How you can make Industry and LoB executives your best advocates.

Before we get into “How do we influence?” Let’s realize that it is possible to win the sale and lose the customer. Why? Because the customer regrets afterwards the purchase that they made.
Did you know that in 89% of the high-regret purchases, buying teams said that they disagreed “on why they were doing – what they were doing”?

There is no consensus around what good looks like. The best possible option for a buying team is “one big compromise”, which they regret later-on. And that is not what you want. To avoid this, with whom do you need to engage? The answer is: you need to engage with business leaders.

Although technology purchases are much associated with IT departments, Gartner stated that 74% of all new funding for tech is partly or directly from the line of business, not central IT. By that, key influencers and decision makers come from the business, with a focus on business outcomes. You better make sure that you are relevant for those business leaders

Let’s dive into 5 reasons, why a business leader chooses a certain provider – like you.

You can see that business leaders choose providers for their understanding of business situations, as well as their understanding of what’s going on in their industry. This approach is successful, because buyers that choose providers on this basis, are more likely to have a “high quality deal” and no regret. Other characteristics like ‘existing relationship’ and ‘cultural fit’ – are highly correlated with regret. So, it’s important that your customers are choosing you because they know that you understand their business situation and industry. This means that they need to recognize themselves in your messaging.

When technology buyers are involved, they may already have decided by online self-study that they’re going down a certain route. The study says that business buyers are not interested in product categories and product messages, they hate an overload of information about products. They are interested in what the product MEANS to them, what business outcomes it will bring, how it contributes to achieving their own role or department KPIs.

So that is exactly how you can win LoB and Industry Executives as your advocates and supporters of your tailored business value proposition.

Here you see the “Triple Metric”: it helps to demonstrate how your solution impacts each level. You are expected to tell your value story from the corporate level, all the way down to the project level. Demonstrate how your solution impacts each level of a customer, to have the right conversation – with the right person.

Now keep in mind if you REALLY want to make an impact and make an Industry or LoB executive a hero in their organization, then you should not only speak to their specific role KPIs. You must make the link to why it’s important to their entire organization. That’s all the way at the top! Imagine that if you turn your Executive advocate into a hero, then that hero will sell for you, even if you are not there. Gartner calls the pyramid: “the hierarchy of customer value”.

Call to action for sellers:

1. The clearest precursor to purchasing regret is conflicting goals in the buying team: 9 out of 10 times.
2. You need to help achieving consensus in the buying team. You can best do that through business leaders, because they are funding new tech purchases 3 out of 4 times.
3. Help yourself by using the Triple Metric: demonstrating how your solution impacts each level of a customer organization, to have the right conversation – with the right person.