Understanding Key Stakeholders

The UPSA Buying, Selling, and Marketing cycles do not exist in a vacuum. There are numerous different stakeholders that have a vested interest in the impact of the the organization to "synchronize" these efforts. A stakeholder is defined in the Compendium of Professional Selling as any individual, group, or organization that will have a significant impact on, or will be significantly impacted by, the competency level of a sales person. Sales professionals serve multiple stakeholders such as the buyer, the buying organization, the selling organization and its employees, colleagues, the global economy, etc. A well-implemented selling model will serve all of its stakeholders. Good selling models and methodologies also address morality, ethics, and buyer's roles and responsibilities when dealing with stakeholders, especially in the buying and selling relationship. UPSA defines four types of Sales Stakeholders. They are:

Absolute – Stakeholders who are held the most accountable for the success and failure of the sales professional or who have the most to lose or gain by their success or failure (including themselves and/or their family). Absolute stakeholders are always the “highest ranking” people that the sales professional must answer to.

Indirect –Stakeholders who are affected by the sales professional's performance and who support the sale by providing the product or service once it is sold. Indirect stakeholders (such as customer service, production, and R&D) help create loyal customers by servicing after the sale as well as creating products and services that work as promised.

Direct – Stakeholders who interact with the sales professional daily as well as those who are directly tied to the sales professional's success in competitively positioning the selling organization in the buyer/seller relationship. They are often the closest stakeholders to the sales professional in their work environment.

Limited – Stakeholders who are affected by the sales professional's abilities but only after several layers of removal from the point of sale. Limited stakeholders such as the global economy and society at large are often affected by the cumulative affect of the entire sales profession.

These stakeholders exist within the context and environment of selling as well as within a local or global economy (depending on the organization) as shown in the figure below. As such, each stakeholder has a different political and technological view of the world; therefore, political interaction is concerned with the interaction between sales stakeholders. The technology could be IT, special written documentation (such as the CoPS), or other proprietary information and knowledge.

Sales Stakeholders