As a sales professional, it never gets easy when you finish giving a demo to a prospect and they respond with, “thanks, this is great, let me share it with the rest of my team.” At that point, you’ve lost control of the sale. You’re now reliant on their selling capabilities to pitch it to the rest of their team, as well as you did to them.
Furthermore, it’s becoming more and more common for prospects to skip the sales rep completely – they do their own research, and pitch their suggestion to the rest of their team. So how can you coach a prospect through the buyer’s journey when you don’t know even know that opportunity exists?
Pat Spenner of CEB writes, “CEB recently published research in the Harvard Business Review that reveals how successful suppliers prime buying groups with a common language, help groups share perspectives, motivate internal champions (also known as Mobilizers) to advocate solutions and equip those Mobilizers to help groups reach agreement. This is why building buying consensus is no longer just a sales problem. According to CEB, a prospect is 57% of the way through their buyer’s journey by the time they reach a sales rep, so it’s up to marketers to guide the buying group in a direction that allows for collaboration and consensus.
Read Pat’s full article, that dives into the deep-rooted challenges of driving buying consensus.
Interested in learning how CONSENSUS™ drives buying consensus through custom demo automation? Watch our demo below.