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The Decision to Buy

By Jeff Thull

How often has a sale been lost after we believed the client clearly understood the problem and would make a logical, quality decision?

As sales professionals we have been taught that we must seek out and uncover our client’s decision process. We are to clearly determine who will be involved, what they are looking for, what criteria they will use to evaluate the situation, how much money they will be willing to spend, and so on. Once we have uncovered the client’s decision criteria, we are then advised to present our solution strengths, our added value, to match that decision process.

But what happens when your client does not have a thorough decision process or seldom, if ever, buys your type of solution? You may find yourself presenting good information into a sub-optimal process. All too often, after the presentation, we find ourselves shaking our heads in disbelief and saying to ourselves or our team, “I just don’t understand! We clearly had the best value,” or “They just ignored the superiority of our service,” or “We thought they understood the flexibility of our software,” or “The (insert your best feature here)—they just didn’t get it.”

Research tells us why they didn’t understand. In the absence of a high quality decision process the client is unable to sort through complex problems and the competitive clutter surrounding them. Consider this question: “What percentage of your clients have a high quality process to make a decision regarding your unique technology or services?” As we survey clients, the overwhelming answer is “Not very many.” The lack of a good decision process appears to be the norm, not the exception.

There are three primary reasons why your clients may not have a thorough decision process and may not be able to comprehend the true value of your solution.

The first is the ever-increasing level of complex products and the similarities of the top highly competitive solutions. In a complex business arena, the client may lack the technical sophistication to differentiate between options that look similar on the surface. Additionally, the problems to be solved and the solutions being offered today are constantly evolving in their complexity. It’s difficult or simply impossible to keep up.

Second, the client is likely to have limited experience in making major decisions regarding this type of product or service. The more critical or significant the purchase, the less frequently the client is going through the process. Down-sizing and reengineering of organizations left many junior managers to cope with decision responsibilities once held by seasoned and experienced managers. Simultaneously, in other organizations, decisions are moving higher and with more people involved that now influence areas of their businesses that previously were not their major concern.

The net result of these factors is that your high value solutions are presented into a less-than-optimal decision process, resulting in the client being unable to discern the respective value of various alternatives. In this environment, the decision outcome is, at its best, random and unpredictable. At worst, decisions will degenerate to the lowest common denominator, which typically is a combination of price and specifications.

A solution provider can solve this predicament by guiding clients through a process that will help them make a high quality decision. This process will bring together both the client and the seller to make a sound business agreement. Note the emphasis is on a decision process, not on the selling process itself.

Consider for a moment a correlation between the sales professional and the client and the physician and the patient. One of the major values a physician brings to the patient is a diagnostic decision process. The process is designed to position the physician and the patient to make a quality decision regarding the patient’s condition and an agreement on the treatment.

Again, the objective of the diagnostic process is not to “sell” surgery, but to guide the patient. Similarly, it is the responsibility of a sales professional to diagnose the client’s situation and together they will make a quality decision about the product or service to fix the problem.

There are many advantages to building your strategy around the decision process. First of all, you will be differentiating yourself by your approach. Clients themselves will tell you why. While interviewing our clients’ customers in the area of differentiation, we frequently receive feedback that they seriously consider the solution presented and eventually buy from the account manager who appears to “really know what he was doing” or “has the most thorough approach” or “asks the questions we hadn’t considered.”

Sales professionals should pay serious attention to this feedback. Your questions should support clients’ decision processes by inviting them to think about areas of the problem or the solution they would not have considered without your guidance. You will, after all, gain more credibility through the questions you ask than the stories you tell.

So, how do you guide your clients through a high quality decision process that will help them understand the value of your solution and be willing to invest in it?

The first step is to assemble a group of people within your organization and, if possible, a few of your best clients. This group should include those who understand the critical characteristics of the types of problems you solve and are able to understand the unique way in which your solution addresses those issues.

Next, explore the six major focus areas required to arrive at a quality decision process. They include: thoroughly diagnosing the problem; determining the financial impact of the solution; establishing measurable outcomes; understanding solution alternatives; defining investment parameters; and establishing the decision criteria. In each of these areas ask the following questions to help prevent decision mistakes:

1. What types of mistakes do clients tend to make regarding this kind of decision?
2. What do clients most frequently overlook or not consider?
   Make sure the decision process brings these elements into consideration.
3. What are the most difficult things for a client to understand?
   Determine ways to communicate these elements precisely.
4. What must a client understand to reach a fully informed decision?
   Make sure the decision process brings these to the client in an orderly fashion.
5. What level of professional education or experience is required to understand each specialty area of the decision?

Make sure you engage people in the decision process that have the required experience or professional background.

If you observe and model what the top 10 percent of professional salespeople are doing, you will find this approach is the norm, not the exception. Top-performing sales professionals are guiding their clients through a high quality decision process.

You will find qualified opportunities sooner and spend less time and money on “resource drains.” You will also find your cost of sales dropping and your sales revenues and proposal to sales ratios increasing. The end results are very profitable sales and completely satisfied clients.

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Jeff Thull is president and CEO of Prime Resource Group, and a thought-leader in the area of sales and marketing strategies for companies involved in complex sales. He is also the author of the best-selling books, Mastering the Complex Sale: How to Compete and Win When the Stakes are High and The Prime Solution: Close the Value Gap, Increase Margins, and Win the Complex Sale. His latest book is Exceptional Selling: How the Best Connect and Win in High Stakes Sales. To learn more, visit www.primeresource.com.

Read our other articles by Jeff Thull, Seven Common Sales Challenges that Prevent Executive Level Access, How to Prevent Unpaid Consulting and The Best Kept Secret of the Selling World.

Also, read two Management Consulting News interviews with Jeff Thull:
Jeff Thull discusses why solution selling fails
Jeff Thull on the sales strategies of top-performing consultants.