "solving and serving", those that never thought they would be in sales found it not only acceptable but worthwhile. Competitive selling isn't negative selling; you can be competitive and still maintain high professional standards of integrity.