Sell at Both the Business and Personal Levels to Improve Your Success

Everyone must sell to some degree or another regardless of their specific role, age, or life circumstance:

• Managers sell employees on taking specific actions and adopting policies.
• Employees sell others when presenting their ideas and points of view.
• Leadership teams sell investors on supporting leadership’s vision.
• Parents must sell their children and family members to keep the family strong.
• Job seekers sell employers on hiring or promoting them.
• Sales, marketing, and business professionals sell solutions prospects and customers will buy.

A best practice of selling is to sell at both a business and personal level.   

Personal level: the things that matter most to each person involved in the decision, which are of primary interest or concern to him or her.

Business level: the issues being faced by the employer, family, company, or department; the impact of those issues (size and scope); and the consequences of not taking action to address them.

Selling at the personal level is accomplished by first asking the prospect, interviewer, supervisor, coworker, and the like, what he or she personally believes is the most critical issue or concern to be solved or outcome to be achieved, and why it was chosen as his or her most important issue.  In other words, you must learn each individual’s what and why from his or her perspective. 

Based on what you learn, identify and propose solutions for those issues and concerns that are personally high priorities for each person. Selling at the personal level also includes the ability to develop trust and rapport with each person involved in the decision. 

In situations with multiple decision makers and influencers, selling at the personal level includes determining what is important to each individual (such as the hiring manager and HR, or three department heads and the CFO).

Selling at the business level is achieved through first determining the key issues for the organization to solve, achieve, or gain, when hiring a candidate, buying a product or service, adopting a plan, etc.  Once you understand the desired business outcomes, demonstrate how hiring you, buying from your company, adopting your idea, etc. will help the organization achieve the goals you learned through your needs assessment.  In short, how you, your ideas, your solutions. and the like will solve a business problem, capitalize on a business opportunity, or achieve a business objective.

A B2B Sales Scenario: How Tianna Jenkins Sold at Both the Business and Personal Level

Tianna Jenkins is the sales director at A-1 Staffing Solutions, and she is meeting with a four-person buying team from Precision Handling Equipment (PHE), a manufacturer of industrial equipment.  Her meeting today is to present the A-1’s staffing capabilities to PHE, having previously completed a thorough discovery with each member of PHE’s buying team.

Having learned both the personal needs and business needs of each member of PHE’s team, she was able to show each of the four members how A-1’s solution met both the business and personal needs of each decision maker:

Bob Masters, Managing Director

• Business needs – candidates who fit PHE’s culture and who have at least 7 years’ relevant experience.
• Personal needs – to keep his board happy.

Sheila Jackson, VP Human Resources

• Busines Needs – average time to fill open positions, and diversity initiatives.
• Personal Needs – build credibility with company leaders as a new VP in her role.

Ken Wong, VP Tech & Sciences

• Business needs – technical qualifications and certifications of candidates and cultural fit.
• Personal needs – to be seen as someone whit a good eye for spotting talent.

Larry Breckenridge, CFO & VP Finance

• Business needs – assure contract terms are favorable to PHE; can demonstrate a better ROI outcome than the previous staffing partner.
• Personal needs – to be seen as a good negotiator.

As Tianna conversationally presented her proposal, she could see by each person’s positive body language that he or she was comfortable in moving ahead.

Exactly the same approach could be used by a job seeker selling him/herself into a job convincing the different members making the hiring decision, or by a manager needing to convince a group of peers to adopt his or her project proposal.

Bottom Line

When selling at either the business or personal level, the successful person learns the factors and circumstances driving the business need to be solved, and what will make each decision maker and influencer personally comfortable moving ahead.

The preceding was excerpted from Boyer Management Group’s B2B Sales Essentials℠ program.