Navigating today's B2B landscape often feels less like selling and more like herding cats as buying groups continue to expand. For modern sales representatives, dealing with decision by committee has become the default challenge, making consensus-building the most crucial skill in enterprise sales. In this episode, host Mark Cox and sales expert Dave Hanley explore how risk aversion in large corporations forces buyers into stagnant patterns where they choose to "miss out rather than mess up." They share actionable strategies to map the buyer's journey, leverage advanced relationship development skills, and employ strategic questions to guide buying groups toward making the right decision for their business.
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Office Hours - Episode 6 - Dealing With 'Decision By Committee'
Dave, welcome to another great episode of the show.
Mark, I’m excited for another session here. We've got some great questions.
Let's jump right into it, Sir. Please and thank you.
Question number one, we have Sharon. Sharon says, “I've been in sales for over 25 years. One thing I've noticed in recent years is a shift towards more and more people being involved in every buying decision. We sell pretty large and complex tech solutions. I feel like my whole job now is like herding cats to build consensus. Is this a trend you're seeing across the board? Any advice on how to succeed if this is the new reality?”
Dealing With 'Decision By Committee' And Overcoming Buyer Risk Aversion
Sharon, you're spot on, by the way. There is lots of research and a couple of great books on this by people we know. Brent Adamson, who's been on the show a number of times. We've had him on recently on the Selling Well podcast, but he does talk about how the buying group has extended over time. They're having this difficulty getting consensus. Matt Dixon speaks to this in his book called The JOLT Effect with Ted McKenna, but it's true. There was a time and place, let's call it 25 years ago, in business, where if somebody had a certain degree of authority, they made significant decisions almost on their own and drove them top-down.
I wasn't old enough to see this, but I used to hear stories of how a CIO would make a single decision on enterprise software, practically. Something huge. It is too risky to do that anymore. A couple of things have driven this. There's a lot of risk aversion in large corporations when they're making decisions. In Matt Dixon's book, the great book, The JOLT Effect, he does talk about how people in big companies think it is easier to miss out versus mess up.
Why would I want to put up my hand, make a huge decision? Maybe it's a little controversial. Why would I want to do that? Now I put a target on my back instead of just if I miss out on something or never do anything, it's much easier. If I get nine people in a room and so, we all tried to make a decision together. We all wanted to get consensus, but it's not my decision. It's the group decision. You're exactly right. What that leads into is the need to be even better at selling to get anything done. What you're trying to do is trying to help that buying group make the right decision for their business.
That's not always easy because they don't have depth. They don't have the experience sometimes in terms of what you do. The second thing is, they don't even understand how they make a decision internally for some of these things because it's not something they do every quarter. You're in a room and there's 6, 7, or 8 people there. They haven't sorted out exactly who's got what degree of influence on this decision, who's got a role, who's got veto power.
Again, the Gardner Group came up with a fantastic diagram that you can Google or use AI on called the Spaghetti Diagram. They tried to map out the buyer's journey to make a decision back in 2017. Instead of the buyer's journey being serial and linear, it's all over the place. It looks like somebody took spaghetti and threw it up against a wall. At the end of the day, you're trying to do two things. You've got to have just a relentless focus on understanding the business of the client you're selling into. You can always make sure that what you're trying to do is help them achieve a desired outcome that's meaningful, number one.
The second thing you need to do is just have very advanced relationship development skills and a high degree of emotional intelligence so that you can navigate the different buying groups, understand who's in that buying group, and understand what's most important to them. Make sure that you can build trust and credibility with those people. This is why enterprise sales is so difficult, because those are two pretty tough things to accomplish. What do you see, Dave? Anything to add to that?
Decision By Committee: The essence of sales strategy is not fitting a wrong product into a company to get a deal done. It's relentlessly working to figure out how to help that buying group make the right decision for their business.
There's a couple of things that come into play. The one thing, when I was selling to large insurance companies for many years, it's like that VP wants a great solution that's going to increase their productivity. There's something they want even more, which is to not get fired. That's the number one goal. You have to keep that in mind. As you said, this is becoming a case where as a seller, you have to be a project manager. Manage this project, which is the deal through to completion.
