Pork-Barrel Projects

Yes, there’s yet another General Election campaign kicked-off in the UK. Already, eye-watering sums of money seem to be promised to various worthy recipients. Of the two main parties vying to supply the next Prime Minister, despite their spin to the contrary The Leftists are looking to magic up a trillion from totally uncosted sources, and the Right are suggesting their money tree won’t need higher taxes.

Many a voter exasperated to exhaustion, if you believe the partisan MSM voxpops.

With imminent fresh cash not so much a splash as a downpour, I heard the spectre of Pork-Barrel Politics attracting whispers. (I learn, also aka Earmarking.)

I thought this was an American confection. Where public spend gets waved through because added to it is a sometimes small yet pretty much unrelated additional spend which happens to be the pet project of a potential dissenter to secure their vote.

The whiff of corruption fanned away in the name of rugged negotiation on behalf of perennially ignored tax payers.

There is a clear parallel in our Sales context.

I myself have encountered a defined budget pot become redistributed. In one particularly irksome case, when one empire builder unilaterally decided that if any money was to be spent at all, then it was damn well going to be spent on their kingdom.

Such attachments can go for and against our ambitions. You’ll be forgiven for the memory of seasoned sellers recollecting only those Against. So what do we do when this fouls proceedings?

I’m reminded of the one-time ‘War on Pork’. Hopes to put an end to bargaining that if not always opaque then at the very least of shadowy-eclipsing dealings in the fight for greater transparency are as regular as various Bonfire of the Quangos purges.

But what this ugly machination might enable us to be is, if nothing else, aware of its possibility.

What other projects does the business you’re looking to persuade buy right now have going through their procurement mincer? Who has a vote (or even worse, a veto) on your bid who might have eyes on another prize? No matter whether informal or formal, from whichever departments, or seemingly isolated to integral, other potential spend seeking to be officially earmarked can derail both urgency and funds availability, not to mention resource focus and deployment.

Do you know from where it might emerge?