Help me stop this pain!…Two painkillers coming right up
The secret to military sales is understanding the audience and their environment. Contractor states, “I'm struggling to know what's a great product for the mission or not.” Who is the market and what to sell them are the two single most important questions in defense contracting. The answer to each is also not obvious, and often learned the hard way. Let me help you deal with that pain.
The first painkiller is to know the crowd. Products are bought most often at the bottom of the organizational ladder. The higher up the chain of command you go, the more purchases shift from products to platforms. Don’t try and sell a crop harvester at the grocery store, nor a box of paperclips at the steel mill. Understand what your product is, and let that filter your audience.
The second painkiller is to realize you are color blind. All funding within the DoD has a designated function and associated restrictions per regulation that is generally referred to as its “color”. All funding is planned for, and the larger the amount the further out its mandatory planning cycle (months to years). So what that boils down to is on any given day most organizations only have access to a very small amount of a very specific color of money for what you would call discretionary spending. What the product is, does, and any development required all dictates various colors of money and planning timelines for approval. So let your desired timeline for sale filter your product offerings.
Everyone on each side of the military sales interaction has had their own most painful learning experience. What was yours?
