Be Ready To Deal With Multiple Stakeholders

With the increased clout of business units in making technology-buying decisions, your sales organization needs to be prepared to deal with different stakeholders from different disciplines. CEB, a technology vendor whose solutions focus on improving corporate performance, says the number of customer stakeholders who are involved in B2B purchasing decisions rose from an average of 5.4 in 2015 to 6.8 in 2016.

"Sales organizations need to better understand each of the various stakeholders that impact deals – who they are, how they connect and what motivates them," CEB said in a recent statement. "Leading sales organizations work to identify and overcome the points of disconnect among those stakeholders, connecting these stakeholders to one another and driving them towards consensus."