By Paul DiModica

Like you and I, senior executive prospects are just people. They have physical, financial, security, emotional, and psychological needs that must be met on a daily basis for them to function in their personal and professional lives.

When these needs are not met, an imbalance happens in their daily functions and they (like the rest of us) adjust their behavior to compensate for those missing elements.

Many times, sales and marketing team members believe prospects base their purchase decisions on the rationale of having the most system features or the lowest price, or even because the salesperson has worked with the prospect for 12 months and developed a "relationship" with them.

Selling and marketing to senior management buyers
is not a rational process. 

Many times, they do not spend money based on the obvious rules of engagement or logical criteria as a result of objectivity, but in fact irrational reasons that would not be a factor in another deal.

Have you ever lost a deal to a competitor whose product or service was inferior or more expensive than yours?

The reason for this is the higher you go in the organizational chart to sell management, the more emotional and complicated the sales process becomes.

That's why selling to senior management is not easy. It is not a mathematical model of steps, actions and reactions . . . and that's one reason why most sales methods fail.

Salespeople assume if they take a senior management prospect through specific sequential sales steps that at the end of the buying cycle, the obvious conclusion would be to obtain a purchase order, but this is incorrect.

Instead, selling is a premeditated process of trying to reduce illogical reactions and walking the prospect through the pain management decision process to give you a purchase order based on their rational and irrational needs being met.

Below is our Value Forward Business Pain Decision Funnel that will help you identify both the rational and irrational decision processes that senior management goes through in the sales cycle.

By viewing this funnel, you notice the primary rational elements of a decision must be met usually before the irrational needs are met.

But even this sequence of decision making is suspect with some buyers. What happens in most senior management buying cycles is the prospect moves from a rational to an irrational position when weighing the maximum achievable pain management benefit (rational) against the maximum acceptable risk conditions (irrational).

So, in order to sell more, salespeople must identify the irrational behavioral risks the senior management team will be experiencing during their buying process. Just because you and I may categorize their behavior as irrational does not mean that it is irrational to them. Their behavior (although unplanned) may be based on actual internal issues that have been verbalized to them.

Provided to Paul DiModica by eMarketer.com under contract.

Irrational buying behavior manifests itself in two ways: 1) visibly and 2) invisibly.

Visible Irrationality is when a prospect openly identifies to you (usually by verbal communication) business fears of managing their business pain.

"Paul, if we do not select the right system to manage our applications, the board will take corrective action."

Invisible Irrationality is when a senior management prospect displays irrational actions without giving input to the seller as to why they are responding this way. At times, this may appear to be a sales negotiation tactic, but it may be irrational behavior based on their internal or personal corporate issues.

Here is a list of several factors that generate irrational behavior during the sales cycle by a senior management prospect:

1. Fear of losing their job based on an incorrect decision;
2. Fear of embarrassment in front of their peers;
3. Fear of embarrassment in front of their subordinates;
4. Fear of embarrassment in front of their management; or
5. Fear of not getting a bonus.

How to Manage Irrational Behavior In Buyers

Irrational is defined by dictionary.com as: 1. Without the faculty of reason; deprived of reason. 2. Without or deprived of normal mental clarity or sound judgment; 3. Not in accordance with reason; utterly illogical: irrational arguments.

1. When selling into a complex environment with multiple decision makers and influencers, it is important that sales, marketing, operations and senior management are all aligned together to capture revenue as a team. When departments or executive management teams hold back corporate resources or do not participate in the revenue capture model, irrational behavior becomes internal (your company) as well as external (the client).
2. Be more proactive instead of reactive in your anticipation of having irrational clients. Why are you surprised that many clients make bad buying decisions? Do you think all clients know how to buy correctly?
3. Create proactive communication devices up front to give to prospects like engagement outlines, consequence management directives and sales objection white papers in anticipation of prospect issues before it happens.

If you are seeking to sell more products or services, study the Value Forward Business Pain Decision Funnel and do not ignore irrational behavior by the buyer. The more you understand or identify non-fulfilled segments of the funnel, the faster you can close the prospect.

In sales and marketing best practices execution, it is not what prospects say -- it is what they do!

Recommendations provided are to be used at your discretion and are provided solely as an independent opinion.