The Big Picture: Buying has become more complex. Based on CEB’s “The Challenger Customer”, on average there are now more than 5.4 stakeholders involved in the decision making process.
These stakeholders have different responsibilities, wants, needs, pains, desired gains, measures of success, they are compensated differently, and the list goes on.
In addition, there is more information readily available, more competition and more ways to solve problems.
This is why prospects are getting stuck in your sales funnel and why many of those opportunities end up in the “lost” or “washed” columns.
Zoom Out: Let’s start with the seemingly obvious statement: if your key stakeholders can’t agree on the on the problem they are looking to solve then they can’t align on a solution.
So how exactly do we get these 5.4+ stakeholders to agree on the problem?
Zoom In: It starts by getting these stakeholders together. Let me pause there. This is critical. Rather than selling to individual stakeholders one-at-a-time…we want them all in the room.
Clearly, this requires your organization to add value to your prospect within your discovery stage. It take thoughtful and well-designed questions so that they better understand the problem they are trying to solve and better understand their potential solutions.
Your goal is to bring clarity and prioritization to the problem(s) they need to solve.
The Bottom Line: Unfortunately, we see too many salespeople forfeiting control of the sales process to their prospect and making one (or more) of these potentially fatal mistakes:
If you want to win more opportunities, make sure your sales process is built to identify, incorporate and add value to the 5.4+ key stakeholders involved in the buying journey.
Go Deeper:
Carver Peterson helps growth-minded leaders and organizations achieve predictable and sustainable revenue growth through a refined strategy, defined process and aligned structure.
We are systematic and process-driven.
We value unique strengths.
We communicate openly and directly.
