Helping a buyer justify you internally when you are not there

5 days ago
3 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

Introduction

There is a conversation that decides a large proportion of business purchases and you are never in the room for it. Your contact takes your proposal to a partner, a director, a committee or a spouse, and argues for it against alternatives, budget pressure and the option of doing nothing. Whether they argue well determines the outcome.

Most suppliers prepare for the conversation they attend and leave the decisive one to chance. The person representing you in it is not a salesperson, has other priorities, and will present whatever they can remember or forward. Equipping them properly is one of the highest-return and least practised things a business can do at this stage.

1. Helping a buyer justify you internally means arming your advocate

The shift in perspective.

Your contact is presenting on your behalf without your skills or your knowledge. The material you give them is your entire presence in the conversation that decides it. Assume they will have five minutes and will not have reread anything beforehand.

2. Find out who else is involved and what they care about

The question to ask early.

Who has to approve this, what will they want to know, and what would make them say no? Most buyers answer readily and the answers change what you should provide. It also tells you whether you are talking to the decision or to a stage before it.

3. Give them a one-page summary

The single most useful artefact.

What is being proposed, what it costs, what it delivers, over what timescale, and the main risk and how it is handled. One page, because that is what gets read in a meeting. Write it so it can be forwarded without a covering explanation.

4. Provide the numbers their finance person will want

The requirement that decides many cases.

Total cost, phasing, what is included, what is not, and any comparison against the alternative. A proposal that cannot be assessed financially gets deferred rather than rejected, which is worse.

5. Answer the do-nothing option explicitly

The most common competitor.

The alternative is frequently not a rival supplier but postponement. Setting out the cost of delay gives your advocate the argument they need against the easiest decision in the room.

6. Pre-empt the obvious objections

The preparation.

Too expensive, wrong time, could we do it in-house, why not the cheaper quote. Your contact will face these, and providing the responses is far more effective than hoping they improvise them.

7. Make the risk of choosing you look small

The decisive framing.

Phasing, a trial, a break clause, references, a guarantee. Whoever approves it is protecting themselves, and reducing their exposure matters more than improving the upside.

8. Ask what happened afterwards

The feedback loop.

"How did it go, and what came up?" tells you what the room actually asked, which is the best guide to improving the material for the next one.

9. Offer to attend, and accept a no

The optional step.

Sometimes joining the meeting is welcome and decisive. Frequently it is not appropriate, and pushing damages the relationship with the person carrying your case.

Be careful about producing so much material that none of it is used. One page that is read beats a forty-page document that is attached and ignored, and the supporting detail should sit behind the summary rather than instead of it.

Conclusion

Equip the person arguing for you, because that conversation decides the deal and you will not be there.

Find out early who else is involved and what they will care about, provide a one-page summary that works in a meeting, include the financial detail an approver will need, address the option of doing nothing explicitly, pre-empt the standard objections with ready answers, reduce the personal risk for whoever approves it, ask afterwards what came up in the room, and offer to attend while accepting that you usually will not.