On Wednesday, February 21, 2018, we discussed social cartography and how it’s the capacity to size up a situation relationally by understanding how people are related. Then, we talked about the importance of understanding who the key players are by what motivates them, and identifying who the main decision makers are in a business. These ideas reminded me of Professor Kocur’s Sales class as we learned about the buying center in a business and everyone associated with it.
The importance of understanding and knowing the buying center boils down to having the ability to identify everyone correctly and using that to target certain questions to certain people. From Professor Kocur’s Sales class, we learned there are five main types of people in the buying center: the gatekeepers, the users, the influencers, the buyers, and the decision makers. In correctly identifying everyone and the role they play, this can mean the difference between making the sale or not. Asking the gatekeeper questions that only the user would know can result in a frustrated customer and a delay in the Need Discovery phase in the sales cycle.
To conclude, understanding everyone’s roles in the buying center will allow you to ask the appropriate questions and efficiently diagnosing the needs of the customer in proceeding to the next phase int he sales cycle: the presentation.
BoweryJE22
This is so interesting and I have never heard of it before! As well as paying attention to the sales funnel, this would be so helpful to learn in a sales situation. Thanks for the insight.
I’ve always found the concept of the gatekeeper to be an interesting one. On one hand, they could allow you to do things other people can’t, but most of the time their job is just to keep people out. Knowing how to handle them is the tricky part. Informative post!