The myth of the ultimate decider

In sales, myths are created when concepts and models are used out of the context they were originally designed for. The concept of the Ultimate Decider is an example of this.

Selling to the small and medium enterprise

In small and medium size enterprises the Ultimate Decider can be found in the person of the owner or the CEO of the company. It is he/she who decides what is to be bought from whom. This person also has the power to commit the enterprise to spend the necessary funds needed to acquire goods and services.

Selling to the large enterprise

Sellers dealing with large enterprises often find, what Andy Paul in his book “Zero-Time Selling” calls the Actual Decision Maker. This person has the authority to decide what is bought from whom. However the authority to engage the enterprise to spend the necessary funds for the purchase lies with another person.

Sellers entering late in the buying journey are though faced with a dilemma. Should they trust the Actual Decision Maker that she/he is capable to get the signature for the purchasing contract of the supplier of his/her choice or should the seller follow the common wisdom of calling high and try to reach the person who has the power to engage the enterprise?

Especially for purchases with lower strategic value, the person with the signing authority is usually just approving the decision made by the Actual Decision Maker. The term Ultimate Decider is thus a misnomer in such situation. Trying to call on this person just slows down the sales cycle. Also the chances to revert a decision of the Actual Decision Maker are very slim.

When to call high

The person with the signing authority is usually of higher rank than the Actual Decision Maker. Especially for strategic deals the question though arises when to call this person.

Stephen J.  Bistritz and Nicolas A. Read in their book “Selling to the C-Suite” have introduced the notion of the Relevant Executive. The Relevant Executive is the person most affected by the problem for which you offer a solution and/or can profit the most from the offered solution.

Based on their research, they recommend that the Relevant Executive is either called after a successful implementation of a project or very early in the buying cycle. In the former case this is a very good moment to establish a relationship which might be beneficial for future deals. In the latter case the aim is to initiate a buying journey. At this point in time it is premature to solicit a purchasing decision. .

The first decision you can expect from a Relevant Executive is to acknowledge the existence of a problem or an opportunity that merits further investigation by the organization. The next decision in the buying journey is then about how to carry out information collection on possible solutions. Depending on how much the Relevant Executive is a “hands off” person, the management of the buying journey is can be passed to at this early stage to the person who later becomes the Actual Decision Maker. The hand over to the Actual Decision Maker may come later, at the screening and selecting of possible suppliers. The Relevant Executive keeps the right to engage the company in the actual purchase through his/her signature. As one can assume that the buying journey is delegated to a person who has the trust of the Relevant Executive, the act of signing is more of an approval than a decision.

The impact of corporate culture

As we have shown in a previouspost, the way decisions are made is also strongly influenced by the corporate culture prevailing at the purchasing enterprise. So it can well be that the Relevant Executive role is limited to initiating the decision making process about whether the problem merits attention and whether a solution is to be purchased.

Conclusion

It seems thus that when selling to large enterprises, the Ultimate Decider is a myth. Chasing after this phantom will thus just delay or even derail your sales campaign.

What is your experience with the concept of the Ultimate Decider?

Christian Maurer

RIIM CONF' 2012

Yesterday was the 7th edition of the RIIM CONF’ (relationship intelligence and influence management conference).  Opinion leaders, experts in sales, network specialists and international business people gathered in the Cercle National des Armées in Paris to share their ideas on relationships and networking in complex sales, global accounts and differing cultures.

Over the coming weeks we will be sharing some of the key ideas from the speakers on this blog.  Today, I’ll give a general outline of the speakers, to whet your appetites.

The day started with François Fleith, from Alcatel-Lucent, who spoke about the need to understand and manage relationships when working with large accounts in the public sector.  He told us of the all too real possibility of eliminating deals as “no go” too soon in the process, due to a lack of technical ability, while relationships and networks can save the day and help both sides of the deal develop new products and therefore new business opportunities.

Serge Papo, President and co-founder of Nomination, demonstrated how important it is to follow decision makers as they make career changes.  He used illustrations from Nomination’s own business case studies and during a live demonstration let us see the “musical chairs” in some large companies.

Christian Maurer, co-author of this blog, spoke about the myth of the ultimate decisionmaker.  He drew on his experience as an independent sales and business consultant to show how there are influencers working behind the scenes in every decision, and also how the role and positioning of the decision maker changes with the company culture.

Jean-François Ruiz, co-founder of PowerOn showed how to use social networking sites like Twitter and LinkedIn to for new business development in a B2B context.  He gave a concrete example of recent work PowerOn has done to develop leads and sales for a client using the technique “collaborative white book”.

