Dealing with the ever-growing buying decision group

28th January 2017 |   Bob Apollo

Bob Apollo on Building Scalable Businesses

Long ago and far away, there was a time when “selling to the C-level” was a credible and often effective strategy. Dozens – maybe hundreds – of sales books were written on the subject. If you could successfully sell to the top, so the authors claimed, sales success would surely follow.

Now, there’s no doubt that senior executives still play a significant role in decision making. But it’s also clear that there are a growing number of influential stakeholders involved in every complex, high-value buying decision. The authors of The Challenger Customer – published in 2015 – concluded that an average of 5.4 different people were formally involved in the average B2B buying decision.

That’s just an average figure (and almost certainly already out of date). In many complex sales situations, the number of actively engaged stakeholders can easily reach double figures – and the upward trend shows no sign of abating. It’s easy to understand why this is happening: buyers have become more risk averse and, in the absence of a clear consensus for change, are most comfortable sticking with the status quo.

Bob Appollo

Founder of UK-based Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners | + posts

Bob Apollo is the founder of UK-based Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners, the B2B sales effectiveness experts. Following a successful career spanning start-ups, scale-ups and corporates, Bob now spends his time as a coach and advisor to growth-phase technology-based businesses, equipping them to adopt the principles of Outcome-Centric Selling.