In this blog post, we’ll talk about how salespeople can map internal customers to understand your prospects' buying decisions.

If you’ve read our previous post about what makes good and bad discovery questions, you should now know it’s not a great idea to directly ask your prospect, “Who is the decision maker?” Don’t get me wrong - it’s important to identify who has the decision-making power for a buying decision. But directly asking this question normally backfires because it suggests that the person you are talking to is not worth your time, and, more importantly, this question gets you nowhere because nowadays decisions about B2B sales are rarely made by one person.  

What is an internal customer?

An internal customer is a person within an organization who receives a service from an internal employee. Most of the time, they are people whose work directly affects the productivity of another worker. For example, if a company’s marketing content is heavily used by the salespeople to generate leads, the salespeople are the internal customers of the marketing team.   

Sometimes, purchasing decisions involve multiple parties because organizations must ensure that decisions are made with the majority of relevant parties’ input. During the discovery phase, salespeople should aim to understand:

1. Who are the internal customers of the potential buyer?

2. What does each of the internal customers care about?

Managers, subordinates, peers, superiors, board members, coworkers in related fields, etc. make up the internal customers of a typical buyer. In the discovery phase, you need to find out what each internal customer wants to accomplish. Knowing what motivates and worries your potential client's internal customers will help you diffuse the situation and move the sale forward. That said, it’s not uncommon for employees of the same company to find themselves at odds with one another due to competing priorities. 

So, what are the typical motivators that can influence internal customers?

1. Personal gain

   In almost all cases, buyers do not want to look stupid because they purchase from you. In fact, they may want to look for the next promotion or earn a raise by taking the initiative to promote your solutions internally. Identifying and comprehending each individual's motivating factors, influences, and professional aspirations is crucial. The best way to approach this is to position yourself as a helpful resource who can aid your target audience in reaching their goals. 

2. Competitive advantage

   Perspective clients may view the competitive factor as unimportant or crucial, depending on their current situation and position in the company. If you are meeting with an executive member, how your solution can help their organization to beat its competitors tends to be important. However, if you are selling to an IT administrator, competitive factors are not necessarily important. Instead, you may consider the next motivator for your prospect.

3. Performance metrics

   Just as salespeople have their own sales target, their internal customers also have their own KPIs and OKRs to achieve. Depending on the position of the internal customers of the buyer, the metrics may include revenue generation, cost reduction, efficiency improvement, lower error rates, or simply stress level deduction. It is quite useful to ask your prospective customers about what’s causing them stress in their day-to-day job.

As a salesperson, your job is to act as a consultant who helps your customers figure out what their problems are and how to solve them. By mapping out your prospects' internal customers, you will be able to see the problems and goals of many people in the target organization as a whole. This is crucially important for your sales success because buying decisions are rarely made alone.

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