What does the prospective buyer need to do before they can consider a purchase?

[Sharon Drew]

I"ve noticed that those who responded are still focusing on the
'selling' end of the buying decision.

Before you can even consider what needs to happen in order to lead
people from the top of the funnel to the bottom and to a closed sale,
you must understand all that is keeping them in place:
1. what is maintaining their status quo?
2. how they would know when it's time to make a change?
3. who would need to be involved with the change?
4. how would they all know what sort of change would work, when, how,
and with whom?

Of course, you realize that all of this is not sales, and happens
behind the scenes.

Have a think, ok? And if you get stuck, either go to my blog
www.sharondrewmorgen.com or to my latest book Dirty Little Secrets.

The longer we stay in the last 10% of the buyer's pre-purchase
activity, the fewer the sales we'll close.

[Brian Berlin]

Sharon Drew,

It's an interesting question. Here's a real world example from an Inc. Magazine article "Marc Cinque hired a corporate pro to upgrade his sausage company. Will the move pay off?" The CEO had hired a VP Operations to fix a problem, and the article shows in great detail what goes on behind the scenes when a company is trying to make a buying decision. 

If you're like the majority of salespeople, you're probably pinging the VP Ops regularly for updates, and she may have gone dark. So you step of the frequency and intensity, but you'd be wrong. Because the VP Ops is wrangling with all sorts of internal issues. In this case, the CEO is being advised by his peers outside the company that implementations of the proposed system have gone haywire. Employees who would be forced to learn the new system rebelled, and tried to sabotage the plan at every chance. If I'm the VP, I'm avoiding any vendor contact because I'm not sure if the proposed system change will go through or not. Even though I've bet my job on it and the CEO has indicated the problem must be resolved.

Eventually the CEO realized that the status quo was unacceptable, and got everyone in the company to bite the bullet and buy into the upgrade. About that time I imagine the vendor got the call from the VP with the go ahead.

What Sharon Drew is trying to teach is a fundamental behavioral change to salespeople so that they can recognize this kind of situation and address it in a way that helps facilitate the buying decision. Even if the vendor in this story could not reach the VP live, the size and impact of this kind of acquisition, and the risk of standing pat should provide guidance on the approach. Rather than repeatedly asking for updates, the vendor could make some assumptions about the behind-the-scenes wrangling from other customer cases. Then provide that info in a consultative fashion, either live, email or voicemail.

If the vendor can successfully make contact, he can build rapport by asking the kind of supportive questions that may spotlight internal wrangling. It's not about Budget, Authority, Need and Timeframe, as most sales managers would insist. "You're talking to the wrong person", or "You need to be talking to the CEO". Wrong guidance. You need to be gaining awareness on the buyer's process. This is the sales skills area that needs the most work.