Episode 193 – Mastering the Project Sales Role: How to Persuade, Lead and Succeed

The podcast by project managers for project managers. Discover how project managers leverage their skills to navigate the multifaceted sales role. Harold Samson, shares insights on developing diverse sales-oriented skills. From the art of securing resources, fostering team alignment, and building client relationships, hear about the pillars of successful project management in a sales-oriented role. Table of Contents 03:10 … The Project Manager Salesperson06:32 … Internal Sales10:26 … Successful Salesperson Qualities14:30 … Opportunity Bulletin16:56 … External Sales Strategies19:57 … Kevin and Kyle21:00 … Selling to Senior Management25:36 … Real-World Situations29:03 … Look for Opportunities30:43 … Ethical Considerations in Sales34:11 … Contact Harold35:56 … Closing HAROLD SAMSON: One of the earliest things that I learned was that every person in the world since the dawn of time, everybody makes decisions that are in their own best interest. It’s as simple as that. And all you need to figure out is what are their best interests? WENDY GROUNDS: Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers. My name is Wendy Grounds, and in the studio with me are Bill Yates and Danny Brewer, our sound guy. We’re so excited that you are joining us. If you like what you hear, please consider rating our show with five stars, and you can also leave a review on our website or whichever podcast listening app you use. This helps us immensely in bringing the podcast to the attention of others, and we want to reach as many project managers as we can to be able to help the community. One question I have for you listeners: How does your experience as a project manager translate into your ability to sell a product or an idea to stakeholders, to your clients, or even to your team members? BILL YATES: The sales aspect. You know, just as we were preparing for our conversation with Harold, just this week there was a blog that I read by Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, a guest of ours on an earlier podcast, and here’s a quote: “Traditionally project management has been viewed as a support function, a facilitator of a predefined business strategy. However, in my experience as a project management expert” - this is Antonio speaking, not Bill – “modern project management isn’t just a facilitator, but an enabler and driver of business growth.” So this is very interesting that Antonio just wrote about this. There is a sales side to what we do as project managers. We have to sell it to the team, we have to sell it internally to get the resources, and then sometimes we have to sell to our external customers. There’s nobody better to talk to us about it than Harold. He’s had such great experience with that. I’ve known Harold since 2006, have been working with him since 2006, and he’s just got a vast amount of experience and knowledge on, not just project management, but different industries and how consulting practices work and how project managers get things done. WENDY GROUNDS: So today we’re talking with Harold Samson, who is one of our instructors at Velociteach. Harold has been with us for many, many years. He has more than 25 years experience in application systems development, and 20 of those involved all aspects of project management. As a senior principal and co-founder of C.W. Costello & Associates, which is a national provider of business systems consulting services to Fortune 500 companies, Harold gained hands-on experience managing project teams in all phases of the system development lifecycle within many different industries. We just realized we have not yet had the opportunity to talk to Harold on a podcast. BILL YATES: We need to make that straight. We need to fix that. WENDY GROUNDS: Yes, yes. Hi, Harold. Welcome to Manage This. Thank you for being our guest today. HAROLD SAMSON: Well, thanks for inviting me. I’m looking forward to the conversation.