The myth of the senior decision-maker

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Having the most efficient and go-getting sales team no longer guarantees high-quality results in today’s B2B buying world. Even several years after the global recession, companies are still incredibly risk averse, and finding a buyer in an organisation willing to put their neck on the line to push your deal through can seem almost impossible.

Part of the reason for this is that the senior decision-maker no longer exists; rather, there are now, on average, 5.4 stakeholders who need to be convinced for any buying decision. Going straight to the top is not a viable option, and CEB research shows that only one in three senior executives is likely to be the person orchestrating change in their organisation. 

So who do sales and marketing teams need to be targeting? Hint: it isn’t the friendly, eager-to-help customer. Instead, they need to engage people who are inherently sceptical and who often intensely question a supplier’s offering or services. We call this person the ‘mobiliser’ in our book, The Challenger Customer: Selling to the Hidden Influencer Who Can Multiply Your Results. 

These are the customers who have the credibility to help create consensus and secure buy-in among their colleagues. It’s these very traits that make mobilisers so effective at inspiring their organisations to act, effectively making them the architects of change.

To identify mobilisers and equip them to forge change, sales and marketing teams need a new approach – one that focuses on three key actions: 

1. Target mobilisers, not advocates

Marketers need to revisit the conventional approach to building personas. Instead of focusing on personas that anchor on a customer’s role, title or function, they should build their personas around mobilisers.  Similarly, sales reps should be able to identify the customers they believe can truly drive action and help win over their colleagues – if they can’t name a mobiliser, it’s time to reassess the prospect or move on.

2. Unteach customers

Focus on disrupting the customer’s self-driven research by teaching them where there are flaws in their thinking. We call this ‘commercial insight’. Where thought leadership focuses on teaching the customer something new, commercial insight is about unteaching the customer something they already assume or believe about their business. It’s diplomatically telling customers they are wrong, and showing them a clearer view on the problem, its causes and the right course of action. 

3. Understand how customers believe their business works

The only way to tell a customer that they are ‘wrong’ is to understand what they believe in the first place. A simple exercise marketers can do is to list the drivers that customers believe lead to important business outcomes. Then ask several customers to review that list and tell you what they would add, remove or refine. In essence, this will create a map of the customer’s mental model, which can highlight where they have flawed thinking in areas that only your solution can address. That’s the starting point for the kind of teaching and insights that leading suppliers bring to their customers.  

While the route to a decision-maker is not as straightforward as it once was, it does not mean the challenge of marketing and selling to the right person is insurmountable. Instead, marketers and salespeople should view it as an opportunity to find the right person to help them along the journey – a mobiliser who can forge consensus and drive positive change for all involved. 

Pat Spenner is strategic initiatives leader at CEB