Early influencing wins more deals

Most of us have heard top management tell us that we should go higher, we should learn how to sell to the customers top managers, and not to the people using our products. This is a challenge for many of us, and for our sales force, as these people tend to be less interested in our product and our solutions – which is what we have been trained to talk about for years.

The Customer Decision Process

We should now acknowledge that must sell value, and in order to do so, we must connect our solution with a needed and acknowledged pain, and at the right level  in the customer organization.  When is the right time to do this? Consider the following picture:

[This picture needs redrawing]

The picture shows a typical cycle for a large or complex Business to Business B2B purchase/investment situation.

1. A need is discovered and defined by someone in Senior management.
2. The purchase need is discussed at the Decision Making Team. This could be the board, the owner, the CEO.
3. A positive decision is delegated back to Senior management to start a buying cycle.
4. Users/Purchasing are asked to research the market, and find suitable suppliers
5. Sometimes an RFP is created and issued to suppliers to evaluate them
6. The evaluation team makes a short list of potential winners, and often ask them to present the solution.
7. One or more candidates are presented internally to board for final decision
8. Board meeting, final decision. The preferred solutions are often invited to make their final presentation.

We have already learnt that if we sell at a low level, then it is not possible to have a business conversation. Even worse is that if we are contacted, or maybe presented by a marketing web lead,  we may be too late in the customer buying process.

The value selling occurs when we enter at “1”, convincing the Senior Manager that he/she need to start the process. When we receive an request for proposal, we have little or no possibility to sell the additional value of Electrolux and our solutions. If we were not the person that approached the customer at “1”, chances are that someone from our competition already has!