One of the hardest things to diagnose in the sales world is what leads to a win and what leads to a loss. In this edition of Emissary’s Buyer Snapshot, we explore the drivers (and derailers) of deal closure…from an IT manager persona point of view.
Specifically, we asked 105 Senior IT Executives to reflect on a recent, large ($>250,000) IT purchase they had made, who was involved, how they made the final decision and what distinguished the winning solution from the second place finisher.
The most effective sellers gather as many of these IT manager persona insights possible outside of sales calls. They save client interactions for demonstrating value, and leverage intelligence instead of wasting sales calls on data collection. Most organizations will have resources in place to leverage 1st party data (CRM, customer success, marketing automation systems) and 3rd party data (contact databases, publicly available information). But these types of data will typically address organizational structure, business performance, historical spending and other information.
Our buyers found mastery of these insights much less impactful than the items mentioned in the report. The more impactful intelligence is much harder to get to. Modern sales and marketing organizations can help sellers fill many of these gaps using 2nd party data (organizations who collect and make available access to intent data, insider account intelligence, and more). Sales and marketing leaders should look at their data sources holistically and see if sellers are equipped to capitalize on a full set of intelligence to close more deals.
