Thomas V. Bonoma

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 <h4 class="ideainbrief-title">The Idea in Brief</h4>
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  <p>You’ve crafted a brilliant strategy for scoring a major sale. But beware: most major sales efforts fail—no matter how carefully planned and adroitly executed. Why? Sellers don’t identify the <em>real</em> decision makers in a big purchase—which often include people with no formal authority. And sellers don’t tailor their presentations to appeal to decision makers’ motivations—which can include anything from saving money to enhancing their status in their organization.</p>
  <p>How to avoid these errors? Bonoma recommends gathering <strong>psychological intelligence</strong>. First identify the “buying center”—the surprisingly large group of individuals who affect the final purchase decision. Then identify the forces shaping these individuals’ choices: their power, their most personal motivations, and their perceptions of your company. Armed with this information, tailor your selling tactics to ensure that the final decision goes <em>your</em> way.</p>
  <p>Gathering psychological intelligence isn’t easy. The most powerful decision makers in your target company aren’t always obvious. And their motivations may turn out to be entirely different from what you expected. But taking time to understand the human side of selling pays big dividends: you produce higher percentages of completed sales—and encounter fewer unpleasant surprises along the way.</p>
  <p>The Idea in Practice</p>
  <p>How to gather the psychological intelligence you need to close a major sale? Bonoma suggests asking four questions:</p>
  <h2>Who’s in the Buying Center?</h2>
  <p>The buying center comprises numerous individuals:</p>
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   <img decoding="async" src="/resources/images/article_assets/hbr/0607/R0607P_1.gif">
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  <h2>Who Are the Powerful Buyers?</h2>
  <p>The powerful individuals in the buying center exert the most influence over the purchase decision. To identify the most powerful buyers, look for high-status individuals who:</p>
  <ul>
   <li>Receive the most attention and information from others in their organization.</li>
  </ul>
  <ul>
   <li>Are disliked by those with less power.</li>
  </ul>
  <ul>
   <li>Send others to critical negotiations instead of attending themselves.</li>
  </ul>
  <p>But powerful buyers don’t always possess formal authority. For example, at one mining company, maintenance personnel blocked the purchase of a new type of machine because they didn’t want to learn to fix it.</p>
  <p>Also, powerful buyers’ power may derive from sources other than position—such as technical expertise or ability to charm others.</p>
  <h2>What Do Powerful Buyers Want?</h2>
  <p>Identify the benefits offered by your product that <em>most</em> motivate the powerful buyers. Then emphasize those benefits in your sales pitches. Motivations can be:</p>
  <p><strong>Financial:</strong></p>
  <ul>
   <li>“This purchase will save our company money.”</li>
  </ul>
  <p><strong>Product- or service-related:</strong></p>
  <ul>
   <li>“We’ll get reliable post-sales service.”</li>
  </ul>
  <p><strong>Social or political:</strong></p>
  <ul>
   <li>“This purchase will enhance my standing with top management.”</li>
  </ul>
  <p><strong>Personal:</strong></p>
  <ul>
   <li>“This purchase will win me others’ respect.”</li>
  </ul>
  <p>Even seemingly unimportant people can reveal valuable information that hints at buyers’ motivations. <span style="idea-in-practice-example"><span style="idea-in-practice-example-header">Example:&nbsp;</span> </span></p>
  <p>When an account representative of an office-equipment company visited a major customer, a talkative administrator mentioned that a new copy machine the rep’s company had sold to the customer was “more out of service than in.” She also noted that a divisional manager had brought in a competitor’s equipment to test. Unfortunately, the account rep pursued none of this information, wasting the sales call and jeopardizing future sales. </p>
  <h2>How Do Powerful Buyers Perceive Us?</h2>
  <p>The powerful buyers within your target company have a wide range of perceptions about your organization, its offerings, and its personnel. Those powerful buyers who like you are already partially presold. Focus your selling effort on them.</p>
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</article-ideainbrief><p>Many companies’ selling efforts are models of marketing efficiency. Account plans are carefully drawn, key accounts receive special management attention, and substantial resources are devoted to the sales process, from prospect identification to postsale service. Even such well-planned and well-executed selling strategies often fail, though, because management has an incomplete understanding of buying psychology—the human side of selling. Consider the following two examples:</p>

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<p><span class="reprint">Reprint: R0607P</span></p>
<p>When is a buyer not really a buyer? How can the best product at the lowest price turn off buyers? Are there anonymous leaders who make the actual buying decisions? As these questions suggest, the reality of buying and selling is often not what it seems. What&#8217;s more, salespeople often overlook the psychological and emotional factors that figure strongly in buying and selling. By failing to observe these less tangible aspects of selling, a vendor can lose sales without understanding why.</p>
<p>In this article, first published in 1982, Bonoma sets up a procedure for analyzing buying decisions and tells sellers how to apply the resulting framework to specific situations. Steps in the procedure include the following:</p>
<p><strong>Identifying the actual decision makers.</strong> Though it may come as a surprise, power does not correlate perfectly with organizational rank. The author outlines five bases of power and offers six behavioral clues for identifying the real decision makers.</p>
<p><strong>Determining how buyers view their self-interest.</strong> All buyers act selfishly, but they sometimes miscalculate. As a result, diagnosing motivation is one of the most difficult management tasks to do accurately. The author suggests several techniques to determine how buyers choose their own self-interest.</p>
<p><strong>Gathering and applying psychological intelligence.</strong> There is no formula for placing sound psychological analyses magically in the sales staff&#8217;s hands. However, the author offers three guidelines&#8212;make sure that sales calls are highly productive and informative, listen to the sales force, and reward rigorous fact gathering, analysis, and execution&#8212;to help managers increase sales effectiveness.</p>

Major Sales:&nbsp;Who Really Does the Buying?

Reprint: R0607P When is a buyer not really a buyer? How can the best product at the lowest price turn off buyers? Are there anonymous leaders who make the actual buying decisions? As these questions suggest, the reality of buying and selling is often not what it seems. What’s more, salespeople often overlook the psychological and emotional factors that figure strongly in buying and selling. By failing to observe these less tangible aspects of selling, a vendor can lose sales without understanding why. In this article, first published in 1982, Bonoma sets up a procedure for analyzing buying decisions and tells sellers how to apply the resulting framework to specific situations. Steps in the procedure include the following: Identifying the actual decision makers. Though it may come as a surprise, power does not correlate perfectly with organizational rank. The author outlines five bases of power and offers six behavioral clues for identifying the real decision makers. Determining how buyers view their self-interest. All buyers act selfishly, but they sometimes miscalculate. As a result, diagnosing motivation is one of the most difficult management tasks to do accurately. The author suggests several techniques to determine how buyers choose their own self-interest. Gathering and applying psychological intelligence. There is no formula for placing sound psychological analyses magically in the sales staff’s hands. However, the author offers three guidelines—make sure that sales calls are highly productive and informative, listen to the sales force, and reward rigorous fact gathering, analysis, and execution—to help managers increase sales effectiveness.

Major Sales: Who Really Does the Buying?

Summary.

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