The Idea in Brief
You’ve crafted a brilliant strategy for scoring a major sale. But beware: most major sales efforts fail—no matter how carefully planned and adroitly executed. Why? Sellers don’t identify the real decision makers in a big purchase—which often include people with no formal authority. And sellers don’t tailor their presentations to appeal to decision makers’ motivations—which can include anything from saving money to enhancing their status in their organization.
How to avoid these errors? Bonoma recommends gathering psychological intelligence. First identify the “buying center”—the surprisingly large group of individuals who affect the final purchase decision. Then identify the forces shaping these individuals’ choices: their power, their most personal motivations, and their perceptions of your company. Armed with this information, tailor your selling tactics to ensure that the final decision goes your way.
Gathering psychological intelligence isn’t easy. The most powerful decision makers in your target company aren’t always obvious. And their motivations may turn out to be entirely different from what you expected. But taking time to understand the human side of selling pays big dividends: you produce higher percentages of completed sales—and encounter fewer unpleasant surprises along the way.
The Idea in Practice
How to gather the psychological intelligence you need to close a major sale? Bonoma suggests asking four questions:
Who’s in the Buying Center?
The buying center comprises numerous individuals:
Who Are the Powerful Buyers?
The powerful individuals in the buying center exert the most influence over the purchase decision. To identify the most powerful buyers, look for high-status individuals who:
- Receive the most attention and information from others in their organization.
- Are disliked by those with less power.
- Send others to critical negotiations instead of attending themselves.
But powerful buyers don’t always possess formal authority. For example, at one mining company, maintenance personnel blocked the purchase of a new type of machine because they didn’t want to learn to fix it.
Also, powerful buyers’ power may derive from sources other than position—such as technical expertise or ability to charm others.
What Do Powerful Buyers Want?
Identify the benefits offered by your product that most motivate the powerful buyers. Then emphasize those benefits in your sales pitches. Motivations can be:
Financial:
- “This purchase will save our company money.”
Product- or service-related:
- “We’ll get reliable post-sales service.”
Social or political:
- “This purchase will enhance my standing with top management.”
Personal:
- “This purchase will win me others’ respect.”
Even seemingly unimportant people can reveal valuable information that hints at buyers’ motivations. Example:
When an account representative of an office-equipment company visited a major customer, a talkative administrator mentioned that a new copy machine the rep’s company had sold to the customer was “more out of service than in.” She also noted that a divisional manager had brought in a competitor’s equipment to test. Unfortunately, the account rep pursued none of this information, wasting the sales call and jeopardizing future sales.
How Do Powerful Buyers Perceive Us?
The powerful buyers within your target company have a wide range of perceptions about your organization, its offerings, and its personnel. Those powerful buyers who like you are already partially presold. Focus your selling effort on them.
Many companies’ selling efforts are models of marketing efficiency. Account plans are carefully drawn, key accounts receive special management attention, and substantial resources are devoted to the sales process, from prospect identification to postsale service. Even such well-planned and well-executed selling strategies often fail, though, because management has an incomplete understanding of buying psychology—the human side of selling. Consider the following two examples: