Any CXO will agree that there is a need for better sales strategy. Sales is an ever expanding universe. Whether it is a product or service, there are a set of people involved to make the closure. Even if it is a consumer product, there is an invisible sales cycle. Some companies try bottom-up strategy and some try top-down strategy.

The ultimate consumer. This set of people are the actual users of the product or service. In B2B environment, they report to managers. Their expectation is more features, great dashboards and less time to learn. These people do not worry about cost. Many to most of the times, these people may even be afraid to go against a tool, if that is pushed on them! They love hand-holding by the vendor.

The decision enabler. Mostly these people are managers or the department heads. They may have limited budget. When so many people reporting to them, come to them and either praise or complain about a product or service, they listen to that. They are always under delivery pressure. They usually want many things to be done, but their hands are tied due to time, resource and cost constraints. Quick implementation is vital for these people and they do not have the full visibility across the organization.

The decision maker. Typically CXOs and VPs. They look for position and brand of the products, usefulness of the product across the organization, cost of competition and opportunity etc. Pressure is always on the profitability. Unless a few decision enablers convince these people, they hesitate to take decisions, for various reasons.

Deal can be closed when your sales person can quickly move across these 3 people and make it happen. What can make these 3 people respond and react? What can create curiosity in these 3 people? What can make these 3 people afraid of?

Now, imagine that these 3 layers are like the user interface, business logic and database layer of the application. UI is relatively fast, business logic layer is relatively slow, database layer is usually slower. Which layer looks like consumer, decision enabler and decision maker - I leave that to your imagination.

Sell Faster. Perform Faster.