Who REALLY Is The Decision-Maker?

Who REALLY Is The Decision-Maker About Buying Your Product?

A couple of days ago, I had a really intriguing conversation. It was about decision-makers. When you’re selling your innovation to an organization, who is actually the decision-maker?

Here is a quick video (see the transcript below):

Transcript

A couple of days ago, I had a really intriguing conversation. It was actually about decision-makers. When you’re selling your innovation to an organization, who is actually the decision-maker?

Now let’s propose that we’re talking about something that is kind of geeky. I mean, technical and that the vast majority of people aren’t going to understand really how this thing works. Let me ask you do you think that conventional wisdom is:

  1. That the upper management of that organization is the ones that make that decision? 
  2. Is it a technical person who’s qualified and educated to understand how your product works? That is the real decision-maker.
  3. Is it a third party in play, and that is, whoever is going actually to use that product within the organization, is that maybe the party that makes that decision?

I’ll share with you something kind of funny. I was talking with a really smart guy, and we came up with the idea that we could compare these three different roles to births. 

  1. The upper management might be the red birds.
  2. The technical people might be the bluebirds.
  3. The users might be the green birds. 

Now the colors are completely arbitrary, but then we discovered something as we thought about who had actually given the okay to purchase in the past. It was indeed a different bird altogether. We called that bird the yellow bird. We said, actually, that bird is a peacemaker that magically connects the red bird, the bluebird, and the green bird. 

Interesting, because it’s not always what it seems to be. We think that the people at the very top, this upper management, that they are always the decision-maker. When the complexity of what you sell goes up, they may very well have to lean on technical people who are more qualified to understand whether this thing will do what it is promised to do—also, the user, who has to live with that decision in the end. 

That’s just to say that when you design your sales and marketing strategy, you need to be careful who really is the decision-maker. That may not be easy to find out at first, but after a little while, you can look back and investigate, and then that gives you some information about how to move forward in the smartest and most effective way.

I’m Curious

How clear are you about who is the decision-maker for buying what you offer?

Dr. Stephie

P.S.: I appreciate you commenting and sharing this with others. Thank you!

Stephie Althouse

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