So you’ve worked on the perfect sales pitch for months, ensured your product offers unparalleled value, and are confident of meeting customer pain points. There’s one tiny problem – you’re reaching out to those who, despite their interest and excitement, have no authority to seal the deal.
B2B purchase decisions are much more complex than B2C because the customer is another organization (not an individual). On average, seven decision-makers may be involved in a mid-sized company for every B2B purchase. It’s also worth noting that around 44% of all final B2B buying decisions are made by millennials.
Keeping such factors in mind is important to win a deal in your favor. When you identify the right decision-makers and target them from the get-go, it will save you time and resources.
Seems like it’s easier said than done? In this article, we will share four tips to identify key decision-makers. This will help you stave off all final decision stalemates.
Learn About Your Ideal Buyer Persona
Your ideal customer or buyer persona will determine who you target and how. This is because not all buyers are alike. Let’s understand why –
- In companies with less than 50 employees, the Chief Executive Officer or CEO is usually the final decision-maker. If the company has co-founders with experienced leadership, they may participate in the decision-making process.
- The Vice Presidents of each department are usually the decision-makers involved in companies with 50 to 100 employees.
- In companies where the employee strength ranges between 100 and 500, specialized roles are assigned for decision-making in every department. These include business development managers, HR managers, operations managers, etc.
- For companies with over 500 employees, regional roles may be attached to each specialized one, such as a North American or East Coast rep.
After figuring out the relevant job titles, it’s time to prepare a decision-maker buyer persona. Answer certain questions to customize your outreach, including – what duties the decision-maker performs on a daily, how long they have been working at the company, how they interact with the product (through website or blogs), and where these decision-makers hang out (forums, chatrooms, social platforms, etc.).
Use LinkedIn to Your Advantage
LinkedIn is the go-to answer for almost any marketing challenge in the B2B business world. Having evolved beyond a professional networking space, this platform received a whopping 47% of votes in a poll analysis for the best B2B marketing platform.
Did you know it takes at least eight cold calls to reach a B2B prospect? However, if you can find a direct connection on LinkedIn who is willing to introduce you to the decision-maker, it’s no longer a cold call.
Start by going through the top positions at your target company. Keep in mind a few things like –
- How long have they been associated with the company? For instance – if a CMO has been around for two years but the Marketing Director has had a tenure of three, it’s more likely that the latter will have the greater influence.
- How are they endorsed? This will give you an idea of the tools the company uses, their managerial and tactical skills, etc.
- What information is available on their profile? If they mention that they’re responsible for planning and executing strategies for their department, you’ve probably found the one you’re looking for.
Know Who to Target With Account Mapping
It’s possible to have churned through LinkedIn but to no avail. Alternatively, LinkedIn may have given you some idea of the best decision-makers to contact, but you still wish to be sure. The next step to identifying the relevant B2B decision-makers is to map the target organization.
In the case of a public company, this should work by looking at the company’s 10-K filing. As for a private company, account mapping software can help. It will offer a holistic view of each target account/company, helping you keep track of decision-makers, blockers, influencers, and champions.
For instance – you will know the key characteristics of relevant accounts, which will help you to describe your target audience, plan their buyer’s journey, and devise personalized campaigns and offerings. According to Prolifiq, the account mapping journey must be a systematic approach involving steps like –
- Proper usage of CRM data – Which key relationships make or break deals? Which job profiles are primarily involved in the deal cycle?
- Creating a group of core prospects that the sales team must focus on at a minimum
- Identifying additional teams or business units that the primary decision-makers work with regularly
- Preparing a list of verticals that see the most expansion in product usage and spending
- Developing a solid strategy to engage each of the core stakeholders while documenting their feedback, dialogues, etc., to track account progress
Only after mapping your target accounts well will you have a clear picture of who to communicate with.
Use Marketing Data
Product conversations and purchase decisions are no longer made in person (even in the B2B world). In fact, it is expected that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions will take place through digital media. This means it’s no longer possible to rely on cues taken from a customer’s body language.
Thankfully, their digital footprints and content consumption behaviors can help you find promising buying patterns. You must become an effective user of web analytics. The marketing data readily available at your fingertips is your ticket to uncovering every potential decision-maker’s online behavior.
For example – do you find them visiting a lot of competitor sites? Are they discovering new software or making comparisons? Answers to these questions will tell you the stage of their buyer’s journey – awareness, consideration, or decision-making. Depending on that, you can figure out whether it makes sense to reach out.
Moreover, even when you do reach out, you can understand what strategies to use to seal the deal. An example would be sharing a product demo or case studies for a decision-maker in the consideration stage. Similarly, you may share customer testimonials for those in the decision-making stage.
Finally, know that you need not chase after the primary decision-maker perpetually. After all, they say that sometimes it’s the next-best option that works out. In other words, try to get the gatekeeper on your side.
Every organization has a decision-making hierarchy. Understand the company’s layout and gather information on all kinds of decision-makers, including technical experts, gatekeepers, champions, etc. That way, the others can help you secure the contact details or build a rapport with the primary decision-makers.
.){kind=link}