The One Buyer You're Not Talking To

Stakeholders, buyers, influencers. You've mapped them all, and you're still missing the one person who actually moves the deal.

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If you prefer to read - here is the transcript:

Something we don't talk about often enough when it comes to opportunity conversion is uncovering the financial beneficiary.

We talk a lot about stakeholders. We talk a lot about buyers. We talk a lot about influencers. But we don't talk about the financial beneficiary.

Now, the financial beneficiary could be one of those people, or not. But they matter because they are the person who stands to gain the most financially, by either solving this problem or by not solving it.

It's the chief legal counsel facing a $3 million compliance charge from the SEC. It's the sales VP whose software keeps crashing while they lose deals. It's the marketing VP whose campaigns are being sabotaged by fraudsters. It's the VP of finance worried about the cash bleeding out of the organization with nothing coming back in. That person might control a bigger budget.

They might not have the final say. But they can put pressure and urgency on the team making the decision. They can stomp into an office and make it a priority, or resolve it themselves and take the priority away. They're critical to the buying process and to opportunity management, because they are the ones who stand to gain or lose the most from the problem persisting.

So find out who the financial beneficiary is.

Ask who stands to gain or lose if this opportunity doesn't get resolved. Who is most affected by this? Who made this a priority for you? Who has the most on the line in getting this right?

Once you understand who's putting pressure and urgency on the group, you can move forward by building a bigger business case, understanding that person's needs and requirements, and matching the level of urgency it takes to get the deal done.