Buying Center 

Use

In order to win, you need to know your customer’s organization and all the people involved in the decision to buy.Many sales processes fail because sales reps underestimate the importance of this success factor, and do not come into contact with the right people. It is particularly important that you recognize gaps and realize where further action is required early in the sale.

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 the customer’s 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 decision 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, the opinion of your solution and personal value proposition

Identifying the key people

The standard delivery contains a set of pre-defined 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’s success 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 in the customer’s company. 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 especially 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)

When customizing the software, 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 decision, 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 of the importance and urgency of the project from each person’s point of view

·         Understanding each individual’s business objectives, buying criteria and personal goals

·         Knowing how each individual perceives your solution

You can record all of these attributes for each person with the opportunity, helping you to identify gaps and necessary 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

Further information on Customizing is available in the IMG under 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. Information on this is available in the Implementation Guide under Customer Relationship Management ® Basic Functions ® Partner Processing ® Partner Teams. The attributes, attribute values, relationships and relationship categories can be pre-defined here.You can create notes for the individual roles/people in the buying center. Notes can also be pre-defined 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 a person’s personal value proposition or personal criteria for reaching a decision.

Further information on partner teams is available under Partner Teams.

You can make the settings for text processing in the Implementation Guide (IMG) for CRM under Customer Relationship Management ® Basic Functions ® Text Management.

In order 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 under Customer Relationship Management -> Transactions ® Basic Settings ® Define Transaction Types (Customizing header, Field: Texts Project Partners).

Activities

You can maintain the buying center in graphical or tabular form. This functionality is available to you in both CRM Enterprise, and CRM Mobile.

Special Features for the People-Centric UI

At present, only the graphical display is available for the buying center on the People-Centric UI; graphical maintenance is not possible.

Special Features for CRM Mobile

·         You can print the buying center in CRM Mobile. A print preview is also available.

·         The following restriction applies for data exchange between CRM Mobile and CRM Enterprise: Notes that you create for partners in the buying center are not exchanged between both systems.

·         You can transfer all business partners maintained for the required opportunity from the Partners tile set to the Buying Center tile set. To do so, choose the Transfer Partners pushbutton on the Buying Center tile set. When you do so, all business partners already maintained for the required opportunity are displayed. From here, you can select or multi-select the business partners you want to transfer to the Buying Center tile set.

Example

The following graphic gives an example of a buying center with the people involved on the customer side, their functions and characteristics, and the corresponding rating.