Decide or Defer: What Type of Message Gets Executive Buyers To Purchase Now? RESEARCH BRIEF Overview Stalled proposals and deals ending in no decision are a major threat to the health of your sales pipeline. There s even a good chance you lose more deals in this fashion than you lose to your traditional competitors. One of the biggest challenges when it comes to building effective proposals is making the business case to an executive buyer. With so many deals now requiring the signoff of a decision-maker with a VP title or above, it s absolutely essential that your proposals meet the business and financial standards of buyers who might be less involved in the actual day-to-day use of your solutions. proposals that maintain momentum, increase deal velocity and improve close rates are what salespeople need to get executive buyers to do your deal now, instead of deferring it or delegating it down to decision-makers who don t have as much influence over budget. Unfortunately, the ability to build such proposals is precisely what appears to be lacking at many companies. A recent Corporate Visions industry survey found the majority of companies aren t satisfied with their ability to tell an executive-level story or craft a business case that creates urgency and helps justify a decision. More than two thirds of companies (7 percent) say they re underperforming at getting executive-level prospects to buy now rather than later, while only 39 percent are confident in their ability to build a meaningful business and financial case to justify a decision. So, if your proposals are stalling out, it s not necessarily because your executive-level prospects don t want to change it s because salespeople haven t made a strong enough business case for doing so. The message that gets executive decision-makers to feel an urgent need to buy promptly is what we re calling the why now story. Background: Executive Emotions A prior Corporate Visions study addressed executive decision-making and ultimately ended up debunking a long-held perception about executive and financial buyers, which is that they are strictly rational, analytically-minded decision-makers, beholden to nothing but the numbers. The study revealed the contrary, i.e., that executive buyers are just as swayed by an emotionally framed message as anybody else. 1 Research Brief: Decide or Defer: What Type of Message Gets Executive Buyers To Purchase Now?
Specifically, the study wanted to test the extent to which executive decision-makers were moved by certain core principles such as risk-seeking and loss aversion of Prospect Theory, an idea pioneered by social psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. The key finding of Prospect Theory is that humans are two to three times more likely to make a decision to avoid a loss than they are to make a decision to achieve a gain. The study validated the powerful effect of loss aversion in an executive-level message: It revealed that executives in the study were 70 percent more willing to make a risky business decision such as switching from their current solution to a new one when the message framed their current situation in terms of what they stood to lose instead of what they stood to gain. This, despite the fact the test conditions, though framed differently, were mathematically equivalent. Research Objectives For this study, Corporate Visions contracted with Dr. Nick Lee, a professor of marketing at Warwick School in Coventry, U.K. The primary aim of the research was to confirm an optimal messaging approach, or framework, for creating a business case that gives executive buyers a strong enough sense of urgency to justify a decision now (hence the why now name we ve given to the messaging framework). The test conditions and questions were designed to assess several areas critical to this particular moment of truth in the buyer s journey areas including confidence in the business proposal, how urgent it was, how essential to future growth, and to what extent it made executives in the study more or less likely to purchase right now. The Study The study, conducted online, included 312 executive participants, all of whom are employed at companies with $100 million or more in revenues, and all of whom have budget responsibilities and decision-making responsibility. We then asked all participants to imagine they were part of the following business scenario: You are an executive at a food processing company that cleans, sorts and packages vegetables. You have traditionally served large vegetable products using large-scale equipment that can process several tons of vegetables per hour. However, the most promising growth market is organic and specialty food production, and unfortunately, you do not have equipment suitable for the small batch requirements of this small-producer market. You will be meeting with a company that makes smaller-scale, more flexible equipment that could help you enter this new market, and they present the following story as to why you should buy their equipment. 2 Research Brief: Decide or Defer: What Type of Message Gets Executive Buyers To Purchase Now?
We then split the executive participants into six different groups, each of which experienced a different messaging test condition, or pitch, that contained different elements of the following: Issue: External factors and business initiatives Loss: Details about your loss to be avoided Gain: Details about your potential positive gain Needs: Introduces an unsuspected threat Heavy : Hard numbers with a detailed breakdown : change story with a light component Here s how we structured the six test conditions: Condition #1: Loss + Heavy Condition #2: Gain + Heavy Condition #3: Condition #4: Loss + Condition #5: Gain + Condition #: We then asked all participants the following questions about the message condition they experienced, to which they were then asked to assign a numerical rating, between one nine, based on how impactful they believed the message was in each area. Results How confident are you that this is a good business decision? How convincing was the business case as far as getting you to make a decision soon rather than later? How important is the solution for future success and growth? How urgent is the need to purchase? How likely are you to purchase right now? Condition #3 structured around presenting a business issue and an unconsidered need before providing a heavy justification was the most effective message across the areas we assessed. It was the only message condition to finish first in each category. Interestingly, the other message conditions proved to be highly volatile in terms of how they performed in these areas. For example, what might have been second or third best in one area finished closer to the bottom in another. Research Brief: Decide or Defer: What Type of Message Gets Executive Buyers To Purchase Now? 3
The winning condition appears to provide the biggest edge in the two most important areas for the purposes of this study: importance to future success and growth, for which it provides a 4 percent edge; and likelihood of making a purchase decision right now, for which companies stand to gain a 9 percent advantage..9 HOW IMPORTANT TO FUTURE SUCCESS AND GROWTH.8.7 4% Increase..5.3.1 Issue Gain + Heavy Loss + Gain + HOW LIKELY TO PURCHASE RIGHT NOW.5.3 9% More Likely.1 5.9 5.8 5.7 5. 5.5 Issue Gain + Heavy Loss + Gain + 4 Research Brief: Decide or Defer: What Type of Message Gets Executive Buyers To Purchase Now?
