Environment Management: Gifts and Late-Stage Sales

When it comes to building relationships between a buyer and seller, gift-giving is a powerful and useful tactic that benefits both parties. But how can we successfully implement gift-giving without excess spending on prospects that don’t end up buying? In today’s episode of Aligned, Sean wraps up his three-part series with Donald Kelly by discussing proper gift-giving and how any seller can build and maintain relationships with their prospects.

Gifts should not be for everyone:

• Gifts should be mostly reserved for people later into the sales cycle, or at least in the middle.
• If a seller were to buy gifts for every early-stage prospect, they’ll face exorbitant costs while also giving gifts to people who will not place as high a value on it as a buyer with an existing relationship with the seller.
• Sales should not have control too soon when it comes to gift-giving; the buyer should be at a designated spot within the buying process to warrant gift-giving as an environmental control.
• Sellers should not have private control over their sales data - if they spend company money to build relationships with clients, that information should be available to the organization that paid for it.

Bonus environment control: Use NDAs to help control late-stage deals:

• In general, it’s best to work with an attorney to utilize NDAs properly.
• NDAs can be signed by both the selling and buying organizations to build comfort and reduce anxiety, especially in industries full of proprietary information (i.e. technology and software.)
•  It is an olive branch that psychology develops commitment and introduces the notion of finality within the deal that encourages the buyer to close.

Aligned Episode Resources:

• Check out the prior two episodes in this three-part series discussing environmental controls, available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
• For more information and content from Donald, visit thesalesevangelist.com or connect with him on LinkedIn.
• Visit fitzmartin.com for resources, articles, and other information that helps any business leader foster connections between their sales and marketing departments.