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I think we all know what a decision maker is at a customer or prospect. This is the person or persons that have the authority to order your products and services. It’s as simple as that. It can literally be just about anyone in a company. I’m surprised sometimes by who are designated as purchasing decision makers. Sometimes it’s the receptionist, sometimes it’s the CEO and sometimes it’s actually someone in purchasing. A decision maker is in contrast to information gatherers or recommenders whom you provide information to but aren’t actually involved in the buying decision. Information gatherers and recommenders provide their information to an ultimate decision maker.

Let’s talk for a second about multiple decision makers. There are two types.

1. Vertical Decision Makers. These are decision makers that either get or give information relative to the buying decision and must act in concert with other Vertical Decision Makers before a buying decision is made. This is group buying. If you are selling to person “A” who has to get approval from manager “B” before buying then they are a Vertical Decision Maker. And if manager “B” won’t make a buying decision before talking with person “A” then they are also a Vertical Decision Maker. We typically don’t like dealing with Vertical Decision Makers because we aren’t selling to a unilateral decision maker and so we burn a lot of time. When you find yourself in one of these situations make sure you develop an ultimate decision maker by earning his or her trust and bypassing the group process.

2. Horizontal Decision Makers. We like this kind of selling environment. This is a situation where you are dealing directly with multiple ultimate decision makers who can all buy from you. This would be common in situations where you are selling your product or service to multiple departments within the same company. Here’s a simple and yet unbelievably infrequently used selling tip. When you are selling to an ultimate decision maker at a large company be sure to ask them this simple question, “Besides yourself, who else orders these products and services at this company?” This question will help ferret out other Horizontal Decision Makers.

Your goal as a sales professional is to eliminate Vertical Decision Maker selling environments by developing an ultimate decision maker at those customers. You also want to create Horizontal Decision Maker selling environments and expand the ones you have.

Tags: customers

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