Vi Coactus

Posts from this Summer of 2016 might as well have been subtagged politics & selling. So tumultuous the global election landscape. Yet so comforting that democracy is the only viable path.

We learned that one political party leader, having won the vote for that office, was never fully crowned. The UK Electoral Commission did not like that she wrote vi coactus next to her signature on the required paperwork.

This slice of bygone Latin evidently signifies “under duress”.

Apparently the apt phrase to write when being forced into signing a contract.

It doesn’t take a legal mind to figure the link between this and selling.

It can be easy to lose sight of the fact that a deal is only a proper deal when it is in the best interests of both parties.

Such a hackneyed phrase has “win-win” become that it can encourage eye-rolling dismissal.

It’s almost always taken for granted that the ‘good’ for the vendor is the resultant payment. which should be good enough. But that is not right.

Likewise, the good for the buyer should be a problem happily resolved, sunshined horizon headed smoother towards. Yet the precise impact can be left tantalisingly – damagingly – dangling in the air.

Then there’s individual players. What happens – as so often does in solution sales – when one person blocks a deal driven by self-preservation rather than company progress?

Shall I re-state that Corporate Politics only exist when someone is no good at their job?

Wherever you sit on such scale, one point is a selling winner from all this. Have you asked your potential client who may feel slightly under duress about your proposal? To isolate and address such concerns can make the key difference to your bid. And starting this conversation invoking the phrase vi coactus could be a disarming way to go about it.