Jake Burhans shares two tactics for closing deals with multiple decision-makers. First, ask the main contact if they'd approve it alone, forcing them to commit verbally and defend that position to others. Second, find out what the other decision-makers will worry about, then coach your contact on how to address those objections directly.
So two great techniques that we use when dealing with other decision makers. For one, you want to try to eliminate the decision maker being a factor after you make an offer. So you try to get that out of the way before you make an offer. But sometimes you run into situations where they do need to take it back after you've made your offer. What do you do? Two things we do is one called the intermediate decision technique. And that's for me to ask the seller, hey, Mr. Seller, if you were the only decision maker here, is there anything in this agreement that would prevent you from moving forward? And what you want to do is get them to say no. And what that does is it adds a little bit of psychological weight to their decision and makes them fight a little bit harder when they go back to the other decision maker, really for their ego's sake. They don't want to come back to you and say, well, actually we can't do it because that would show that they are not the primary decision maker. People like to be in charge. So the intermediate decision technique is going to help them fight a little bit harder. And the other thing that's really important is asking them what the main concerns of the other decision maker will be. So ask them, hey, what do you think the concerns of the other decision maker will be? And whatever those are, coach the seller up on how to speak to the other decision makers in regard to that objection. So you're trying to avoid any misinterpretation and get the deal across the finish line.
