Speakers: Gary Ackerman | Greg Alexander, SBI
Today’s topic is understanding how executives make purchase decisions. Failure to understand, exactly, how the executive decision makers inside your target accounts buy will result in poor win rates, long sales cycles, and you missing your number. It’s difficult to grow revenue faster than your industry’s growth rate and faster than your competitors. The Revenue Growth Diagnostic interactive tool will help you determine if you are likely or unlikely to make your number.
Joining us is Gary Ackerman, the SVP Head of Global Sales at Pepperjam. Pepperjam is a performance marketing company focused on helping global advertisers drive e-commerce sales. During the interview, Gary will demonstrate how executives make purchase decisions by using Pepperjam as an example.
Executives are changing the way they make purchase decisions. Some are altering their evaluation criteria. Others are involving more people in the decision-making process. Some are changing their preferences for how they want to engage with your sales team. Decentralized decision-making is becoming centralized, and centralized decisions are now being made regionally. And on and on. Failure to exactly understand how executives are buying will prevent you from growing revenue.
In the first segment of the program Gary provides an overview of the profile of his buyers and describes the buyer’s journey. We discuss in detail how Gary figured this out.
The second segment breaks down the reasons why executive decision makers don’t buy. The reasons are identified and the evaluation criteria used by these executives is discussed to understand how they decide to buy from you or someone else. Listen as Gary describes the approach to a centralized or decentralized executive team.
In the final segment of the show Gary answers the following questions about Buyer behavior:
- Does the customer’s buying process vary by market segment, customer profile, the product you are selling, and the sales channel you are using?
- Which sales channel (i.e. face to face, web, phone, etc.) does your customer prefer to buy through and how did you determine that?
- Have you validated your value proposition with the executive decision makers and if so, how?
- What skills/competencies does your executive decision makers want your sales team to have, and how was this determined?
- Is your sales team best-in-class in these areas, and how did you find out?
Have expectations gone up and left you wondering if you can make your number? Here is an interactive tool that will help you understand if you have a chance at success. Take the Revenue Growth Diagnostic test and rate yourself against SBI’s sales and marketing strategy to find out if:
- Your revenue goal is realistic
- You will earn your bonus
- You will keep your job
