This is a sales gravy is sponsored by Paycom.

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They offer award-winning training, unbelievable benefits, and the opportunity to sell industry-leading best-in-class products

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takes to join this elite group of sales professionals. So if you're ready for a new career and direction in 2017, go to careers.pacom.com.com. That's careers.pacom.com to check them out now. Before we get started with this episode, I've got to share some fantastic news. My brand new book, SalsEQ, my follow-up to Fanatical Prospecting, is in bookstores

right now. In North America, you can pick it up at any Barnes & Noble store, or you can pick

it up on Amazon or at Ibooks or at Google Play or anywhere books are sold. So go right now and

check out my brand new book, SalesEQ. During a recent training session, one of the participants asked me this question.

He said, during the past month, I've had several of my potential accounts hit a wall because the

person I was working with turned out not to be the decision maker. And what's frustrating to me is that

the people told me in the initial meeting that they were the decision maker. So I don't

understand why people are lying to me like that, were the decision maker. So I don't understand why people

are lying to me like that, and I want to know how I can identify who is telling me the truth

and who is not. Sadly, this sales rep is not alone in his frustration. You see, salespeople often

find themselves mired and stalled deals because they were dealing with the wrong person. And this often happens because the stakeholder either says outright or insinuates that he or she is the final decision maker. And believing this to be true, the salesperson goes through the sales process with the stakeholder, connecting, discovering, presenting solutions, and asking for the business. And then, bam,

out of nowhere, the stakeholder says, well, thank you for all this great information, but I'm going to

need to review this with my boss, the committee, my husband, my wife, my friend, my peers, my dog,

before we can make a decision. If you've been in this situation, and I bet you have, it makes you want to scream.

You try to salvage the deal by asking for a meeting with their boss, but most of the time they're unwilling to give you access.

But you fear if you go around them, you'll poison the relationship to the point that you'll lose any hope of closing the deal.

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