#008: Win more competitive deals

Welcome to the latest edition of the Succession newsletter where growth-minded biotech sales professionals improve their skills and take the next step in their career.

Read Time: 3 Min

Today we’ll show you how influencing your buyer’s decision-making criteria is one of the best ways to win more competitive deals.

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Influencing your buyer’s decision-making criteria is one of the best ways to win competitive deals.

Your potential buyers have more access to information than ever before. They can explore your website, download content, talk to lab mates, and have countless other ways to consume information about what they perceive to be the solutions to their problems.

Based on their search, it's likely that they have shortlisted a handful of vendors whom they believe can help.

If you’re going to win that deal, you’ll need to influence their decision-making criteria and have it lean towards your offering.

**By this point in the conversation, you should have already identified the problem, root cause, and business impact of not solving it. More on that in this article: Stop losing to “No Budget”

Defining decision criteria

Decision criteria are all the big and small decisions a person or company will have to consider before choosing a solution.

Examples could be:

• Quality control

• Delivery time

• Data output

• Support and servicing

• Company expertise

• Comparison data

• And many others…

Gathering the decision criteria

Not all decision criteria are weighted equally. It’s important to ask what are the most important variables they are considering when selecting a vendor.

“I’m sure you’re evaluating a couple of different options to solve this problem. I’m curious, what are the top 3 most important criteria for you when making this decision?”

Once they respond, dig deeper into the context behind that criteria. You need to know how THEY are evaluating it.

Let’s use quality as an example.

“So quality is the number one criterion. Different people measure quality in different ways. How are you measuring quality and what are you looking for?”

Listen closely to how they respond because this is your opportunity to influence the decision.

Introduce unconsidered needs

Unconsidered needs are challenges, shortcomings, or missed opportunities that your prospect doesn't yet know about but are holding them back.

Use your expertise from all the conversations you’ve had with customers to shed light on something they haven’t thought about in their decision criteria.

This unconsidered need should be directly related to a differentiated capability that you offer.

For example, if you offer a specific QC test that none of your competitors do and quality is one of the main decision criteria, you might say something like:

“I was talking to a customer the other day. They also mentioned quality was most important to them. Have you considered what happens if you don’t run [insert QC test]?”

You’ve introduced something that is important for them to consider in making their decision and it happens to be something only you can provide.

Continue this process for each decision criterion you believe you can influence in a unique way.

Document and share

You’ve identified the most important decision criteria and introduced some unconsidered needs that point back to your offering. After your call, send them a list of the most important decision criteria you discussed.

This resource can be shared internally and referred to in future discussions to help them make the best decision possible.

TL;DR

1. Ask for their top 3 decision criteria

2. Dig into their definition of each criterion

3. Introduce an unconsidered need that relates to a unique capability

4. Document and share the criteria with them

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