Sell to a decision-making team

An important factor in a customer's purchasing decision is your consistency, whether it's one person or a group of people making the decision. But it's obviously much easier to convince an individual than a group. When you're selling to a group of decision makers, you obviously need different skills. For example, you need to know: Are they volunteering, or are they instructed to participate? What beliefs do they hold together? Nine principles to help you sell to a decision-making team.

Let's face it -- the world has changed. Selling is harder than ever. Gone are the days when we could bring products into the market and price ourselves in markets without any effective competition. The kind of situation where the close relationship between the customer and the salesperson can close the sale and keep the customer may only appear in the movies. I'm sorry, everyone doesn't pay much attention to this relationship now.

You have to learn to sit down, convince customers to accept your point of view, and then sell. Persuasion is the key to whether customers can accept your point of view, and the most influential factor is consistency. If you can successfully show that you have a consistent set of standards and never change, it can have surprising effects. Over time, people will start to trust you. On the basis of this trust, you can be incredibly persuasive.

One of the best ways to test persuasiveness is to make a pitch to a group of decision makers. Every decision maker has his own set of creeds and expectations. The difficulty of pitching is how to influence such a group of people to accept your point of view.

How can you make the most of your persuasion in the face of a group of decision makers? The following are some specific application guidelines.

1. Find out why this group of decision makers came. The first thing to consider before convincing these people is: how did they get here? Did they come by order, or did they volunteer? For example, company management may make these people mandatory to attend regardless of their wishes. They may even be hostile to you if they are forced to attend. On the other hand, if they're volunteering, then obviously you're dealing with a much friendlier audience.

But for you, the persuader, there are more important factors. If your audience is volunteering, you're almost sure they've taken your point. You don't have to introduce too many opposing viewpoints, and you don't have to worry about not being able to change your audience's opinion. You can focus all your energy on persuading your audience to take action.

Second, get this group of decision makers to accept your point of view. It's very easy to do this: Start with a topic that your audience cares about.

For example, if you're going to an oil company to make a pitch, and you know that company is strongly opposed to any government interference in the business. You sell computer technology and custom software. Then you can start by talking to them about the Fortune 500 companies you have had business relationships with, and then talk about how well you work with all walks of life. Then you can say, "Actually, the only department we don't have a good business relationship with is the government." What's the benefit of that? While this approach won't get neutral listeners to support your plan, it will silence those who might disagree.

Researcher W. Weiss demonstrates how this works. He divided 120 college students into two groups. The topic of his talk was "Nationwide Fluoridation of Water". Through prior questionnaires, he learned that students supported the practice, but supporters were not in the majority.

Before the topic of fluoridation in water, the speaker told a group of students that he was very supportive of student freedom, and the students were clearly fanatical. But the speaker didn't talk about it with another group of students. The speaker hoped that both groups of students would support a ban on fluoridation in water. Remember, the students actually support fluoridation in water, so the speaker is asking them to change their opinion.

The speaker was able to convince the first group, the one who had heard him talk about supporting student freedom. But the speaker was unable to convince the second group. Further research has shown that solidarity with one popular topic, while not getting the audience to support another topic, does diversify many who might disagree, allowing the speaker to win the support of the majority.

3. Decide whether to place your strongest argument at the beginning or end of the pitch. There is no doubt that people are more impressed by what they first hear or what they hear last. So put your strongest argument at the beginning or end of the pitch. Just like the first or last paragraph of a sales letter should be the most powerful.

But if you have 20 minutes to impress your audience, wouldn't it be better to put your best argument at the beginning? Or do you want to save the strongest argument for last, with an uplifting call to action for your audience?

This depends on the audience. That's why you need to find out if your audience is willing or ordered. If the audience is friendly and has accepted your talk, save the strongest arguments for last. The audience will show enough support for what you're talking about. So you can save your most powerful weapon for last and issue a call to action.

