Decision-Making Ecosystems and B2B Sales and Marketing

Large organizations are complex webs of accountability and decision-making processes.

Effective B2B sales and marketing require understanding that these “decision-making ecosystems” are MUCH MORE than just “personas.”

Understanding a cluster or ecosystem of roles, and how it works, can save you from the trap of the oversimplification of using “personas,” since B2B sales processes are much too complex for traditional “personas” to be sufficient.

Personas have long been a key tool that sales and marketing departments use to define the critical players in their organizational clients. However, personas alone fall short of providing insight into the webs that connect decision-making roles and how these roles interact when purchasing decisions are made.

In large organizational environments, you're not simply pitching to a lone player; you're navigating the maze of interdependent roles and inputs we call a Decision-Making Ecosystem.

If your business sells to large organizations, understanding their decision-making ecosystem is a necessity. This requires using an innovative market research approach — developed by Sylver Consulting — that probes the organizational structure.

Our approach unravels:

Who is in the ecosystem?
What is the overall decision-making process and where are the different touchpoints?
How is each member involved in the process and when?
Who has authority or influence over which decisions?
Where is their expertise relevant? Where is it not?
How influential are factors like stakeholder input at each stage of the process?

Once groundwork has been laid by answering those questions, you can start digging into the priorities ecosystem members consider when making partner or vendor decisions, as well as any agitating factors that could cause them to decline a working relationship

These considerations include:

Failure to follow up on sales calls
Bad marketing material
Promises that are never delivered on
Any other “red flag” behaviors

These data can be used to determine where and how your marketing and sales strategy needs to be focused at different moments of the sales cycle and at different points of the sales pipeline—what messages need to be conveyed at each point in order to be pushed through to the next step of the sales funnel.

Sylver Consulting is one of the only research and strategy consultancies that uses such an approach to B2B market research. Our clients are thrilled with their results. One client, a leading health services organization, took our decision-making ecosystem research findings even further and turned them into training materials for their sales force!

One of the key advantages of the Decision-Making Ecosystem approach is its adaptability. This method allows for a rolling recruit, where participant targets are recalibrated as data is being gathered. This flexibility ensures that the research evolves to accurately depict the organizational decision-making landscape as it is vs. what you initially perceive it to be.

At Sylver Consulting, we've witnessed firsthand the transformative impact of this approach. And with every new project completed, we’re able to expand and adjust the process to yield even richer results.

Unlock new avenues of success in the complex world of B2B sales using Sylver’s DME process.

Practices