4 Ways to Engage the Decision Maker

And welcome back. Yes. Very exciting. Today we're gonna be talking about how to engage with the decision maker.

Yes, the ultimate decision maker. The person who can buy your product or service, your savior, the person that is gonna make you rich. And your job as a salesperson is to find the decision maker, then engage with them and help them navigate the decision making process, and ultimately get them to make a decision in favor of your product or service.

 Put it in one sentence like that. It sounds easy, but we will often stumble if we don't have a robust and repeatable process. So I'm gonna give you several ideas to be able to navigate that. Four main points.

Point number one. Your job number one is to identify and talk to the decision maker.

 I've, I've watched lots of salespeople run campaigns and they never talk to the ultimate decision maker. They talk to the buying committee, they talked to a subordinate , they talked to somebody in the office. Now I go through, In significantly more detail if you go back to episode six of Sell The Sizzle podcast, "don't talk to the monkey when you should be talking to the decision maker".

I go through this, I'm not gonna repeat a lot of that here, but if you're not talking to the decision maker, you are not selling. They may be buying, but you are certainly not selling.

 Often we'll have a cozy relationship with some kind of subordinate of the Decision Maker who's shepherding the overall evaluation process.

But look, they can't sell your solution as well as you can. They can't express the level of energy and excitement and belief that you have in your product or service, so don't allow them to be the salesperson. You are the salesperson, so you've got to get to the decision maker, even if it makes your cozy relationship with the subordinate a little tense.

But you can do it in a nice way and explain. Hey, Janet, I know we've got a great relationship, but, , I know that,  Alison is ultimately making the decision here. I'd love to, get some time with Alison, and if you like, we can both go together and, talk to her or Indeed, you know, I, I, I'd like to, to speak to her. And if they say, Well, no I can pass along all that information.

So, no, it's very important for me to be able to express all of the different aspects of our service, and ultimately, I'm the person who's gonna be responsible for the sale, and so it's important for us to have that relationship, and I'd hope you would help me build that because it's gonna ensure success for everybody.

So don't be afraid of asking to meet the decision maker. You're making a commitment in terms of your time, in terms of your resources to put this together. There's a lot of work associated with it, and they should reciprocate by allowing you access.

If the decision maker doesn't allow access. I see this a lot in, , situations where there's a request for a proposal and invite 20 companies to come and bid.

If you are not able to meet with a decision maker at some point, you should know bid because it's a lottery and you got more valuable things to do with your time than play the lottery. So number one, job one, identify and get an audience with the decision maker.

So job. Job two is we've gotta engage the decision maker, right?

We're sitting in a meeting, with him or her who we may be on, on Zoom. I mean, they're very, very hard to get to. They're very, very busy and they appreciate directness and brevity. They're managing an entire enterprise. They're managing lots of people. They've got lots of priorities, and the thing that you are talking to them about might be number six or seven on the list.

So they don't want to beat around the bush. So don't think that you've got to build this deep, meaningful emotional connection in the first few seconds of the meeting by asking them about their favorite football team. Talking about the weather, talking about, you know, politics. No, you want to get to the point. You want to be able to get them engaged in the challenge that they have talking about what the problem is, how are you gonna navigate it? And you are the architect of the sales process, right? You are the salesperson and the more complex and sizable the deal that you are working on, the more help you will need to guide the decision maker through a proper evaluation. Cuz often they don't buy these services frequently so they don't quite know how to proceed.

They've kind of got some sense, but they don't really know what questions to ask. They don't really know some of the risks associated with the technical niceties of what they're getting into. And so,  when you educate them about those risks, when you tell them about all of the things that they've gotta think about, you come over as being a very respected authority and they are going to trust you.

 I talked through as a re a robust and repeatable sales process in episode 16, how to become a born closer. You should go and listen to, to that one. But the one thing I want to emphasize in this podcast in engaging the decision maker is one of the best ways to get engagement, demonstrate your expertise is to ask good questions.

So job two, engage the decision maker with great questions.

Voltaire, the philosopher, said, judge a man by his questions. Rather than his answers.

so a thoughtful. Provoking question that causes the decision maker to think critically is much more powerful than you handling an objection. If you don't control the sale.

Just objection after objection will come through. But what you want to do is help them navigate through the sales process by asking good questions.

Now, good questions that engage are hard questions.

And so sometimes  we're reticent about asking the hard questions, but you are in business. Business requires you to ask challenging questions.

Decision makers like to think about critical things. They like hard questions that make them think. Good questions create engagement. Good questions, help you qualify out. Not qualify in.

Most salespeople think if they see a living, breathing body in front of them, that they've got a good opportunity and they qualify that person in on the basis of the fact that they're breathing.

When in reality, the average salesperson wins, let's say one out of three deals. So that means two-thirds of the time. You are working on deals that you're not gonna win. Therefore, you want to get to know as quickly as possible. So you have more time to focus on the ones that you can win. And if you've got a, anemic pipeline, if your pipeline is thin and empty, you, you're going to hang on to those deals that otherwise you would've qualified out.

Qualified out in, there's a lack of urgency qualified out, and it doesn't, fit your services qualified out in that the competition are better qualified out because you know that they go and play golf with your competitor's CEO every Thursday, right? You know these things. You qualify out and work on some other deals that you can win.

But you won't qualify out if you've got a thin pipeline and you hang on to the rubbish and you spend all of your time going down in circles until you disappear down the plug hole, right? So, qualify out.

Good questions, help you qualify out.

Now let me give you, give you some example questions early on.

We've said that we wanna make sure that we're talking to the decision maker, so ask them. Who else is involved other than you in making this decision? And if they say, no, it's just me, then, then that's a good, good point. If, if they say, well, you know, there are two or two or three other people, "who are they and how could I get access to them? Because they'll have a perspective on this and I would like to make sure that I'm meeting all of the requirements.  If they are committed working with you to get the best solution they should provide access to these other people who are involved in the decision.