HOW URGENT IS NEED TO PURCHASE 2% More Urgent 5.8 5. 5.4 5.2 Issue Gain + Heavy Loss + Gain + HOW CONFIDENT THAT THIS IS A GOOD BUSINESS DECISION.8 1% higher. 5.8 5. Issue Gain + Heavy Loss + Gain + The findings of this study are presented using effect size as the criteria for whether the effect is interesting or not, following the latest opinion in psychological research methods, Dr. Lee wrote in a post-study analysis. He added that a consistent pattern of a large number of small effects means that, taken together, there is a clear argument that [the winning message condition] is more likely to be effective than the others, and that the unconsidered needs and heavy message is the way to go. Research Brief: Decide or Defer: What Type of Message Gets Executive Buyers To Purchase Now? 5
Conclusion The effectiveness of the message structured around a business issue, an unconsidered need, and a heavy case is consistent with the body of decision-making science research that inspired the study. The portion in the middle of the message the unconsidered need can be seen as an extreme form of loss aversion, because it positions their current approach as a loss to be avoided. This satisfies the emotional, decision-making part of the brain, sometimes called the old brain or lizard brain. Meanwhile, the documented component satisfies the new brain, or neocortex, which is more analytically inclined, and provides the rationalization and justification for decisions, but does not actually make them. You differentiate yourself by telling your customer something they don t know or hadn t thought about, said Conrad Smith, VP Consulting Services at Corporate Visions, and a member of the research team for the study. You want to generate enough curiosity that you create value in what you are selling and your conversation, because a valuable conversation adds urgency and gets you another appointment. The Winning Why Now Framework Below is an example of the winning why now message that performed best across the key executive decision-making areas measured in the study. Issue: Growing consumer demand for organic foods, especially in the ready-to-eat category presents a great opportunity for processors, like you, to expand. Needs: However, this market has unique requirements and cost pressures that you need to consider if you want to enter and compete effectively. First, your large processing machinery is not compatible with the unique needs of the organic producer, who requires frequent changes to accommodate a greater variety of vegetables to be processed, and smaller batch sizes. Second, your current labor and material costs are too high to be price competitive in this market. Solution Response plus Impact: Investing in our smaller-scale, flexible equipment should position you to get at least a one percent share of the growing small-producer market, generating $10 million in new revenue. Improvements in automation technology should also provide you with a two percent savings in labor and material costs. This one percent increase in sales and two percent cost savings should improve your operating margin by 29 percent. With all these factors considered, we estimate this will generate an of 78 percent in your first year of investing in our new smaller-scale processing equipment that will enable you to enter the organic produce market. This means you ll be making money on this equipment by year two. These results are typical of the results documented by dozens of other processing companies using our equipment. Research Brief: Decide or Defer: What Type of Message Gets Executive Buyers To Purchase Now?
Meet Our Research Team Tim Riesterer Chief Strategy Officer, Corporate Visions Tim is co-author of Conversations That Win the Complex Sale and The Three Value Conversations. As a designer of the study, he developed the hypothesis based on decision-making science principles and the test examples under Nick s direction. Erik Peterson Chief Customer Officer, Corporate Visions Erik is co-author of Conversations That Win the Complex Sale and The Three Value Conversations. He helped design the study, review and interpret the findings, and frame the relevant decision-science principles within the customer conversation. Conrad Smith VP Consulting Services, Corporate Visions Conrad Smith is a co-author of The Three Value Conversations. He has delivered Corporate Visions Executive Conversation skills to more than 12,000 people since 1997. Jim Moliski SVP Sales Enablement and Product Marketing, Corporate Visions As Senior Vice President of Sales Enablement and Product Marketing at Corporate Visions, Jim Moliski brings over seventeen years of sales enablement and business-to-business marketing experience to the mission of improving customer conversations. Jim has worked with more than 100 organizations across 15 countries and gathered insight from interviews with over 1,000 salespeople, marketers, and subject matter experts. Dr. Nick Lee Professor, Warwick School Nick Lee is a professor of marketing at the Warwick School in Coventry, UK. His work connects theories from social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, economics and philosophy. Corporate Visions, Inc. 1.800.30.SELL CONVERSATION.com