Mar 062016
 

It is often noted that successful salespersons interact with the right employees of their prospects/customers.

What is less often discussed is with how many of these folk a salesperson should interact. The question is more and more relevant because decision-making is increasingly and more and more diffused.

IDC’s 2010-2012 survey has something to say about this question.

In a survey of IT buyers (see figure 8) customers/buyers report the following statistics when asked “How many people were on your buying team including yourself — that is, the group actively involved in influencing the short list of vendors considered and making the purchase decision?”:

  • Companies with 100-499 employees: 3 to 4 people
  • Companies with 500-999 employees: 4 to 6 people
  • Companies with over 1,000 employees: 5 to 7 people

multiple lanes

Noteworthy is that in two out of three scenarios the number of employees involved in making a decision is increasing.

What a salesperson needs to know is that buying is a collaborative effort. As such, not only a wider view of the process is needed the typical marketing funnel and CRM single-person view of leads is lacking in a broader view of how customers buy unless used by sales as a single strand in a larger weave.

sales funnel

*Things That Need To Go Away: Marketing and sales efforts, which focus on persons, contacts and a decision-maker and are not holistically geared at accounts i.e. multiple persons.

 

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