When you look back, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, or 50 years ago, there were a lot more solutions brought to the table where the outcome was a lot more obvious in terms of what it brought. Where it's like, “We're going to go from a fax machine to computerizing something.” That's big. Easy decision to make. Nowadays, there's a lot more incremental solutions where it's like, “We're going to turn, we're going to be turning the dial up 10%, 15%, or 20% on this one metric. Is it worth it or is it not worth it? It says there's a lot more risk management and assessing, is this worth doing or not? It's part of the issue that Sharon's seeing.
Sharon, it's such a great question, and Dave, great points. Also, think of the economic times we're in now. When macroeconomic factors are tough and companies are worried about sustainability and long-term profitability. People in those companies are even more risk-averse. At the end of the day, we all have to make decisions and try to do the right thing for our company. It's on us to make decisions. The higher up the chain you go, the more important it is that you make a decision as a leader. You don't always have all the information.
Trying to help these buying groups make a better decision help them get to a better future. The last point I will bring up if I could, Dave, is this is the essence of sales strategy. It's not fitting a wrong product into a company to get a deal done. It's relentlessly working to figure out how to help that buying group make the right decision for their business. How do I navigate the needs and wants of all the different people on that buying committee or buying team?
That's the essence of sales. It's all about helping them. The salespeople generally spend too much time solutioning a deal, but not enough time on sales strategy and sales execution. They don't spend enough time working all of this and working those relationships and building them. They spend too much time trying to figure out what the solution is and what's my price and how do I get out of the door.
Sometimes it's the right decision, as you said. It's not the decision to buy your product. Also, spending the time to figure out that it's the wrong decision. That's also a win because you can divert your attention and efforts elsewhere.
Great question. Thanks, Sharon.
It's a good one. We got another one here from Eric, just skimming this. It looks like it's right in your wheelhouse. I know you've got some good stuff on this one. Eric says, “Like most companies, we have a few sales reps turn over each year. Lately, I've been scratching my head on how we best ramp up newly hired salespeople to get them productive ASAP. What do you recommend to minimize the time it takes to ramp someone up?”
Shortening Sales Ramp-Up Times With A Formal Onboarding Plan
You're right, Dave. Right in the wheelhouse. Thank you, Eric, for your great question. A formal onboarding plan. Team, most companies have a company onboarding program where you go through some policies and security. Sometimes a little bit about the products and services. In sales, we need a formal onboarding plan to shrink the time to value for a new sales hire. In my experience, the more formal the plan, the more it's positioned as a bit of a boot camp, the better it's for the salesperson because they ramp up more quickly.
In sales, we need a formal onboarding plan to shrink the time to value for a new sales hire.
The better it is for the company because they shrink the time to value, meaning that salespeople start contributing in a much shorter time frame. When we think about an onboarding program team, a lot of times when we've all lived through it, we come on board. They say there's an onboarding program. It's driven by HR. I met with my manager who's so busy because it's the end of the quarter. She's swamped. We get 30 minutes together, then she says, “Why don't you travel in the field with Dave Hanley for a few days?”
Dave drives around telling me how much he doesn't like the company. Not this Dave Hanley. The doppelganger in the Marvel parallel universe. One of the things we like to think about with an onboarding plan, joking aside. We're trying to do three things with a new sales hire. We're trying to teach them about our company, products, and services. More importantly, we're trying to teach them about the markets we sell into. The ideal client profile, the buyer personas, the challenges that those companies have that our solution fixes or helps with. Finally, the third thing we're trying to teach in an onboarding plan is how we sell.
How we sell can be competitive differentiation. The way we teach is also threefold. We teach with what I call passive learning as part of an onboarding plan. The new sales hire, whose name is Jane. Jane goes into a room digitally or physically, and somebody comes in and teaches Jane about the products and services or about the vertical markets we sell into or about how we sell. These are pre-booked meetings where we have internal experts come in and teach Jane in a room.
