In my last blog post, I provided my initial takeaways from The New Strategic Selling, by Robert B. Miller and Stephen E. Heiman, and how its approach to complex sales cycles can be replicated when advising our PR and communications clients about their businesses.
In this post, I’ll examine the various “buying roles” involved with a complex sale and how to influence them. By gaining a better understanding of the buyers that will ultimately approve your sales proposal, you increase your likelihood of winning the sale.
Critical factors to consider with each of these individuals include:
- Organizational impact – Where will your proposal have the most immediate and lasting impact?
- Level of expertise –Who are the contacts that decision-makers will turn to for inside advice?
- Location – Are your influencers located geographically near each other?
- Personal priority – This will increase the likelihood of a buyer to influence the outcome of your proposal.
- Politics – Unavoidable, unfortunately, but this is why it’s key to identify your buying influencers early so that you can examine their relationships, potential conflicts and motivations.
We start with the Economic Buyer, the person who gives final approval to buy your product or service. This person’s ultimate focus, according to Miller and Heiman, is “the bottom line impact you can make on this organization.” This person controls the funds for your sale and the book asserts that it’s imperative to identify them early in the process.
In our case as a PR agency, this individual typically serves in a finance capacity and has the ability to not only approve our sales proposal, but the scope of funds to be allocated for our work. While this contact won’t be involved with a PR agency on a day-to-day level, they will be the person receiving the monthly invoices and it’s key that they have a solid understanding of the results and value we are providing to their business.
Next up is the User Buyer, the person that is concerned primarily with how this sale will impact everyday operations in their own area or department. Their questions will center around reliability, service records, retraining that might be necessary, ease of operation and potential impact on employee morale. Again, in our case, this contact typically serves in a public relations, marketing or marketing communications role, and is the person we would interface with on a day-to-day basis.
They may have key performance indicators (KPIs) tracking to their individual or department performance, so it’s critical that a PR agency have a strong understanding of how success will be measured in this person’s eyes.
Then we have the Technical Buyer, or the person whose job it is to play gatekeeper. “It’s the technical buyer’s task to limit the field of sellers and come up with a short list,” the book explains. As a PR agency that might be coming in to pitch an organization, it can be difficult to gauge who this person might be. Sometimes it’s another team member who works closely with the User Buyer (i.e., another contact in the marketing department), or it could be an executive that serves as a media spokesperson and interfaces frequently with the PR team.
Finally there’s The Coach, whose mission is to guide you into the sale. This buyer influencer can be found in either the buying or the selling organization (or outside of both) and their focus is on your success with this sales project. The Coach has credibility with the buying organization and wants your solution to succeed.
For PR agencies pitching a company on their services, examples of coaches could be contacts who have worked with your agency previously and who have provided a reference and a foot in the door to present to the team (we love these people and are always grateful for their help). Another example could be a reporter or industry analyst contact who has developed a strong relationship with a PR contact and who would recommend their services to a company. This is a keen reminder that “relationships” are the fundamental part of both public relations and business development, and also that the world is generally a very small place. You never know when your next “Coach” influencer may pop up next!
In my third and final blog post based on The New Strategic Selling, I’ll examine best practices for assembling an action plan, and how to develop strategies when time is short.