Ever dealt with a prospect who, you discover, doesn’t make the final decision? If you manage sales people, this is likely something that fries your bacon on a regular basis. Part of what makes this difficult for a sales manager is that it is easy to answer a salesperson who finds him/herself in this situation glibly and say, “You should stop the sales call until the higher authority is available.”
That is optimum and salespeople should be careful not to artificially empower the contact who “can only say no (not yes).” With that said, successful sales is often about finding the best business case among several less than optimum choices.
If your contact is standing between you and the higher authority you have five options:
1. Politely withdraw
“Please don’t take this the wrong way. But nine out of ten times when I am not the one making the presentation, I don’t make the sale. I’m sure it’s my fault, but I don’t want to waste your time or mine. So it sounds like it’s over...”
2. Artificial Decision Making
Treat your contact like they are the decision maker and proceed. The goal is to get them to drink your kool-aid and become your inside sales person.
3. Technical Consultant
Ask permission to be available to your contact as a technical consultant. You promise not to go into sell mode, but you are available when the money person asks questions they can’t answer.
4. Rehearsal
Brief your contact on presenting your product/service. Have them feed back to you how they are going to answer a variety of questions. Hopefully they will realize its better to bring you. If not, then at least they are prepared.
5. Put it in Their world
This is “salesperson empathy.” If they were in your shoes, how would they handle this? Keep it business, not personal.
As a manager you now have a teachable moment to explore which option(s) might be available to your salesperson and a cost-benefit analysis for any option which might apply.
As with nearly everything in sales, staying away from the highest swings of the pendulum—in this case, chasing business no matter the tenuous connection to the real authority, or walking away from anything which requires even the slightest outside-the-box thinking—is the advisable strategy.