Identify power
Everyone says they are the decision-maker.
it is common that when you speak to a prospect they are going to tell you that they are the one who makes the decision. Sure, some individuals will say to you “hey I’m not going make the decision” but more often than not whoever you are dealing with will claim that they are the decision-maker.
In reality, in modern businesses, there is rarely a single decision-maker. It is more common that several individuals are involved in making a decision, and very often, these will have different perspectives. Some will be looking at the commercial side, some will be looking at the capabilities and benefits to the business, some look from a technical perspective, some security and privacy perspective etc. All of these different personas represent power.
Expect early in the selling process that you will not be dealing with, nor is it appropriate, to deal with some of these personas. Generally, you want to establish the benefit of your solution with an individual or department that will use your solution rather than have it blocked early by someone for reasons of policy and corporate fit. As an example, the Apple iPhone would never have established itself in large corporations in preference to the BlackBerry if Apple attempted to sell this to corporate IT. Typically CEOs with Apple iPhones went to IT and said “I need my email on this” and that broke BlackBerry’s dominance on the corporate market.
In the early stages, it is critically important to have some insight into who you be dealing with later in the sales process. Who are the individuals that constitute the positive and negative power in an organization.
Amplifying Factors Industry Location
RED – Power Unknown It’s very useful at this stage to understand who is in the buying chain. A simple search on LinkedIn or the prospect website will probably indicate to you the likely buying cycle and where power is likely to rest. |
AMBER – Power Indicated Your contact probably told you that others will be involved without specifying who or their roles. It’s useful at this stage, to map out the likely roles involved so you can understand the landscape that you will need to navigate later in the sales process.
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GREEN – Power Confirmed You are now armed with an understanding of the different roles that will impact later in the process through your sale and you can now align your value conversations around each of these roles. |
Mitigation – what to do?
The first thing always is to map out what roles are likely to be involved. This can both be hierarchical as in the person’s manager or their manager, but also horizontal to other functional areas. For example, IT security, data protection, legal etc etc. A quick search on LinkedIn and/or the company website should give you some indication of the likely roles involved and over time you can map out the individuals in more detail.
Beware that power can both be positive and negative. Over time, you’ll learn where the likely positive power plays will come from. Who will be supportive of what you’re offering and the likely negative power holders who detract from your proposition.
You need to develop talk tracks and plays to cope with this. For example, if your solution interacts with an online checkout and you’re dealing with marketing you can be pretty sure at some point you have to deal with technical guys regarding response times and integrity of the checkout. Learn and prepare in advance what their likely concerns are and make sure it’s clear to them before they raise objections so they become advocates rather than detractors.
Introduce power to your solution at the appropriate time in the appropriate way. For example, when you’re setting up your demo suggest to the champion to invite decision-makers to the demo or see that they have a second demonstration just for them. This way they are involved in the decision process rather than have them presented with a solution and be required to make a cold decision in isolation of your influence.
One of the commonest problems is champion shielding you from the real decision-makers. It’s usually difficult to go over the head of your champion as this can ruin that relationship very quickly. Sometimes you can do this indirectly through a mutual contact such as investor contacts from your VCs, board members, or others to make the contact and thereby leverage that relationship to power within your prospect.