Professional Selling Skills Training: Sales Office Politics

Selling Tips and Sales Advice Reader Feedback:

Readers of Selling Tips From The Sales Hunter are always sending in questions about sales. I'm not able to reprint most of the questions. However, here is one that I'm sure is of interest to a number of readers:

"I am a top-performing sales person who recently changed companies and in the new organization, I'm having to deal with a lot of office politics arising from lower-level sales people shooting arrows at me. How should I respond?"

Answer:
(Before you read the ideas below, never forget your skill set that got you to where you are or allow yourself to do anything to diminish your selling skills as a way of trying to get other sales people to like you.)

1. First, don't expect to be able to quickly change people's attitudes. Rather, your best approach is to befriend one of the sales people and, as your relationship with them grows, they will convey to others the fact that you're a great person and a team player.

2. Spend as much time as possible away from the office. It's hard for people to shoot arrows at somebody if they don't see them. Don't take this to an extreme and never show up, but pace yourself to be in the office less time than the others.

3. Food / drink: It's amazing how a little food or drink can change another person's opinion. Bring in some doughnuts on occasion or have some candy at your desk. It will often soften things up.

4. Offer to be a sales coach to the newest person in the office. But when you do this, don't allow your ego to get in the way. Rather, convey your skills with an incredible sense of humility. A key thing to keep in mind when coaching somebody is if you have to tell somebody how good you are, you're really not very good. People should know your skills simply through the results you obtain. (Donald Trump never has to tell anyone how rich he is...his problem is he has an ego.)

5. In sales meetings, avoid dominating any discussions. Take a more quiet approach and when asked your opinion, answer humbly by stating something like, "Well, an idea that may work might be something like....."

6. Become a cheerleader to the office. Anytime somebody else in the office does something, be sure to compliment them and ask them how they did it. If they're looking at you as a super sales person and you take the time to ask them how they did something, it will elevate their thinking about themselves. (The key is to bring the others up to you, rather than you dropping down to them.)