MEDMEN: Five Things Not To Do With The Economic Buyer

00:00 Pim Roelofsen: Welcome to The MedMen Show. My name is Pim, that's Andy. And in this episode we are talking about five things you never want to do when engaging with the economic buyer. Why don't you take us away with the first one, Andy? 00:13 Andy Whyte: The first thing — and it's number one because it's the most important — is: never assume anything with the economic buyer. We've all had it in our history of selling where we've assumed someone is the economic buyer, or assumed the economic buyer is interested in a particular thing, without getting consensus, without triangulating, without doing our research. You're assuming. And as the saying goes — you spell ASSUME: it makes an ass out of you and me. So never assume. Always go in with an informed point of view. And that's why having a champion is so critical — the champion is the one who can help you check your assumptions and turn them into more qualified perspectives. 00:58 Andy Whyte: That takes me to the second thing, because whilst you may be working with your champion on things like technical decision criteria — you don't want to lead with those things when engaging the economic buyer. Because by extension of their actual name, they care about the economic decision criteria. They depend on their teams — the people that run operations, whatever it may be — to select the right solutions for whatever needs solving. If you go in and lead with technical decision criteria, you will lose their attention immediately. They're not interested in the technical side of things — they literally build teams to be experts on that. They delegate it down. The clue is in the name: economic buyer, economic decision criteria. Those are the things they truly care about. 01:57 Andy Whyte: Third thing — and this is tightly linked to the first two. To avoid assuming, and to avoid going in with technical decision criteria, you have to go in with a point of view on the economic decision criteria. To do that, you have to prepare. You have to put the time in, do the research, work with your champion to form a qualified point of view. Do not go into an engagement unprepared. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. 02:23 Andy Whyte: Which brings us to the fourth thing — going in cold. Going in cold is when you've somehow got access to the economic buyer and you just show up with no context, no foundation. But I think it goes even further back than the meeting itself. It could be the idea of — for some reason — taking it upon yourself to email or call them without engaging a champion first. Now, of course, there's that often-arising challenge where we feel like we're being blocked from engaging the economic buyer and we have to think about tactics to go around someone. But doing that without exhausting other avenues, or trying to find a new route in, and going in completely cold — it's never going to be a good proactive form of entry. 03:10 Pim Roelofsen: Yeah, absolutely. I also think that even if you do get access early, spending real quality time with the economic buyer is typically more effective a little further down the line — when you've had the opportunity to do proper discovery with your champion and can come in with a strong POV. That's when you can really make the time worthwhile. 03:27 Andy Whyte: Yes — and all of those things tie into the fifth one, which is: don't blindly challenge the economic buyer. Good books like The Challenger Sale have suggested going in with an original point of view and challenging the customer — which of course ties into consultative selling, showing yourself as an expert, pushing against the status quo. That's OK in principle. But if you do that without having the credibility — which you have to earn, particularly with the economic buyer — you're going to end up with egg on your face. It goes back to making no assumptions. It goes back to being tuned in on the economic decision criteria and making sure you're prepared. All those things come together. If you are going to challenge the status quo, you need to come from a very strongly informed point of view that you can fall back on with credibility. 04:21 Andy Whyte: Otherwise — we've all had it early in our careers, where we've been put in front of someone very senior and we've been almost pitching. And you just feel it: it's not resonating, it's not hitting, we've missed the mark. And that's exactly why — because we haven't got the credibility to position our point of view effectively. We end up looking very, very silly. You're so much stronger if you can refer to something someone in the EB's organization has said — and ideally, they should be in that same meeting so it becomes a conversation rather than a pitch. 04:56 Pim Roelofsen: So — five things not to do when engaging the economic buyer. Number one: don't assume. Number two: don't go in with technical decision criteria. Number three: don't be unprepared. Number four: don't go in cold. And number five: don't blindly challenge without the credibility to back it up. Cheers! 05:17 Andy Whyte: Cheers!