The Bottom Line Vine

A familiar challenge for sales people is understanding the critical path to revenue, or closed business.  In most complex B2B sales, multiple people are included in the evaluation and decision making process.  Ensuring you are selling to the right people is challenging and time consuming.   The result of selling to the wrong person almost always ends with no business and a huge opportunity cost for the sullen sales rep.

As a first step to getting to the right decision maker, a clear understanding of the roles must be established.  We like to categorize the ‘buyers’ as follows:

• Influencer- This person can help to open the door for your product/service.  They may have the ability to shape the thinking of the buyers.  Ultimately, they have little control over the buying process.
• Champion- Not the ultimate decision maker.  A person who will cooperate with you to collect inside information to win the deal.  They will coach you on how to win, and give you the critical information to shape the deal so you are in position to get the sale.
• Economic Buyer- This person has the budget, and in smaller companies is often also the decision maker.
• Decision maker- The person who will sign on the line, giving final approval to the purchase.  In the current economic environment, this is often the CEO in most small to mid size companies (in the context of selling a 10-20K+ deal).

Unless you start with the decision maker, most sales will have multiple people involved on the buying side.  The most important part of any sales cycle is getting the buyer and decision maker exposed to your offering as early as possible.  This is the only way for the sales person to control the sales process.  Otherwise, you become reliant on the influencer or champion to sell your product.  Through our observations, the win rate on these deals is less than a percentage point.

Think about all the time and energy you spend learning and preparing to sell your product.  After all this preparation, do you really want someone else selling on your behalf?  There is no way they will know answers to all the questions and be able to handle pushback the way you can!

The takeaway?  Look at your pipeline.  Who are you selling to?  Are you engaged at the right level and do you know the critical path to revenue.  If yes, are you currently engaged with all the people that are involved in the decision?  If no, you need to hit the panic button and create a plan to sell to the people who have the ability to buy your offering.

Next time, we will discuss how to get the right people engaged, early, in the sales cycle.

Popularity: 1% [?]