Salespeople need decisive decision makers

If your startup has salespeople who sell directly to businesses, they’re probably wasting a lot of time talking to people who cannot make a decision.

People who can’t make a decision to buy include employees or managers without the authority to buy, or CEOs/founders who lack decisiveness.

If you can quickly determine who can and cannot make a decision to buy, you will dramatically improve your sales momentum. The best way to do this is to ask your prospect questions like:

• What steps are required to close this deal?
• Tell me about the most recent SaaS purchase your team made. What was the process like?
• Who’s approval do you need to buy a product like ours?

Most contacts will give you a useful answer to these questions. Though, keep in mind two things

Dealing with indecision

Indecision comes in many forms, but some are more common than others. Here are a few specific examples:

• Employees or managers without the authority to buy. You should upgrade your contact as soon as possible. Find out who can decide, and get access to them. Do not rely on your contact to sell up to whoever the real decision maker is — they will never be as good at this as you are. Think about how long it takes for a new salesperson in your company to learn how to successfully sell your product. In my experience, deals with decision maker access are 3x more likely to close, so if you can’t get access, move onto the next deal.
• The CEO who can’t decide. While the best leaders are decisive, many leaders are not. Typically, they’ll delegate decisions downwards and rely on organisational consensus to make decisions. In many cases, it’s best to abandon these deals, but it is also possible to apply the same principles we just covered: upgrade your contact. If someone lower in the organisational hierarchy is truly empowered to decide, get access to that person and pitch first-hand.
• The inflated manager. This one is tough to identify, but middle managers in many organisations do not have buying power, and yet will tell you that they do. This is as common as it is frustrating. These people will often gate keep the true decision makers as it makes them seem less influential if they do defer to them. It’s usually best to move on.
• The manager with no (time or money) budget. There’s nothing more frustrating than getting to the finish line only to find out you need to wait for budget renewal in two months. Ask: “assuming we tick every box and you’re excited to move ahead, how soon can we get started?” This also applies to people bound by existing vendor lock-in. Some middle managers have small discretionary budgets: it’s possible to use these to your advantage. For example, if your product delivers results quickly, and you can offer a trial at a price that fits within their discretionary budget, you may be better positioned to sell to the real decision makers after you’ve delivered some real results to the client.

The best salespeople have great intuitions for which prospects are most decisive, and how to get access to better contacts. Everyone else wastes their time talking to people who will never buy, no matter how appealing they make it sound.