There's a way to teach. Passive learning. Jane gets to listen and learn, then there's going to be learning on her own. Jane's going to take what she learned. She's got some materials. Put white space in the onboarding plan so Jane can go away and build on her internal learning and go on websites and do additional research. Maybe use the learning management system. We like it, but once a week, Jane's got to present back to us what she knows. Literally, we've got formal role plays or presentations every Friday, almost every week of their onboarding whether it's 6 weeks or 8 weeks.
They feel like they're on the hook for presenting back. It's an active presentation of what they know. That does a couple of things, Dave. Most importantly, it helps the leadership team in sales assess how that new person's doing. Are they learning what they need to learn? If they're on the hook for presenting once a week and sharing, then you can give them immediate feedback like, “You did a great job. Here's what you picked up. You prepared properly.” It also helps teach the culture.
This is our expectation for the quality and the preparation of one of those weekly presentations. The onboarding plan, by the way, is not always just on the sales leader. On these weekly presentations, they've got to do where we're assessing their learning. You might bring other people from the sales team and put them in the room. You might bring other people from the executive team, bring the head of marketing, bring the finance person in to see how Jane's doing with her onboarding.
These weekly touch points help us assess how they're doing and then feedback the breakfast of champions. We can point them in a direction if it's not resonating, certain things aren't working out. They can't articulate our value proposition. We can give them real-time feedback, versus the old way. I travel around with Dave for a while. Weeks later, you take the new salesperson, Jane, on a sales call and you see what she does in front of a client. You go, “She doesn't know anything about our business.” Does any of this resonate?
Reinforcing Sales Standards: Peer-To-Peer Training And Active Feedback
This hits home. We implemented this many years ago in our business. The one thing I would encourage, and I'm assuming Eric is the sales leader. Somebody who's doing this type of ramp-up. Bring in the other team members. Bring in one of your salespeople and say, “We want you to come in. Train Jane on our sales process or on some aspect,” which gives that person a little bit of like, “I'm going to train this new person. I better get up to speed and make sure I know this stuff is cold.”
There's nothing like having to teach something to be able to master it, which is great. The other thing you said which is also huge, is that real time feedback. The person comes in. It's a big deal that they're presenting to some of the management and the company. They're like, “This is serious.” We've had a situation in the past where someone comes in and they're casual and they're not prepared.
We, at the end go, “That wasn't good enough.” You have higher expectations. The next week, immediately they're like, “These guys are seemingly pretty casual around the office, but they have pretty high expectations about how this stuff needs to get delivered.” The next week, they came in and nailed it because we made that really clear. That's massive.
Dave, thanks for sharing that. It's a perfect example because that new person, you're doing them the favor by letting them know. The sooner they understand how we do things here, the sooner they understand they don't get confused by a great culture and a fun culture. It doesn't mean we're not professional. It doesn't mean we don't work hard or we don't prepare. We can have both. Sometimes, these are things that aren't self-evident to everybody.
Team, this onboarding plan, a couple of other quick thoughts. Once you create a template of this and a structure of this, as you have your first few sales hires, Eric, go through this. At the end of the onboarding plan, once they've been certified, because that's what you're doing. You're treating it like a bootcamp. They've got to get certified to be unleashed on our territory, our client base. Do ask them what would have been more helpful?
Once they're through it, say, “What would you suggest for the next person going through this? Let's have this constant improvement. What are two or three things we could have done differently to make this even better for you?” The second thing I'd always focus on is, if we're getting somebody to help with the onboarding plan where they're going to teach about our products and services. They're going to teach about how we sell. Not everybody's a naturally great teacher. Help them.
The person who's going to be running that module. Help them with a structure that says, “Here's the learning objective. Here's what we're hoping the person can do when they leave the room.” When they're tasked with doing the presentation back, here's what we're going to assess. Try and document those things, the learning objective and how we'd measure progress when they have to present back to us. Finally, I would let every new sales hire know when they come on board with a company, it's going to be like a bootcamp for the first couple of months so that they know it's not going to just be passive learning.
