Business to business (B2B) marketing & selling are very sophisticated processes. You need to understand that there are a number of people, or possibly groups, that influence the B2B sale.
In a recent article I wrote about the four influencers in a B2B sale. Initially we talked about the Financial Influencer. As a quick revue, the four influencers are again.
1. The Financial Influencer(s)
2. The User Influencers
3. The Gatekeeper(s)
4. Your Champion or Sponsor
This article will focus on the User Influencer.
The User Influencer
As you can readily surmise, this influencer is the person or group that will directly use your product or service. The role of this influencer is to make judgments on the impact your product and service will have on their job performance. It will either affect his job directly, and at least the people that work for him.
The role this person or group plays in the evaluation process is,
• This is the group using or supervising the use of your product or service.
• You product or service will be personal to them because this group has to live day-in and day-out with your product or service, both during implementation and after it has been implemented.
• There is a direct link between the user influencers’ success, and the success of your product or service.
This person or group focuses on the job to be done. They ask – how will this affect me and my job and my department. This is the group that will have the most important impact in the executives’ eyes, as this group will be the most affected by the buying decision.
Get as close to this group as you can. Get to know the senior executive that runs this group. He or she will have a huge weighting on whether you make the sale or not. Make the head of this group one of your main contacts for the decision. You also, of course, need to be as close to the financial influencer as you can.
This group is extremely important in your marketing and selling process to your prospect and client base. You will more than likely interface with this person, and his team, more than any other person or group, in your selling cycle.
You will also be very close to this whole group in the implementation phase of your product and/or service. Most sales and marketing people spend their whole time working with and interfacing with this person and his group. This is particularly true in a technical environment, such as an engineering or software sale.
You should also line up people in your organization, with like minded skills, to interface with the members of this group, as they speak the same language.
Just as you must work with the four different influencers in your prospect’s company, you need to also align the people in your company, with the right people in your prospect’s company, in order to move the sale along.
Selling in a B2B environment is a complex and sophisticated process. But once you understand the process, and the different influencers, it becomes much easier, and a lot more fun.
What tactics do you use to find and know the right users?
Kind regards,
Ian Dainty
416.277.4537
ian@b2bbusinesscoach.com
The post Who Makes The Buying Decisions in a B2B Sale – Part 2? appeared first on Business to Business Marketing | B2B Lead Generation | B2B Business Coach.
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