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.

The Project Manager Salesperson

WENDY GROUNDS:  Yeah, I think it’s been a long time coming, and we’re excited to get into this topic.  Where did the whole idea of the project manager as a salesperson come from, and how has this evolved as your career has progressed?

HAROLD SAMSON:  Well, I started up in the Boston area.  When I first got into IT consulting, I worked for a boutique consulting firm up in Boston, and we were organized pretty much how every other consulting firm was organized back then.  We had a CEO and a whole bunch of salespeople, and then all of the consultants.  So it was a flat organization, and the salespeople were responsible for selling, and the consultants were responsible for doing the work.  And there wasn’t any emphasis put on the consultants being salespeople in place, so to speak.  So I worked there for four or five years, learned my craft.  And then me and six of my buddies, we decided to start our own company in Connecticut.

So we moved from Boston to Connecticut, and we started our own company, and it pretty much followed the same path until we hired a salesperson from  IBM.  And this gentleman was looking for a change in his career.  He was very, very successful at IBM, selling mainframes and everything that goes along with it.  And we brought him in.  He wanted a challenge.  He wanted to start selling services, so he thought that would be interesting for him.

And the first thing that he noticed when he came into our organization is that none of the consultants were selling out there in the field.  And we said, “Well, what do you mean?  We’re supposed to do the work.  We’re supposed to be the geniuses onsite.  We don’t sell.  That’s your job.”  He said, “No, no, no.  My job is to get you into a place, but then you have boots on the ground.  You get to see everything.  I’m not there.  There are many, many opportunities, and I’m going to teach you how to look for them.”

And over the next couple of years we went from a small company with a couple of offices.  Ten years later, we were doing $100 million in sales, and it was all because of what this guy taught us.  And as I go from class to class, site to site, and most of my classes are the PMP prep classes, but we teach a variety of other classes where management brings us in to groom their project managers.  And the first thing that we noticed, first thing that I noticed is that these guys wouldn’t know a sales opportunity if it knocked them on the head with a mallet.  It’s really a pretty straightforward thing to teach not only the project manager how to find and close on additional work with the customer, but the team members as well.  They’re out there.  They hear things.  They see things.

And they just don’t know what they’re hearing, and they don’t know that there are opportunities buried in some of the chitchat that goes on in any facility.  And you just need to know what to look for, and that’s what we used to train our people.  That’s what this particular IBM salesman used to teach us, and he opened our eyes, the results went right to the bottom line for sure.

Internal Sales

BILL YATES:  That’s a powerful story.  And to me, one of the things that intrigued me in talking about this topic is, in my mind, there’s two types of sales that a project manager needs to be aware of.  There’s the external opportunities that we need to be more aware of.   But there’s also the internal piece, a sales piece that I think for some project managers is a bit of a stretch.  But it’s, hey, you need to sell the team on the value of this project and sell the team on their contribution to the success of the project.  You’ve got to get them onboard.  So talk to us a little bit about that internal sales piece.

HAROLD SAMSON:  You’re definitely right.  There’s two sides of the coin there.  And when we talk to these project managers about sales, the way I introduce the topic, as I say, hey, I’m just curious, how many of you guys have ever been in sales before?  Just a show of hands.  And it seems like an innocent question.  And if we’ve got 20 people in the room, maybe one or two will put their hands up.  Then I’ll begin the discussion.  I’ll say, okay, that’s the problem.  You’re all in sales.  You don’t realize it, but as a project manager, you are selling to everybody.  First and foremost, you are selling to your team.  The first sale you have to make when you bring your team together, you need to convince everyone on the team that it’s in their best interest that the project succeeds.

Now, question is, how you do that?  Well, there’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to that.  You need to talk to everyone.  One of the first mistakes that I made in the early part of my career as a project manager was I just assumed everybody was motivated by the same thing I was, which was I want to advance in the organization.  I want to make a lot of money.  And I found out very quickly that not everybody is motivated by money and advancement.  And you don’t know that until you sit down and have a one on one with every person on the team. 

You know half of them will be motivated by money, and that’s an easy discussion to have.  You know, what’s it going to take?  What kind of money are you looking for in the future?  And let’s put a plan together.  If you do this, then you will get that.  And once it’s in black and white, people have a roadmap for how to get from A to B, then you’d be amazed at how motivated they are.

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.  Now, half the people, like I said, are going to be motivated by money, advancement, all the accoutrements that go with that.  But the other people, you’d be surprised.  Some people are motivated by, you know what, I’d really like more time off.