Why Consensus Is a Customer (Not a Seller) Problem

This is the fifth in a series of blog posts on our latest research:  Creating Customer Consensus . To read more, click here.

In a previous blog post, we showed evidence that the increasing number of diverse customer stakeholders we must face in consensus deals is leading to dysfunctional buying group behaviors. And worst of all, it is leading to the commoditization of our solutions, as dysfunctional groups, marked by diverging mental models, are unable to agree on anything other than price.

Now you may still be wondering why dysfunction in the customer organization is any of your reps’ business. But here is what is crucial to understand about buying group dynamics: our research shows that coping with increasing consensus requirements is less about helping reps sell differently and more about helping your customers buy differently. At the end of the day, individuals who are part of a buying process need to connect with each other and agree on shared priorities and interests in order to address broad challenges and pursue big opportunities. It is precisely the inability of stakeholders to align on a problem to solve that leads decision groups to default to the basic common desire to either save their company money or avoid organizational risk.

What our data also revealed is that buying groups that manage to create greater overlap in terms of individuals’ goals, priorities, means, and metrics are more likely to interact in a functional manner and therefore purchase more ambitious offerings. In other words, while stakeholders in dysfunctional buying groups have diverging mental models, stakeholders in functional buying groups have converging mental models.

So what does the research say about what sellers can do to encourage convergence among otherwise diverse stakeholders? At a very high level there are three things that can drive stakeholder alignment:

A common language. Building communication bridges between stakeholders who speak IT or speak Marketing is crucial for identifying common objectives and creating greater overlap between stakeholders.
Collective understanding of individual perspectives. Alignment will not be reached without ensuring that everyone understands not only what each stakeholder wants but why.
Overcoming biases. Being open to consider new ideas requires abandoning both individual biases (e.g., my team is not agile enough for this change) and company biases (e.g., internally-built solutions always meet our needs better).

In essence, convergence can be achieved through the process of people learning from one another in order to establish common ground and collective expectations, or what behavioral psychologists refer to as “norming.” And that is precisely what our research this year found. Stay tuned for our next post on this series addressing what the single largest driver of high margin purchases in a consensus sale is.

CEB Sales members, listen to the webinar replay and review the key findings from the study. Also, register for one of our upcoming meetings on the topic.