If your audience has doubts about what you're promoting, or if they're negative or hostile, place your strongest argument at the beginning of the pitch. You have to get your audience's attention enough to make them listen carefully to what you have to say. You can start by saying, "Maybe you won't like what I'm about to talk about, but someone has to say it. If we don't do something about it, your company will be harder today than it has been 20 years since it was created." There are even more difficulties in the future."

Fourth, if several sales teams are present, they should insist on speaking first. For example, you sell hardware. Home Depot is conducting a biannual supplier review. You are sitting in the lobby with your team, and there are 5 other sales teams, all of which are your direct competitors. Home Depot's review board will hear presentations from all six companies and make a selection. Would you like to speak first or last?

Research shows that your team is better off speaking first. If you can make your point first, and then if the other sales team can outperform you and let them out, you'll have a better chance of winning. The downside, of course, is that you won't be able to understand what other sales teams are talking about. Another sales team might counter your point, but your advantage is that you can strike the heart of your audience first.

5. The question-and-answer presentation will help you. The purpose of a question-and-answer pitch is to get the majority of your audience to support your point. Generally speaking, people support the topics they are happy to talk about.

Always encourage those who dare to ask questions. You don't necessarily have to agree with them, but you need to tell them they ask good questions and treat them warmly. If you're uncomfortable with questions from the floor, chances are you don't know much about your product or service. Either you don't trust your product or service enough. If you are convinced that they need to buy from you, then you welcome objections, because then you have the opportunity to correct any misunderstandings that may exist in your audience. Don't worry about a hostile questioner making you look like a fool. Unless you're hostile to your audience, they won't tease you like that.

6. Use constructive methods to distract your audience to improve your persuasiveness. Don't worry too much about your audience being distracted. Once the audience is properly distracted, it becomes much easier to persuade them. Sounds weird, right? But this is the truth. Listeners who are distracted are more persuaded than those who are forced to focus on the business at hand. However, to achieve this effect, the distraction should be moderate and not objectionable. A business lunch is the perfect way to feel comfortable and moderately distracted -- and persuasion in this setting is fantastic.

When considering this question, it is self-evident that a pleasant distraction can help persuasion efforts. It can feel overwhelming when forced to focus on making decisions. A pleasant, moderate distraction creates a warm, friendly atmosphere that makes your message more receptive to customers.

You can also unwittingly distract your audience with some interesting visual aids, such as adding some colorful cartoons to your PowerPoint presentation. This keeps listeners from getting bored and is a distraction that's enjoyable without being overly exaggerated.

7. Decide whether you want to introduce both sides of the issue or just one side. There are three basic principles for dealing with this issue.

You only need to address one aspect of the problem if: the group of decision makers is friendly; you are the only one making the pitch; you want quick approval, not long-term support.

You need to address both sides of the problem if: the group is hostile; they will also be listening to salespeople who disagree; you want long-term support.

Eight, do not exaggerate your introduction. Slight exaggeration for emphasis is allowed, but not too much. Taking this approach in the persuasion process has a clear diminishing returns effect.

If you can increase your audience's sense of accomplishment after accepting your offer, then your persuasive ability will increase. On the other hand, this also increases your penalties for dissenting listeners. But more important than the sense of achievement or the severity of the punishment is to convince the audience that the achievement or punishment is real.

Achieving or punishing persuasion is greatly diminished once the audience loses trust in you because of your over-exaggeration.

9. Merely providing information does not change the audience's opinion. You have to draw conclusions, and you have to ask your audience to take action. Often, salespeople are very good at guiding customers to the threshold of making a final decision. Then they failed because they didn't take the crucial step: telling the customer exactly what to do next. They didn't say, "I just need you to tell me it's time to ship," nor, "I need you to give me an order number and a deposit check for $5,000."

The persuasive people know that, It's not enough to just make a sales request. You also have to tell the other person what you want them to do.

Original text excerpted with permission from Secrets of Power Persuasion for Salespeople by Roger Dawson, published by Career Press Inc. (Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, USA). The author registered copyright in 2003. Translated by Su Yong.

Roger Dawson has been a professional speaker for the past 20 years and has trained executives, managers and salespeople throughout the US, Canada and Australia.