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Key Account Management. The Customer’s Perspective II. The Buying Decision Process. Most buying decisions go through three stages: Realizing that there is a need. Looking at the options. Clearing up concerns and making a choice. The Buying Decision Process.
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Key Account Management The Customer’s Perspective II
The Buying Decision Process Most buying decisions go through three stages: • Realizing that there is a need. • Looking at the options. • Clearing up concerns and making a choice.
The Buying Decision Process Most sales are made on three levels: • By meeting the business needs. • By meeting the personal needs. • By understanding how the organization operates and makes their buying decisions.
DMU – The Decision-Making Unit • Authoritarian DMUs. • Consensus DMUs. • Consultative DMUs.
It is important to consider: • What is the buyer' s role? • Who else is in the DMU and what are their interests and influences? • Levels of seniority.
Entry Strategies • who to see? • who should see them? • in what order will they be seen? • what will you be saying to them?
The Buyer’s Role • Lead • Buyers play a key role. The decision probably impacts on their own performance measures — stay close. • Specifier • Buyers are interested enough to set some guidelines for the purchase and this sees their involvement early on. • They have been asked to take part in a decision that is really to be made elsewhere. • You should be seeking more information. The interest of the specifier is worth maintaining as they may prove a useful ally and could give you valuable advice.
The Buyer’s Role • Service • Buyers perform this role on behalf of someone else. • This makes it hard for the seller. The buyer is perhaps only concerned with price, whereas you suspect that the final user, the real client, is far more interested in quality. You have to go beyond this type of buyer, but only with their permission. • You must demonstrate that you can be trusted, and that you can help make the buyer's job easier. • Gatekeeper? • No great interest or involvement • The reason? Perhaps you are a minor supplier, or still a potential supplier, and the buyers act as gatekeepers, protecting their organization from the 'interference' or 'nuisance‘.
Rule one — recognize their reservations and don't go behind their back. • Rule two — keep pressing to find other points of contact, but always with the relevant buyer's permission, perhaps utilizing other members of your own team. • Rule three — patiently work on winning the buyers' trust and confidence; give them reasons to allow you in; reasons that mean something to them.
Other Interests and Influences • Influence through involvement • Influence through interest • Influence through acceptance • Levels of seniority
Influence through Interest • Those that are receptive to the supplier's ideas or approach. • Those that have problems with their own current situation. • Those that have power regarding the final decision.
~ The End ~ • Textbooks • Peter Cheverton, Key Account Management – a complete action kit of tools and techniques for achieving profitable key supplier status, Kogan Page, London & Philadelphia, 3rd edition 2004. • Ch 23, Ch 24 (pp.259-272)