Decision By Committee: How we sell can actually be competitive differentiation.
Every week, they're going to be on the hook to present. It's better for them, but it's also just so they can manage their calendar and so forth. That there is going to be some self-study, evening study, or maybe work on weekends. They can ramp up properly the first time while they still have that energy and enthusiasm of being a new hire. They are going to shorten the time to value because that's way better for them too.
The right people love this. Most companies are pretty bad at onboarding, frankly. They just go, “Here's the laptop. Here's the bathroom. Go start selling.” Even if you implement any aspect of that, you're going to be ahead of 90% of companies.
Thanks, Eric. Great question.
Good stuff. Number three here, we have Lewis. Lewis says, “I've been in my current sales role about seven years now, and I've noticed a change in the way that my buyers are interacting with me. I wanted to see how best to deal with this. On sales calls now, prospects seem much more informed and have already done a good level of research and diligence on me and my competitors. How should I tweak my approach to thrive in this seemingly new environment?”
Out-Preparing The Educated Buyer: Elevating Sales Prep With AI Tools
Great question, Lewis. Thank you. Do the same thing. You said your buyers are much more educated. They're doing research on me and my competitors. Before anybody goes to another meeting with any client in this day and age, let's do our research on the client and the prospect. One of the fun things we did. The second we talk about AI, as soon as it comes out of my mouth, it's dated. One of the things we did with a team we were working with was we asked them, “How are you using AI?”
They said, “We're going to be doing research. We're trying to get summaries of annual reports of clients that we're working with. We upload it all. We look for a one-page summary of what's going on with their business.” Fantastic. Our suggestion was, why don't we feed AI the same thing on us? Let's go get four years of our annual reports, our quarterly updates, talk about some of the things that we're doing, then feed AI how we want to behave and sell as a sales organization.
Say, “I love to trigger a fantastic conversation with the VP of retail banking for X, Y, and Z. Here's all of their data and information. Here's our data and information. Please give me seven questions and a structure for a meeting that would help me trigger a fantastic conversation that would showcase to them.” All we care about is helping them run a better business. The stuff that came back gives you a framework for this conversation where you're earning the right to almost be a consultant for that company.
I put everything about us. Everything about them. Everything about how we sell and how we want to be perceived. Try and do the same thing. Try and think about Lewis. What would you do in that sales meeting if it had to be so good that the client would pay for it? How would you structure that discussion? What questions might you ask? What insights and knowledge would you bring to the table? How do you walk out of that meeting where somebody literally goes, “Mark never spoke about sales training.”
By the way, no one's ever asked what we do in sales training. We're a sales training company. Most of you know that. We also do sales enablement consulting. No one ever says, “What do you do in training?” The conversation is all about elevating sales performance, their sales performance. It's all about their business. It's all about thinking about their sales playbook and their go-to-market. How we do these things never comes into it. No one cares. The only thing they care about is accelerating revenue growth. The only thing I care about is having a great conversation, talking to them about some of the opportunities to do that. What do you think, Dave? What would you add?
I love that. It's keeping in mind that if they're meeting with you and 2 or 3 or 4 competitors. Those competitors are probably coming in going, “Here's my PowerPoint. All about us.” Meanwhile, you're having a conversation about them. It's like the cocktail party where you talk to somebody and they're interested and you ask a ton of questions and then they leave and they go, “Mark was a great conversationalist and you never told them anything about you. You just ask questions about them.
That old adage definitely applies. As you said, bring insights to the table, like, “Here's my take on what's going on in the industry. How does that relate to what you guys are up to in this area and that area?” It somehow comes back to what your value proposition is at some point, but that's a great recommendation.
