Using a Business Development Approach to Guide Buying Decisions

It sounds like a great deal-let me shop around a bit

Competition comes in all shapes and sizes today; direct, indirect, and disruptive; however, there is another internal competitor in our midst – indecision.  This sales trend is about the new stagnancy –  procrastination culminating in no decision. 

We are seeing global buying decisions taking a lot longer. Most global sales organizations try to implement key account sales programs which gets more people involved from both the buy and sell side.  There are on average 5.4 buyers involved in a new supplier decision. Decision by committee add, on average, 20% more time to the decision making process.  Frequently their decisions are postponed ad infinitum. 

Buyer indecision making (my new Wikipedia word) has become more commonplace and acceptable.  There lacks a sense of urgency to change. 

Why is “indecision making” a growing trend in business?

Information overload.  There is so much information available to buyers today-the oft quoted statistic is that they have 80% of the information required to make a decision prior to seeing a sales rep.  

With information comes choice and without proper guidelines and filters in place to guide decision making, too much information and too many choices can lead to indecision. Data then needs to be compiled....and sometimes resurfaces in the corporate limbo.

The general causes of information overload include:

• A rapidly increasing rate of new information being produced
• An increase in the available channels of incoming information
• Contradictions and inaccuracies and competing analyses in available information
• Lack of a method for comparing and processing different kinds of information.

It is now reported that consumers are having to wade through, on average, 11.5 pieces of information to find what they need to make a buying decision and consumers are five (5) times more reliant on information than they were five years ago.  More information + more choice=longer decision making at a time when time is at a premium.

What are the by-products of information overload?

1. Management by committee
   Managers do not want to be held accountable for a decision in case it may back fire and reflect badly on their career progression and/or compensation. Committees are supposed to be a safety net, but usually they are the bottleneck
2. Fear of making the wrong decision and risk aversion.  Customers want a trusted salesperson that will outsource a solution for them.  Fear then plays a huge part by delegating that decision making. Addressing the client’s risk factor is critical to helping people make informed decisions; yet, risk is rarely or poorly addressed by salespeople.  Salespersons are often afraid to raise the matter for fear of upsetting or offending the client.  My wife taught me a long time ago that people are motivated by one of two things; pleasure enhancement or pain avoidance.  Pain avoidance trumps pleasure enhancement by a wide margin. It has been proven if the benefit isn’t at least three times greater than the risk, buyers will reject an offer. Silly? No, just risk averse.
3. Lack of defining a clear winning outcome. If a buyer does not have a clear winning strategy, then every solution looks viable.  Watch out for the buyer committee with no clear decision maker, strategy or mandate.

Sometimes prospects or clients acting like genuine buyers when in fact they are vacuums siphoning up lots of information from suppliers thinking the more information they get the safer they will be when it comes the time to make decisions.   WRONG!!!  They don’t know what information they require.  This activity is almost always a waste of time, effort and resources and prolongs decisions.

How as suppliers do we overcome decision inertia?
We need to know our product offering, business, markets, and customers inside and out to present viable solutions for effective decision making.  If our clients are indecisive then we need to:
 

1. Make sure we know exactly what results they want from outsourcing their problem solving to us.
2. Understand what information is relevant. Great salespeople need to know the details of what they offer but even more they need to be able to sift, sort and analyze the relevant information (markets, competitors, business processes, etc.) for their prospects.
3. Provide competitive analysis, demonstrate clear points of difference including a business case and testimonials.
4. De-risk the offer. Instead of getting hooked on offering features and benefits, quantify the risk of not changing in clear and unambiguous terms. Show them the real consequences of not changing.  We can help our prospective customers regain control over how they process, use and manage information. Remove the clutter.

There is no one right solution anymore. There are options and each comes with the various benefits and risks. It’s how we help prospective customers decide what is best for their situation now and moving forward that will help them make a difference.

This is how true Business Development should work.

Good selling!