 Another great question is why are you considering this purchase now at this moment. Get a sense of what's driving their urgency. Another way of asking is, what would be the consequence of not making this decision. If the consequences is minimal, then it's not really that important.

If they say, well, it's not that urgent, they could delay the decision for a long period of time and you might want to think about how you handle this opportunity and develop a cadence that is in more, concert with a longer decision making cycle.  You want to get a sense of their urgency and you wanna understand if they don't do it, what's gonna happen.

If they've got a big enough problem, I need to do it now because, and they'll tell you why that they need to do it.

Then you could ask them what would cause you to change your mind in not buying, you know, my, my product. And they might have some concerns that they have not yet voiced. So there's always a hidden objection.

They don't always tell you what their biggest concern is up upfront. So you can have to dig for that. And then lastly , ask them how will you justify the investment? In this product, you want to get a sense of are they're prepared to commit the the dollars to your product? Do they think that it's expensive?

If they think that it's expensive, have you done a good enough job to to identify the value? And when you ask them to justify it, they're gonna talk about why they want to do it, what it's gonna do for their company, what it's gonna do for them, and they'll start giving you the value side of the equation.

So together you will build the value proposition and they'll help you sell it to themselves. So ask great questions. That's job number two.

Job number three is anchoring emotional success with you and your service.

People make emotional decisions that they post rationalize with logic. Human beings make decisions based on how they feel.

So the trick here is you want them every time they see you, they hear your voice on the phone, or they see an email from you they get excited and they're suffused with warm feelings and believe that everything is gonna be rosy and successful. So how do you do that? All right. Well, it's really quite simple.

What you want to do, and this will depend on the nature of your product, but if your product is more complex, the project takes a while to to sell, or your services take a while to install. You might ask, well, if we're successful in doing this for you, what would,  success look like 12 months out or six months out?

And get them to say, well, You know, it, it will have, you know, higher levels of productivity.  We'll have a good working environment. Let's say you're putting in a floor. Putting in a commercial floor. We will have a very clean environment. it will invite more people to come back from working at home.

We want more people to come into the office.  The acoustics are gonna be better. It's gonna look fantastic, so it's gonna create a good environment,  lower level of dust, because we're putting some some laminate down not all carpet. The carpet will absorb the noise.

And they start talking about the office environment that your commercial floor is gonna help them with, and they're imagining all of these productive bunnies, all happy working in the this beautiful office. And every time they see you, they're gonna think about that moment.

As opposed to, what we are often tempted to do is we start asking them about all of the problems.

What's the, what's the problem with the, oh, it's dirty, the floors. Dirty, you know, people are tripping. It's not safe. There's water contamination. there's mildew everywhere. I mean, they, they start getting a real downer on just talking about it. Resist the temptation to go, oh, let's talk about, moisture mitigation. And you talk about all of the reasons why moistures happen.

Now you'll talk about how you can solve the moisture problem, but you are wallowing in the problem. Right, we we're talking about the cracks. How people trip up on cracks. And you'll be talking about how, you can join things tightly together.

So technically you, you're solving the problem, but you're still wallowing in the problem.

Don't talk about the problem.

You've got plenty of time to install the floor and show them how it all you know works. Get them excited about this future vision where they've got this wonderful operating environment.

 Get them invested in the future, get them to paint that vision together, and then you can say, okay, now we've painted the picture of success. Let's, let's look at some of the steps on the way to get there. Step number one is we gotta get the the spec right, and let's get the contract signed, right?

So job three. Emotional engagement, you want to be anchored with success.

Job number four. They're called decision makers for a reason because they make decisions and they want to make decisions. So give them the decision to make.

Ask for the order.

Ask for a start date. Often we don't. We don't ask. We have a great meeting, but we don't ask for the order.

We don't ask them to sign the contract. We don't get ink on the paper.

Now remember, we asked them early on, are you the person? Does anybody else need to be involved? And they said, no, no, I'm the decision maker. And if they say, well, I need to think about it. Well, you told me at the start that, you are the, are the decision maker and I I believe you.

So, we have all of the information. What information do you not have that I could provide that would help us make this decision.  There may be an underlying objection that they've not yet put forth that will come out at this stage.

But asking the question at the beginning, who else do we need to involve? If they say no, it gives you license at the end to say it's just us, right? I've got the authority to be able to deliver and price and,  Build this project with you, and you are the decision maker. So what's getting in the way? Why can't we start? Let's get a start date. Ask them more than once.

Ask.

Ask once.

Ask twice.

You know, ask three times.

So ask for a decision.

So that's it. If you wanna engage with decision makers:

Number one, you've gotta identify and talk to the decision maker. Don't be afraid.

Number two, engage them. And that's not about giving fancy PowerPoint presentations and talking. It's about asking great questions. And great questions are hard questions cuz they make the decision maker think and they, they show that, you know Business

Number three, attach yourself to the emotional success. Get them to imagine what a great outcome is so that they paint that picture in the mind and you're not wallowing in all of the negativity and problems. So paint the vision and

job number four, ask for the order.

Ask for the decision. Ask multiple times.

You do these four things and you'll have a much higher success with decision makers.

So once again, hope you enjoyed this quick podcast and stay tuned because I will be developing a live show, sell the Sizzle, live with Mick, and that'll be going out on,  Facebook and Instagram.

We'll be doing it once a week. I've just gotta find the right time so that you can listen to that and participate in that. Be just a 15, 20 minute exercise where I'll take a, a topic, but then we can get into questions and hopefully as, as a group of sales professionals, we can all help each other out.

So watch out for that and I'll see you next week.