We hear this story all the time from clients that we're consulting with at different levels where, eventually, salespeople always say, “I'm going to get an executive to an executive meeting. I'm bringing in my CEO. I'm bringing in my global. Whoever it is.” There's been a version of this story for so many different clients that we've had, Dave, over the years. There'll be some executive meeting, and then I'll be meeting with the salesperson who facilitated it. I'll go, “Tell me about the first three minutes of that meeting.” I'm always so interested, like, “We're getting two very senior people.”
The story is never, “We brought them in to meet the head of retail banking.” That person was super charming. They sat down and said, “Where are you traveling from? How was your trip?” None of that. These two executives always meet. They sit down and the client executive goes, “How can you help me run a better business?” That executive understands. The other executive on the other side of the table from the client working with us, they know that question's coming.
Elevating Sales Conversations: From Product Pitching To Strategic Business Acumen
Suddenly, it's a very strategic conversation. My three goals are this, how can you help me do that? It cuts right to the chase. The salespeople always come back and say, “There was no rapport building. There was no one to tell me about the weather. It did not tell me about your kids and sports and everything. They cut right to the chase.” I said, “It’s because that's all people care about.” What they're interested in, what's interesting is the client feels like they have more of an opportunity to extract those insights when they're speaking with the CEO, because they naturally believe the CEO is much more strategic and can tell about what's going on in the future.
That CEO also might have a global view of what's happening with other companies like mine in the industry. Salespeople, if we can get to that level where we're constantly earning the right for that conversation by showing we're doing that preparation, analysis, and research, earn the right to have that conversation with a client. Earn the right by continuing to develop your own business acumen. Not industry acumen.
Industry acumen is, I know about sales training. Business acumen is, I understand how other businesses work. That's business acumen. By the way, Dave, I'm on a lifelong journey there. I'm still not an expert. I've had a little education and a little experience, but I still do my reading. I'm still always trying to stay current. I'm still trying to learn best practices from other people because I'm so curious about how other businesses operate. What would you add? Anything you'd add to that?
Industry acumen is knowing your own field. Business acumen is understanding how other businesses work.
That's it. Your goal as a salesperson should be, to be able to go into that room and share some of those insights where that executive says, “That was very insightful. I want to introduce you to somebody else in my network that is interesting.” That's the goal where they're talking to another salesperson. They're feeling that they're getting value out of that conversation because you're bringing something to the table that's unique and that builds a lot of trust. When you're talking about their business more than you're talking about what you're trying to sell, that goes a long way.
It's so true, Dave. I'm thinking about this as we're saying it. Sometimes I feel like I have that imposter syndrome, too, because we're having this conversation. I'm thinking about something I did because somebody came at us and they needed large-scale training. There was a rush and all of these kinds of things. There was another half hour of questions I could have asked, but it went pretty quickly too, they needed something quickly.
I got it out the door and I'm thinking to myself, “Hang on.” Maybe there might have been a slightly different way of taking that up a notch. Dave and I are at the core. Dave's run multiple different businesses and incredibly successful exits. We run this thing in the funnel, but at the core, we're both salespeople. We do this all the time. We still live this life and we're trying to figure out how to constantly evolve. We're right there with you. We appreciate these great questions so that we can have this conversation. We hope that it's helpful to you.
I want to thank everybody, by the way, for their questions. It was Eric, Lewis, and Sharon. Thank you. Team, I'd like to thank you. Some of you might have noticed that the show has taken off due to you. Please continue to like and subscribe to the show. We're incredibly surprised and privileged to find out we're a top twenty Apple podcast for the last couple of weeks in marketing. If you ask AI for a top twenty podcast in the marketing category, we're in there.
It changes frequently. Keep liking and subscribing and sharing this show with your pals. Please continue to send your questions to us because we appreciate them. This is what drives some great authentic conversation. Thanks a million, Dave. You're always great on these. I always appreciate you driving the bus.
Thanks, Mark. I get as much out of it as the readers do. I get reminded of all this. Although you said, easier said than done on a lot of this stuff. It's a good reminder for me too.
We'll see you next episode. Thanks so much.
Thanks.
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Framemaking Sale: Improving The Buying Experience With Brent Adamson – Previous Episode