Idea in Brief
The Problem
Increasingly, decisions about large company purchases are made not by individual executives but by a group of managers. Because group members often have different priorities, getting them to reach agreement poses a big challenge for suppliers.
The Solution
Salespeople must learn to build consensus. They can do so by helping buying-group members discover shared language and goals; motivating individual members of the group to become advocates for their firms’ solutions; and equipping those advocates to teach and persuade.
The Benefits
Consensus building taps capabilities within both sales and marketing. Companies that encourage the two functions to collaborate on consensus-focused strategies are seeing decisive improvements in sales performance.
Sales reps have long been taught to seek out the executive who can single-handedly approve a deal at a company. But whether they’re selling to a customer with 50 employees or 50,000, reps today rarely find a unilateral decision maker. More often, they discover that the authority to make decisions rests with groups of individuals—all of whom have different roles, and all of whom have veto power. Reaching consensus and closing deals has become an increasingly painful and protracted process for customers and suppliers alike.
