What do you see in this picture?  It’s a very famous–some people see an old woman, others see a young woman.  Some of you may just be able to see one image, you’ll have to ask me for clues for the other.

Even though I knew there were two different images in this picture, it took me a long time to “find” the old woman  (tells you where my mind is at).  However hard I stared at the picture, however hard I tried to block the image of the younger woman, I really had difficulty finding the older woman.

After a few minutes, I finally had the “aha” moment.  After that, it was amazing, I could switch my focus–I could look at the younger woman, then change my focus to look at the older woman–then go back.  But I had to train myself to look at things differently and to look at different things.

I think buying and selling is often very much like this picture.  We and the customer are looking at the same thing.  But what we see is completely different.  We may be looking at the younger woman, the customer may just see the older woman.  We talk with the customer, we both are looking at the same thing, we are hearing the same thing, but we are really disconnected and talking about something that’s completely different.

It’s one thing to have shared goals between sales & marketing. A common definition of a qualified lead. A coordinated effort for lead generation and follow-up.

It’s quite another thing for marketing to share responsibility for sales. To share the anxiety. Share the terror.

The point here is fairly simple. Until marketing has the same end-of-month and end-of-quarter anxiety as sales, it’s hard to believe there’s true alignment and shared revenue responsibility.

That may be a high bar of sales and marketing alignment, but isn’t a bad idea either.

A lot of selling goes on in major accounts when you not there. Top sales performers know they need someone to “tell their story” when they’re not there – because they’re not there most of the time.  That’s why top sales performers develop internal champions.

Logical? Yes. So why doesn’t everyone leverage internal champions? First, it takes a lot of time to develop internal champions and not every sales rep concludes the investment is warranted. Second, some sales reps have had negative experiences with internal champions because the sales rep fell into the classic trap of spending time with people who are “willing” but are “not able” to tell their story.

There’s no clear path to developing internal champions, but some best practices are:

I am giving a workshop on intrapreneurship next week and as I am doing some research, I decided to update this post and ask for more input on the drivers for intrapreneurs – and innovation in general.

If you wonder what the term, intrapreneur, means the American Heritage Dictionary in 1992 acknowledged this as “a person within a large corporation who takes direct responsibility for turning an idea into a profitable finished product through assertive risk-taking and innovation.

Entrepreneurs are driven by passion, an urge to execute on their ideas and the chance to strike gold. Intrapreneurs do not have quite the same personal reasons for what they do. Yet they still have to be in an environment where they can bring on innovation that makes a difference.

So what drives intrapreneurs? Here you get six bullet points from me:

• Freedom to operate
• Recognition
• Time to reflect, time for personal development
• Encouragement and opportunity to learn from failure
• Intellectual challenges
• Money

This is meant to be a discussion starter. I already got some great responses when I originally posted this. What would you add?