sharondrew's profile

There are two distinct categories involving buying decisions: 1. the behind-the-scenes issues buyers must manage internally to get stakeholder buy-in for change and for going outside their status quo for a solution; 2. the solution-choice issues. We are all very familiar with the latter: that’s what sales handles so well. But sales does not handle #1 at all: we are not there when buyers choose the Buying Decision Team, or the machinations of how they will work together; we are not there when...

Sales people get confused when I suggest they can’t ’understand’ the buyer’s needs if they approach a sale with this outcome. Without everyone on board who will lend their voice to a possible solution, buyers cannot understand it themselves. And using the sales model, we can’t help: we’ll never understand what’s going on behind-the-scenes as they figure out who should be involved, what must be managed, and how to maintain the rules and norms of the environment, as they consider change. We are...