Buying Center
To win, you need to know how your customer is organized and who is involved in the buying process. Many sales processes fail because sales personnel underestimate the importance of this success factor, and do not come into contact with the right people. It is particularly important, early in the sale, that you recognize gaps and realize where further action is required.
Key questions to ask are:
“Who makes the final decision?”
“On whom does the approval of the project depend?”
“Who benefits from your solution?”
“What does the relationship network look like? That is, who influences whom, and in what way?”
“What are the strengths and weaknesses from a customer view point?”
“What do we need to do to establish positive relationships with the right people?”
The buying center functions in Opportunity Management provide you with optimal support to answer these questions.
Functional Scope
You can create a comprehensive buying center. That is, you can:
Identify those persons involved in the buying process, and determine their degree of influence
Display the relationship network of those persons involved in the sales process, and
Enter key attributes for each individual, for example, their opinion of your solution and personal value proposition
Identifying the key people
The standard delivery contains a set of predefined partner functions that represent the most important people in the sales process at the customer, for example:
Endorser: The endorser is the person who gives final approval and can increase or decrease the budget.
Decider: The decider recommends to the endorser which of the alternative solutions should be purchased. The decider is responsible for the project and for keeping to budget.
User: The user is the person who benefits from the decision to buy. The user judges the offered solution, based on how operations will be impacted.
Assessor: The assessor evaluates the alternative solutions, usually from a technical point of view. The user tends to block access to the decider or endorser.
Coach: A coach is not necessarily an employee of the customer. The coach supports and guides you through the sales cycle, providing advice and information important for your success, for example, whether you have overlooked any key players.
You can, of course, also define customer specific roles that are specially tailored to fit your business.
Understanding the relationship network
What type of relationship do the people involved in the buying process have with each other? Knowing this relationship network – which goes beyond understanding the official hierarchy – is a deciding factor for your success.
You can define the following relationships at the customer:
Formal relationships, based on the structure of the organization (person A reports to person B)
Informal relationships, based on personal relationships and influences (person B influences person A)
Through Customizing, you can define these relationship categories depending on your business requirements.
Establishing personal value propositions
Once you have identified the key players and their degree of influence on the buying process, the next step is to define and communicate the value of your solution. A common mistake is to substitute product features and benefits for specific value propositions.
Important attributes for building convincing value propositions are:
Being aware how each person perceives the importance and urgency of the project
Understanding the business objectives, buying criteria and personal goals of each individual
Knowing how each individual perceives your solution
You can record all of these attributes for each person relevant to the opportunity, helping you to identify gaps and required actions early in the sale. You can, of course, define further attributes important in your selling environment. You can easily highlight risks and missing information using warning signs.
Based on this information, you can tailor your sales campaign to the customer and the specific individuals involved. For example, knowing the business objectives and criteria helps you to prepare individual product presentations.
Prerequisites
For more information about defining texts, see Customizing for SAP CRM by choosing Customer Relationship Management Transactions Settings for Opportunities Sales Methodology Define Texts for Goals, Competitor Analysis and Buying Center .
Make the settings for the buying center in Customizing for partner processing. For more information, see Customizing for CRM by choosing Customer Relationship Management Basic Functions Partner Processing Partner Teams . The attributes, attribute values, relationships, and relationship categories can be predefined here. You can create notes for the individual roles/people in the buying center. Notes can also be predefined in Customizing, from which the sales employee can then choose.
You can create additional texts for each person in the buying center. For example, this could be the person's value proposition or criteria for reaching a decision.
For more information about partner teams, see Partner Teams.
You can make the settings for text processing in Customizing for CRM by choosing Customer Relationship Management Basic Functions Text Management.
So that these texts appear and can be maintained in the buying center for the opportunity, you need to assign the corresponding text determination procedure to the transaction type. Make this assignment in Customizing for CRM by choosing Customer Relationship Management Transactions Basic Settings Define Transaction Types (In Customizing header; Field: Texts: BC Partners)
Activities
You can maintain the buying center in graphical or tabular form. This functionality is also available with CRM Mobile.
Example
The graphic below gives an example of a buying center with the people involved on the customer side, their functions and characteristics, and the corresponding rating.