{"id":2049,"date":"2016-03-06T22:56:53","date_gmt":"2016-03-07T03:56:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/?p=2049"},"modified":"2016-03-06T22:57:17","modified_gmt":"2016-03-07T03:57:17","slug":"with-how-many-of-your-customers-employees-are-you-interacting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/?p=2049","title":{"rendered":"With How Many Of Your Customer&#8217;s Employees Are You Interacting?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It is often noted that successful salespersons interact with the right employees of their prospects\/customers.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>IDC&#8217;s 2010-2012 survey has something to say about this question.<\/p>\n<p>In a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.idc.com\/eagroup\/download\/accelerating-new-buyers-journey.pdf\">survey <\/a>of IT buyers (see figure 8) customers\/buyers report the following statistics when asked &#8220;How many people were on your buying team including yourself \u2014 that is, the group actively involved in influencing the short list of vendors considered and making the purchase decision?&#8221;:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Companies with 100-499 employees: 3 to 4 people<\/li>\n<li>Companies with 500-999 employees: 4 to 6 people<\/li>\n<li>Companies with over 1,000 employees: 5 to 7 people<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/?attachment_id=2051\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-2051\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2051\" src=\"http:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/multiple-lanes.jpg\" alt=\"multiple lanes\" width=\"243\" height=\"91\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Noteworthy is that in two out of three scenarios the number of employees involved in making a decision is increasing.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/?attachment_id=2052\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-2052\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2052\" src=\"http:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sales-funnel.jpg\" alt=\"sales funnel\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sales-funnel.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sales-funnel-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sales-funnel-96x96.jpg 96w, https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sales-funnel-24x24.jpg 24w, https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sales-funnel-36x36.jpg 36w, https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sales-funnel-48x48.jpg 48w, https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sales-funnel-64x64.jpg 64w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>*Things That Need To Go Away:<\/em> <em>Marketing and sales efforts, which focus on persons, contacts and a decision-maker\u00a0and are not holistically geared at accounts i.e. multiple persons.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217;s 2010-2012 survey has something to say about <a href='https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/?p=2049' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":""},"categories":[3,8,11,1],"tags":[192,194,193,191],"aioseo_notices":[],"modified_by":"Ali Ghaemi","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2049"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2049\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}