In my last post, I discussed that one of the main differentiators between a complex sale and other sales is the fact that in the complex sale you must deal with different buyers, with different issues – all at the same time.
I also introduced you to the most common ‘buyer’ – the key executive. In this post, I introduce you to the other four buyers involved in a complex sale:
2. The Financial Buyer is the person(s) who must pay for the offering – it comes out of their budget. Too often, sales people think the financial buyer only resides in the finance or procurement departments. This is true only when the budget being affected is lies within one of those departments.
The financial buyer is concerned about paying for the offering. They want to know how long it’s going to take before the investment is returned. They agree with Will Rogers that the “return of my money is more important than the return on my money.” The financial buyer is interested in how your offering will save them money, increase productivity, and pay itself back. Where the key executive is interested in these issues from a strategic, often conceptual framework, the financial buyer wants hard data. “You’ll recover your investment in 30 to 38 months” is music to the financial buyer’s ears. Be specific and enable the financial buyer to understand how your offering provides a quicker or bigger payback than other alternatives – even when the alternatives may be less expensive.
3. The Technical Buyer is responsible for making sure that everything is effectively integrated in the company. They’re worried about how everything fits. The finance or procurement department are often technical buyer’s confused as financial buyers.
When talking with the technical buyer(s), you need to address how your offering is going to fit within their existing systems and/or methods of operation. Technology companies often screw up when talking with technical buyers. They spend all of their time talking about how ‘cutting edge’ their ‘solutions’ are; or how ‘fast’ they are. All the while, the technical buyer is thinking things like, “yeah right, I’ve heard that before,” and “the last time we implemented a new idea, I had to work 80 hour weeks for three months.” By the way, this is often true for non-technology offerings as well.
The technical buyer is worried about messes. When working with them, focus on understanding their systems and the challenges they face. The technical buyer is often more concerned about making the safest choice than the best choice.
4. The User Buyer is the buyer responsible for implementing and/or actually using their offering. This buyer is concerned about ease of use and divergency. When they hear ‘new’, they think ‘difficult.’ The user buyer is concerned about making their life better. Be careful when dealing with the potential user(s) of your service. They may appear to have no decision making authority, yet they can often kill any deal. All they have to say to one of the other buyers is something like, “I don’t think that new offering you are talking about will work here” and you could be dead.
5. The Coach is the person that has a vested interest in your success. The Coach can have a formal role in the decision process, an informal role, or no role whatsoever -- they may not even be in the organization. Additionally, the Coach is not necessarily high up in any organization.
Here is what a good coach can do for you – they can give you the lay of the land. They can tell you how you are doing, what the conversation on the other end is all about, who you should talk to and how to break a log jam. I advise every salesperson involved in a complex sale that one of their first missions is to find a coach.
There you have it. Five buyers. Five different interests. Five different languages. Five different sales process – all being orchestrated as one – isn’t the complex sale fun. There are three keys to remember when you are involved in a complex sale:
- What role is the person I am talking to filling?
- What are they concerned about?
- Has everyone participated in the conversation?
Constantly ask yourself these three questions and you’ll find bigger sales coming faster. If I can help, please let me know (doug@imaginellc.com).