Selling in a Crisis

34Deal with Decision Makers

“Over the past month I've had several of my potential accounts hit a wall because the person I was working with turned out not to be the decision maker. What is frustrating to me is these people told me in our initial meeting that they were the decision makers. I don't understand why people lie to me like that. How can I identify who is telling me the truth and who is not?”

This rep's frustration is real and shared by sales people everywhere who find themselves mired in stalled deals because they were dealing with the wrong person.

Sometimes you are dealing with a deceitful person who has no intention of doing business with you. They're just using you for free consulting or pricing information to use as leverage with your competitor.

These stakeholders are easy to spot because they are unwilling to engage, resist emotional connections, renege on commitments, and rush you through the sales process just to get what they want. The easiest way to pull the curtain back is asking them for multiple micro-commitments that require them to invest time and effort in the deal.

In other cases, you assume that they are the decision maker because you didn't qualify well enough to know otherwise. Do not assume. Ask questions and test your assumptions. Don't trust anything until you know it for a fact.

The most common reason you end up working with the wrong person, however, is that you asked one simple but deadly question: “Are you the decision maker?”

Most stakeholders ...