A major problem facing today’s sales and marketing teams is not their ability to sell solutions; rather its customers’ inability to buy, owing to larger and more diverse purchase groups. To some extent, this is hardly new – there have always been committees for sales teams to convince. But flatter organisational structures have resulted in bigger challenges for sales and marketing teams and, in the wake of the financial crisis, risk-averse customers balk at making even the smallest buying decisions on their own, meaning that nearly all B2B deals require agreement from a widening set of customer stakeholders.

This makes the job of the sales and marketing teams ever-more challenging. Identifying the right individual or group within the company who can get decisions made and contracts signed is critical in today’s buying environment. The average B2B purchase now involves 5.4 stakeholders who are typically from different parts of the business – and often different geographies – all of whom have the ability to sway the final decision and who are extremely difficult to align in the process.

This is where the challenger customer, or what we call ‘Mobiliser,’ plays a vital role for sales and marketing teams who want to reach those who matter. The Mobiliser is often overlooked by salespeople and marketers, as they are usually harder to engage, ask tough questions, and are vendor agnostic.

CEB research shows that while Mobilisers aren’t necessarily senior decision-makers, they are significantly more able to inspire organisational action and forge consensus than other personality types. This is because they are the individuals who challenge their organisations to do better, and question how their organisation collectively behaves by disrupting how their organisation collectively thinks.

So, how can businesses make use of this knowledge to identify and equip the Mobiliser who will really forge change?

1. Don’t target advocates, target Mobilisers

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 person they believe can truly drive action within the account –the Mobiliser. If they can’t name a Mobiliser, it’s time to re-assess 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 current 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’re wrong and replacing their flawed view of their business with 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 diplomatically tell a customer that they’re “wrong” is to first 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, you’re creating a map of your customer’s mental model, which can highlight where customers 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.

In summary, our research shows that everyone is facing the challenge of dealing with multiple departments from different geographies and with varied perspectives on a deal, meaning that no sale is straightforward. But far from being an insurmountable challenge, this can be an opportunity for teams to find the right person to forge consensus and drive positive change for everyone involved.

 

By Pat Spenner, Strategic Initiatives Leader in the Sales and Marketing practice at CEB. 

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