The more successful you are as a Sales Leader means that your sales strategies will affect more and more people. The more people you affect, the more likely it is that your actions will impact people who have power and influence over changes that you are seeking to implement. These people could be strong supporters of those changes or they could block them.
Stakeholder Management is an important discipline that successful Sales Leaders use to win support from others. It helps them ensure that their changes succeed where others fail. By engaging the right people in the right way in your proposed changes will make a big difference to the outcome you desire to attain from the changes.
Stakeholder Analysis is the technique used to identify the key people or departments who have to be won over in order to successfully implement the changes you want to make. You then use Stakeholder Planning to build the support that helps you succeed.
The benefits of using a stakeholder-based approach are that:
- You can use the opinions of the most powerful stakeholders to shape your change plans at an early stage. This makes it more likely that they will support you and their input can also improve the quality of your change plans.
- Gaining support from powerful stakeholders who have high levels of influence regarding your changes can help you to win more resources – this makes it more likely that your change plans will be successful.
- By communicating with stakeholders early and frequently, you can ensure that they fully understand what you are doing and understand the benefits of your proposed changes so they can support you actively when necessary.
- You can anticipate what people’s reaction to your proposed changes may be, and build into your plan the actions that will win people’s support.
Stakeholder Management really is that important!