Sales Managers always ask, “Are You Talking To The Decision Maker?”—but I 100% disagree. Here’s why: …

Episode nr. 6.

If you are a salesperson, how often have you heard this question from your Sales Manager? I think this is no longer the right question. It doesn’t help the salesperson at all, and here is why.

Straight to the Top

As a front-line sales rep two decades ago, I also aimed to find out who the decision maker was as quickly as possible and secure a meeting. In those days, salespeople had a good chance to leave a customer’s office with a new contract under their arms. Why?

• Buyers relied heavily on salespeople for information about products and services.
• Sales cycles were linear and predictable.
• Decision-making was often concentrated on fewer stakeholders with straightforward needs.

Sales frameworks like SPIN, MEDDIC, or GAP selling provided a structure that helped salespeople qualify opportunities, identify pain points, and deliver solutions tailored to customer needs. In those days, sales managers should have challenged their teams with that question. Speaking to decision-makers increased the probability of closing deals.

While these approaches were highly relevant in their time, the sales and buying environment they were built for no longer exists.

Influencing a complex buying team

How things have changed:

• The buyer-driven world demands a complete transformation of the sales approach.
• Traditional methods fail to address modern buyers’ complexity, autonomy, and expectations.

To move opportunities further in your pipeline, you need to speak to many stakeholders. And the dynamic of a buying team is complex. Their buying process is non-linear, and decisions are only made when there is a clear consensus on why a change is needed, the solution criteria, and which supplier is best positioned to fit the required criteria.

To succeed in Sales, you must know how to drive consensus and who influences who. But there are so many stakeholders – and no shortage of gatekeepers.

“Empower one, influence many.”

In the new buying environment, your best shot at influencing many is to empower one. This is called ENABLING. You choose a stakeholder as your change champion and enable this person with your insightful information and related customer success story. Then you wait for what will happen. Most influencing is done when you are not there. For example:

Mary (chosen change champion), let me recap what we just discussed. We went through the recommended growth strategy from Gartner and McKinsey how to attract more customers to your website, clicking through offer options and increase orders at a higher basket value. I have helped other customers doing this and I shared with you how I did that.

Am sending you now two hyperlinks summarizing the insighs and sucess story. Who else in your organisation would have an interest in these?

What will happen now?

Your insights and stories will ignite conversations., ripple through the customer’s organization and spark a chain reaction. Where in the past, stories were shared at the watercooler, now everything goes digital. In fact, one change champion may influence several others with the click of a button.

So, the right question to ask salespeople about their opportunities is not

“Are you talking to the decision maker? But instead:

“Who have you ENABLED, and how did you do that?

#salescoaching #decisionmaker #enabling

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