Hervé Debaecker, Chief Methodologist from Perfluence, spoke about the need to manage the relationship capital of a company.  Based on years of experience and feedback from many clients, he gave approaches to doing this and ways that a sales team in a complex sales situation can work together to manage their ecosystem.

Matthieu Aubusson and Sébastien Leroyer from PricewaterhouseCoopers spoke about strategic value selling.  Matthieu started with a precise and informed description of what exactly is strategic value selling and how to go about ensuring your company provides it.  Sébastien continued by sharing information from PwC about the reality of what companies are actually doing versus what they should be.

Antoine de Septenville, Chief Technology Officer from Perfluence, introduced the Sales Data Hub.  He spoke about recent and continuing trends in IT, in sales, and in data management systems.  Using “pivots & facettes” he showed how it is possible to combine several systems to answer a company’s particular needs.

Sophie Galoo from ADP-GSI showed how to bring value to clients by enlarging the shared ecosystem.  She told us how ADP-GSI has moved very quickly from working alone as an HR specialist, to now working within and managing their ecosystem, including their partners and competitors in their scope.  She laid out the essential question that anyone embarking on this route will need to ask themselves.

Then two speakers shared their insights into different cultures and how these affect the networks and relationships.  Sam Wellington from Safran spoke about Brazil.  Starting from a historical perspective he showed how networks in Brazil are created and maintained.  Jean-Michel Terrier from Altair gave his experiences of working with Asian cultures, notably China and Japan.  He was able to draw comparisons between these cultures, the Anglo-Saxon culture and the French culture.

The day finished with a round table chaired by Christian Maurer with the following experts.

David Gotchac from E-DEAL, Thomas Cochin from Microsoft Dynamics, Khalid Madarbokus from Oracle and Hervé Debaecker from Perfluence.  They discussed the triangle of people, processes and tools, and the efficiency of CRMs to manage this.  The question of how to achieve high adoption of any tool was raised along with the importance of good change management.  The general conclusion was that any IT system should be sales method agnostic and that users would adopt it if / when they could see that it served their own best interests.

Special thanks for

Matthieu and Sébastien from PwC, who stepped up at the eleventh hour and gave a remarkably solid presentation.

Sam, who came from Brazil not just for us but it was very appreciated.

Apologies to

Sophie, who had her presentation cut short.  About half the audience came to complain to me in person.

As I get in the blog posts from the speakers I’ll add links to their posts to this page.

Please feel free to comment and share your ideas on this.

Cate Farrall

Job crafters and the network

Job crafting

Job crafting refers to the way that each individual shapes the job that he / she does in order to satisfy their own needs and desires.  This can be independently of the organization’s needs.  There are three main areas that job crafting affects:

·         Quantity of work (you can do more or less)

·         Relationships with others (these can be improved or can deteriorate)

·         Perception of work (an insurance agent sees his / her work as helping people after accidents, rather than just processing claims)

For more details, please refer to “What is job crafting and why does it matter” (Berg,Dutton & Wrzesniewski).

Jobs are crafted by different aspects of a person: ambitions, desires, skills, personality traits, personal interests, etc.

An interesting part of the job crafting approach is the finding that those who actively engage in it are more likely to be engaged and motivated workers.  If you are interested, you can find more informationby clicking here.

Job crafting is similar to job redesign, the difference being that job redesign is negotiated with the employer in a formal process while job crafting is done under the radar.

The job and the crafter

In a previous post (the company, the job, the person) we argued that the person and the post they fill should be kept separate within CRM systems because of the way that people move from one job to another in their careers.  Job crafting and its effects requires the person and the post they fill to be kept separate but for different reasons.

The job can be considered to be what the person should be doing.  It involves a list of requirements, expectations and reporting lines.  The crafted job is how the person currently holding that position fulfills the requirements, meets the expectations and respects the reporting lines.  The difference between the job and the crafted job will vary depending the person, but there will always be a difference.

Job crafting and the effect on the sales meeting

We can picture all the people in a network busily job crafting in their own manner (with a positive or negative outcome, knowingly or subconsciously).  The effects of this will filter down to many business situations, including the sales meeting.

·         The sales person who considers the job in terms of hitting his / her commission at the end of the month will have a different approach to one who thinks in terms of making the client happier.

·         The client who sees the purchase as part of a wider plan will use different criteria from a client who is looking for the cheapest, quickest to deploy solution.

