Presented by Daniel Toriola
Project Management is as tough as standing on a ball and is as important as success of a project. There are few
keys points that you need to follow to achieve success in project management activities.
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Effectively Selling Feature, Function and Benefit To Project Stakeholders
By John Reiling
As project managers, we often "inherit" projects once they have already been sold to and accepted
by stakeholders. A sales force in a consulting organization, for example, typically sells a project that is
later assigned to a project manager. A similar situation exists within organizations, where a project has
been "sold" to upper management and other stakeholders.
The concept here is that the selling to the stakeholders actually continues once the Project Manager
takes over. Because of this reality, the Project Manager must to some extent use sales skills and
continue to build (and even sometimes repair!) the relationships with the stakeholders.
Most projects have numerous and diverse stakeholders. One of the first tasks of the Project Manager
is to identify those stakeholders and establish a working rapport with them. The starting point must be
to clarify expectations, initially set when the project was "sold", and to refine those expectations for the
next phase. The Project Manager, in the end, must ensure that stakeholder needs are understood and
will be met. In addition, systems must be put into place to ensure that they are providing regular input
and feedback in the process of delivering the project. The Project Manager must continue to be
attentive to stakeholder needs throughout the project, and there are a number of techniques for doing
that.
One way that Project Managers can leverage sales skills to establish stakeholder relationships is to
think in terms of features, functions, and benefits. Typ