How Latest Brexit Resignation Reminds Solution Selling About Successful Lobbying

The man without whom there’d have been no EU-UK Leave/Remain referendum has just resigned. Again. Part of what the press now dub Brexodus. Anyone supposedly at the helm of either campaign seems to be gone. Or going.

This particular party leader is certainly not an overwhelmingly popular politician. Yet evidently a populist one.

His habit of quitting (is this the third time?) – as well as the unwon episodes the night of The Count – see his final speech labelled as his mere “annual resignation”.

Here’s where he began to elude to the upcoming brexit negotiations:

… crucially, we need some business people, who know not only how the world works, but understand the importance of lobbying industry directly.

Lobbying. An essential dark art on a long cycle complex sale.

He continued:

We need to be lobbying the German car industry, the French wine producers, because next year, both France and Germany have general elections. It is pressure on Merkel; it is pressure on Hollande from within those countries that is likely to get us the best possible deal.

Reminiscent of anything?

Later:

… we need teams and negotiators. Let’s get them in from Singapore, or South Korea, or Chile, or Switzerland, or any of these countries who’ve managed to achieve [their own] global trade deals …

These three strands are intimately linked. Let’s first take the act of lobbying.

In our realm this equates to finding every single person that is touched by what we aim to bring. Directly. And in even the slightest way, indirectly. They can be tough to unearth. We must lead them to see that what can happen is in their best interests.

Then crucially, let those with vested ambitions cajole those strangely more ambivalent.

Then we come to the optimum personnel. You can only effectively do this if you have the right people in place for it. Who has personal knowledge? Who has empathetic knowhow? Who has authority and credibility? Are you truly involving them from your side on this bid?

So, who is your equivalent of the big-name wine and car makers to mobilise within your prospect? Upon whom must pressure be best applied? And where do your experienced team of global trade talk shapers reside?

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