       

As a manager of a sales team, I need to think about which aspects I want my individual team members to develop and which ones I think the whole team could embrace.  This kind of insight will help me to plan training and assessment programmes.

Job crafting and o2o

Within the o2o complex sales situation, job crafting will also play a role.  A new occupant, of whatever position, is going to bring his / her own way of crafting the job.  This could be in terms of

·         Priorities for business development (opening new markets in a given zone, etc)

·         Personal criteria for making decisions (carbon footprint, ethical business, etc)

·         Personal preferences for partners (size and profile of suppliers, etc)

As a sales manager, I need to think about which of my team, as job crafters, will be best suited to working on a particular account and with certain people within that account.  Using my knowledge of my team I am better able to not only cover the network (see our post onnetwork coverage in o2o) but also to cover it with people intelligence.

In addition, understanding how key people in my client’s ecosystem have crafted their jobs will help me to get a better understanding of the way that they fit into the network.  I can look for people who are making similar changes and possibly use this to my advantage.  The use of Key Opinion Leaders by pharmaceutical companies is an application of this idea.

Next generation CRM

Job crafting affects the way we as individuals work and the way we affect the organizations we work for.  And recognition of this is growing on both sides of the Atlantic.  It is clearly going to play a role in the way we think about people and the jobs they do. 

The question is: how will future systems manage this aspect of the person / post combination?



Cate Farrall

Are you selling i2i or o2o?

While the terms B2C and B2B are familiar to you, you might wonder what i2i and o2o stand for.

These terms add an interesting twist to the concept of B2B selling. The first term, i2i picks up on the fact that in a B2B environment people buy from people and not from organizations. The term i2i (individual to individual) expresses just this. An individual at the customer organization buys from an individual of the seller’s organization. This situation actually implies a relatively simple deal structure.

We consider a deal as complex when several people in the customer organization are involved in a purchase either in formal buying roles or informal influencer roles. When there are also several individuals at the seller’s organization involved, we describe these as an o2o configuration. The term o2o (organization to organization) stands then for an orchestrated group of individuals in the customer organization buys from an orchestrated group of individual of the seller’s organization.

o2o in action

A key part of the process is orchestration. By this we mean the people in the customer organization have and follow a buying process and their counterparts in the seller’s organization also have and follow a sales process. The two processes and teams come together by coupling the sales process used by the seller organization with the buying process used by the buyer organization.

Individuals in the organization

Within the o2o sale there are clearly individual people working and making decisions. Yet the buying and selling processes outlined above do not indicate which individual at the seller’s organization is to talk to which individual at the customer organization. In addition, the people involved may well change as the sale progresses. For example, at first there is a need to determine whether there is a mutual interest in pursuing a potential opportunity. As the deal moves ahead different individuals in both organization are called upon to continue coordinated dialogues in an attempt to move a deal forward towards a buying decision.

We are thus faced with two critical questions:

·         Which person / people from our side should we be sending out to talk to the customer’s organization?

·         Which person / people in the customer’s organization should we be trying to reach?

o2o = utopia?

The key of the answer to these questions is in Relationship Management and understanding the power structure within the customer’s organization. The insights we need concern things like formal and informal reporting lines, and influential players and their motivations. We also need a system that codifies existing personal relationships. Yet such a system can only be effective it there is a willingness within the seller’s organization to share contact data. For many seller organizations this is still utopia. Everybody considers the relationship as a personal ownership. A change management process is therefore needed which is usually federated by a relationship management charter defining rules of how shared information is to be exploited.

So, o2o selling can only be effective if we have a codified system to capture relationship intelligence and influence management, governed by a relationship management charter.  We then need to invest in tools which support o2o selling in an effective manner.

Christian Maurer

Building Bridges: when less is more

Mark Granovetter is famous for his ideas on weak ties within social networks (Granovetter, 1973, American Journal of Sociology).  Although his most famous work is now nearly 40 years old, it’s still relevant and a fresh read.  I’ll start with an outline of his main ideas and if you want more detail here is a link to his original article (http://bit.ly/cj4fhO).

Granovetter starts with the premise that within social networks there are different degrees of relationships.  He suggests that intuitively we recognize our relationships as strong, weak or absent.  Two people who share a strong tie are likely to spend time together and are also similar in various ways.  They are also likely to share friends and relationships.  This leads to the development of close networks of people.

