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Selling to Multiple Decision StakeholdersThe down turn in the economy has forced most organizations to change the way they buy. Decisions are made / approved at much higher levels – making the process to sell to them much more challenging and complicated. This fundamental change in the buying process has thrown most technology sales organizations and people for a loop. What happened and why is there a problem? Back in the late 1990's, companies were maniacally focused on top line growth. Decision authority was pushed way down in organizations. It was not uncommon for IT directors and managers to have buying authority of up to $500,000. The only buying edict from above (C-level) was, “buy it if it will help us grow.” Technology sales people had a field day. When the economic down turn happened, upper management reacted fast and hard. Most IT managers and directors were stripped of their buying authority. Companies have implemented strict buying controls and processes that mandate several layers of inspection. Final approvals are only made at very senior levels. Technology vendors have felt the brunt of this change. Many sales people who crushed their quotas four years ago struggle to survive. Sales organizations find sales cycles longer and cost of sales higher. It is undoubtedly a more challenging world. What to do in this new environment? Many technology companies have actually done well over the past few years. These companies recognized and embraced the change in the buying process and re-aligned their sales approach to successfully sell to multiple decision stakeholders. What is a Multiple Decision Stakeholder Environment? Just about every technology vendor today (hardware, software, and services) sells a product / service into an environment with multiple constituencies. For example, the primary visionary behind an initiative could be a business executive, the actual user of the product could be a developer, the recommender could be a systems analyst or architect, budget might be owned by a director and the actual final approver could be the CIO. A company selling into this environment must have an approach that pro-actively determines the needs of all decision stakeholders – then maps your solution to those needs. How do companies typically sell today? The majority of technology sales people rely on their “champion” to carry their deal to closure. In doing so, they typically ignore other potential stakeholders... The sales person is very comfortable dealing with and selling to their “champion” - a person typically at a certain level (IT manager, Director, etc.). The sales person knows their needs, what it's like to do their job, and is very fluent in conversing with this level of person. They have sold to this type of person before and are very adept at convincing then to buy their product. Going above this person's head (or to other areas of the organization) is a very uncomfortable proposition. In fact, most sales people struggle to have a relevant conversation with a decision stake holder outside of their comfort zone. Sales management is always inspecting sales opportunities to prevent decision maker access problems. But just because you got ACCESS to a decision stakeholder doesn't mean you SOLD that decision stakeholder. To improve your team's ability to sell to multiple decision stakeholders, Akina recommends a four step process:
Let's use an example to demonstrate this point…. Read More:
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