In marketing we often speak about “buyer personas” and “the buyer journey.” But reality shows that many large technology purchases are made by buying committees rather than individuals, making the buyer journey highly complex.
The bigger the buyer committee, the longer the sales process.
Selling to a committee rather an individual can often be baffling and frustrating because of what it seems like a buyer journey that will never end.
Let’s set the groundwork to better understand what a buyer persona and buyer journey is by agreeing on some basic definitions.
What is a Buyer Persona: “A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.” (source: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/buyer-persona-definition-under-100-sr)
What is Buyer Journey: “The buyer journey is a series of interactions between a customer and a company that occur as the customer pursues a specific goal.”
https://www.forrester.com/Customer-Journey#
When purchases are made by buying committees, the decision is made by a team of individuals who are usually from different departments who may each have different goals and objectives of their own.
The following is one of the most complex scenarios I have seen, where buying committee roles were divided into four components:
The primary Point of Contact and ultimate decision maker/user
Executive Sponsor and/or Chief Executive (CxO)
Technical representatives
Legal representative
Purchasing or procurement department
Have you run into similar scenarios? Can you think of any that I’ve not included from your experience? Did you ever have more than five departments involved?
Let’s break these down a bit and uncover their role in the buyer journey:
● Primary Point of Contact or head of the department is usually the individual who has a vested interest in the purchase. At times the head of the department assigns an individual within their team the task to do the research, gather internal requirements, and narrow down the top three to five offerings on the marketplace,
● Technical representatives (from IT department) are often paired with the business analyst or the primary point of contact responsible for researching the offerings to analyze the proposed solutions at a technical level. IT department will be the implementer and can help uncover specific requirements and packages.
● Executive Sponsor and/or Chief Executive (CxO) is the person that ultimately sign off on the purchase. It is key to appeal to them and keep them in the loop.
● Legal representatives are involved with contract, liability and compliance issues. Privacy laws are becoming more complex. Legal personnel are responsible to ensure that the organization is appropriately protecting Personal Identifiable Information (PII) and/or Personal Health Information (PHI).
● Purchasing or procurement department manages the purchasing process to include standard terms and conditions, invoicing, payment, etc.
In anticipation of such complexity it is important for any company selling a product or service to understand the different individual lenses used by committee members and what sort of information each of them may require in the consideration process. Marketing can help the sales team tremendously by ensuring that sales has tools and messaging for each constituent department on the buying committee.
It is also important to evaluate the level of relative influence that each department has on the final decision. We can no longer operate as if we’re selling to one individual. We are selling to anywhere from 3 to 15 people — and it’s our job to showcase value to them all.
If marketing is in a direct sales support role, it should work with the sales team to compare notes on the chemistry and relative influence of the players involved in the purchase. Sales support in this context can also provide valuable feedback to be incorporated in optimizing the buyer journey and to minimize the sales cycle whenever possible.
Tiziana Barrow
Founder, Tilagia