Enter the weak ties

Weak ties link people who know each other less well, perhaps only in passing or as an acquaintance.  These ties, according to Granovetter, can act as bridges from one close network to another.  A bridge is a point in a network that provides the only path from one person to another.  For more on this, have a look at the Social Capital Blob (http://socialcapital.wordpress.com/).  The basic idea from Granovetter is that “no strong tie is a bridge”.  On the other hand, certain weak ties are bridges to other networks, other sources of information and other influencers.

The strength in the weak links

Closed networks have, according to Granovetter, only strong links and few or no links to other people in other networks.  These networks run the risk of suffocating and, under the right circumstances can die out (see Granovetter’s article for more details: http://bit.ly/cj4fhO).

Networks need weak links or bridges to expand and to grow.  New blood, new contacts, new information, new insights, new sources of help are needed.  This will help to spread ideas and messages more efficiently.  Get out of your comfort zone and make the most of any weak links you have.  Or, even more uncomfortable but more interesting, start building links with people you don’t know yet.

Bridges and Sales

So, how does this help those of us who work in sales?

·         No strong relationship is a bridge, so those happy people you’ve known for years might not be able to help you expand your network and make new contacts.

·         You cannot only rely on your strong links, if you want to extend the reach of your messages and ideas.  Get out of comfort zone and meet new people.

·         Some weak relationships will act as bridges, so new professional contacts are potential gateways.  Use your existing weak links to expand and reach new people.  Always ask if they know other people who might be interested in what you do.  If you have made a good impression, they will be happy to recommend you to their professional or personal contacts.

·         Some weak relationships will act as bridges, but how do I know which ones?  For the moment, let’s keep it simple.  Pretend you don’t know and you never will, but ask for recommendations all the same.

Cate Farrall

Right Topic, Right Moment, Right Person

It is probably now over two decades since I read the following statement from a Swiss sales trainer: “I do not sell anything to people. I just talk to them until they want to buy”

At that time he had already understood that selling is not about closing techniques and objection handling but about holding “value-adding conversations” with potential clients. What has changed since is that today sellers have to hold these conversations with crazy-busy people who have no time.

When is a conversation value adding?

For a seller to add value to a sales conversation he/she should talk:

a) about the right subject,

b) at the right moment,

c) to the right person.

This powerful combination will lead to an informed decision being made.

The conundrum though is how to figure out who the right person to talk to is, what the right subject to talk about is and when it is the right moment to talk. The short answer is that relationship intelligence among other things is an important method helping you solve this conundrum. Yet relationship intelligence is not just desk research, it is to a great extent gained through interactions (conversations) with people. So we use the same vehicle (the conversation) for a dual purpose: to gather relationship intelligence and also to get a person to make an informed decision. While the value of conversation is usually more obvious for sellers it is less so the crazy-busy prospect. For conversations geared towards relationship intelligence gathering, the problem is even more acute.

Solving the conundrum: create value-adding conversations

A clear understanding of the intended purpose of a conversation is paramount. Is it primarily focused to get decisions directly advancing the sales campaign? Or is it more about relationship intelligence gathering? While we might go into a conversation with a particular purpose in mind, we also have to be prepared that this purpose might shift during the conversation.

Let’s assume a seller has found out about an event which is triggering an urgent need within a prospective customer organization. This increases the likelihood that the moment is right to talk about the subject of the trigger event. From the seller’s knowledge of the customer’s organization, he/she also can infer which person is most likely to be concerned about this event.  The seller might be confident enough to expect, that the conversation held with this person will directly advance the sales campaign. However, early in a campaign, with a customer organization we do not know very well, there is also a high chance that our assumption will not be correct. Then the purpose of the conversation has to shift from advancing the sales campaign to gathering relationship intelligence. During the conversation, the seller might conclude that although it is the right moment and the right subject for the organization, he/she is not talking to the right person. The objective is now to get the prospect to make a decision to come forward with the name of the person in the customer organization who might be more concerned by the subject. By being agile, the seller can still get value out of the conversation. Yet there is an equally important question:

Where is the added value for anyone helping us gather relationship intelligence?

If we stay with our scenario, here are at least two thoughts why the conversation might also be valuable for the person the seller is talking to.

–      Getting the right for first refusal to tackle the subject

–      Fostering ones own image in the organization by referring a potential solution provider to someone more concerned about the subject

A prerequisite for these possible outcomes is obviously that the seller was able to build trust with the conversation partner. These are the social skills that oil the wheels of a good sales conversation.

How to profit from this discussion?

You can have more productive conversations with your customers if you

–      Enter conversations with the right mindset,

–      Have always a primary and a secondary objective for the conversation

–      Are agile to switch objectives according how the conversation develops

Christian Maurer