How to Sell to Complex Organizations with Multiple Decision Makers

Trying to close a deal with a complex organization can feel like an endless game of telephone. Once you’ve given the message to one person, it turns out there’s another decision-maker who needs to be looped in. And probably another one after that. Rinse and repeat. And if you’re not getting in front of each of those decision-makers, who knows what the message has turned into once it reaches the one who gets to finally say, “yes.”

It’s a pretty common problem to encounter this kind of touch-and-go buying process; 63% of B2B purchases involve more than 4 people.

It sure would be nice if there were organized committees of decision-makers who met biweekly to discuss potential purchases, or if there was some other magic formula to explain how buying decisions are made. That would make things easier for analyst firms, sales trainers, and consultants. But that particular idea of the buying committee is inflexible. The truth is a little less structured.

But don’t worry, we’ve got the info you need to guide you through the messier reality. We spoke with Brian Burns, the brains behind The Brutal Truth About Sales and Selling podcast, and Lusha’s very own US Director of Sales and Business Development, George Nammour. 

Whether you missed the webinar or you’d like a refresher, you’ll want to read on to learn more about how you can infiltrate these complex buying processes. 

The messy reality of B2B purchasing decisions

Anyone who thinks there’s an organized buying committee at the helm of purchasing decisions has clearly never actually sold B2B before, according to Brian Burns. 

“The idea that there’s this organized, well-structured, methodical group of people who are assigned to buy our products, it’s nice. It’s kind of conventional logic. That’s the way I would think it would work if I had never done it. 

“But if you’ve been there on-premise in those meetings with your customers and prospects, and you hear the dialogue, it is everything but a well-organized, structured process. It’s very ad hoc and it’s much more like House of Cards than it is business, meaning that everyone’s out for their personal win, their turf, their territory, how it impacts them. And if it’s good for the company, that’s good too.

So I think as a salesperson, we have to understand how companies buy. And it’s not this well-designed process that they are educated and trained on. It’s very much ad hoc.”

Follow the trail of decision-makers and engage on-on-one. 

Finding the “real” decision-maker can be difficult when there’s multiple people who need to be involved in a buying decision. 

Brian’s experienced it firsthand: 

“Early in my career, I used to always ask the classic question, ‘who is the final decision maker’? And there’d be five engineers in the room and they’d all raise their hand. So clearly they’re not the decision makers. Well, they make the decision about which product they like, which product they will recommend, but they have zero budget authority.”

Then when these “decision-makers” have to sign on the dotted line, the process ends up getting  more complicated. “They bring the quote down to procurement, and procurement goes, ‘That’s not the way it works here’…Someone has to fill out a purchase request. Someone has to approve it.” And next thing you know, the CEO is feeling pressured and uninformed because they’re being asked to approve something at 4:50 on a Friday. 

So how do you avoid this kind of mess? The key is to learn about that trail of approval so you can get in front of all the decision-makers, not just the informed user who will champion your product. 

Cater to personas to prove your product’s value.

Once you learn more about who all needs to be looped into the purchasing process, you’ve got more work to do. According to George Nammour, the key is to sell to each person one-on-one, not as a single entity with the same exact concerns:

“Every person has their specific role. For end users, they need to have a valuable experience. They need to see some wins from our solution and then be able to quantify what they’re able to gain to their leadership. Otherwise we haven’t earned the trust or even the right to have that conversation with their leadership team, managers or directors… It turns your end users into your champions to get this tool internally.” 

It’s important to become an expert in the industries you sell to and an expert at demonstrating value to a director level or VP level. “What they’ll see as valuable is going to be what they’ll see as valuable is gonna be completely different as to what our end users are seeing… The set of criteria we’re going to use to measure the proof of concept or the trial is very different from what the director and the manager might care about and might see success from.

“Speak your customers’ language to be able to highlight where these folks will see the value of your solution. Expect what roles you’re going to see to get a solution in place at an organization, and then cater your value proposition to specifically support and validate the fit of your solution for those specific roles.”

Don’t rely on a piece of content or your champion to sell for you. 

Taking that time to sell to the different decision-makers involved in a purchasing decision is the best defense against having a proposal gathering dust in somebody’s inbox. 

We’ve all experienced it as end-users looking at a product: you hear a nice proposal from a salesperson, then get a one-sheet or some other piece of marketing collateral that you’re supposed to pass on to your decision-maker. But is that single bit of content really going to convince them to sign off? Or a second-hand summary of the demo and value propositions? (Here’s a hint: the answer is “no”).

It’s important to have that material to help document, but sellers still need to sell (plus, remember the whole catering-to-personas thing we just talked about?). Here’s what Brian has to say about it: 

“The sales rep has to take more ownership of it because we know how to do it. You don’t want Joe Engineer presenting your product … They talk about features and functions of what they need. They talk in their language. The project manager needs to get it done on time under budget. They have their needs. The government wants it functional, reliable, dependable, doesn’t want to make mistakes, and wants it purchased legally and within a certain time period. 

“So that’s a lot of responsibility to give to an end user who has very little motivation compared to us. We have high motivation and hopefully higher knowledge about how to do it. Single-threadedness on a complex deal is usually the death knell.” If you’ve only talked to one person on the account, then it’s not going to happen. 

Selling to complex organizations doesn’t have to be super complicated when you think of this simple strategy: do your homework on the different people you need to speak to at the organization,  then present your solution based on what they care about. 

Key Takeaways

• B2B sales often involve multiple decision-makers, making for a more complex decision-making process. 
• Get one-on-one face time with each of the people involved in the buying process; don’t rely on content or your champion user to pass on your value proposition.
• Personalize your messaging based on the personas of each decision-maker. What an end-user wants (and needs) to hear is different from what the legal team or the VP is looking for.