The days of a single person being responsible for the buying decisions are long gone. In enterprise sales, you interact with multiple influencers within the buying process. Here are some typical roles: → The initiator, who first looks at your product or solution and begins the sales process → Users, who will be relying on your product on a daily basis → Influencers, such as consultants, who have opinions on the product and what need it solves → The decision maker, who is signing off on the purchase, typically a VP or director in an enterprise organization— bear in mind that they may not hold the budget → Approvers, such as procurement departments → The buyer, normally the CFO or Head of Finance → Gatekeepers, those that can prevent a sale. This could be the CIO on technical grounds such as not wanting data to go off-premise into the cloud To help satisfy everyone within the buying center, adopt this three-step process: 1. Identify who is involved: What are their job titles and responsibilities? What are their pain points? 2. Build a value proposition matrix that matches your product or service against these pain points. How do you overcome them and what is the added value that your product brings? 3. Create appropriate messaging for each person. Bear in mind that people buy painkillers, not vitamin pills. That means they will choose solutions that solve their problems now, rather than investing in things that might benefit them at some point down the road. 17