Dealing with DMUs

What is a DMU?

Traditionally salespeople concentrated on a ‘decision maker’. However, research is showing that increasingly more people are involved, so we need to consider ‘decision-making units’ 

Within a DMU an individual may have a stronger influence, but everyone should be considered important, and their individual objectives, needs, wants, key performance indicators (KPIs) – whatever it is they are trying to achieve – should be understood. By doing this a salesperson can start to think more strategically about their approach by understanding who might be a:

• Supporter: someone who likes what the salesperson is offering and will push for that decision
• Detractor: the opposite of a supporter, who will do what they can to make what the salesperson is offering not happen
• Influencer: neutral in allegiance, but having things they want to achieve, and their opinion counts
• Sponsor/coach: like a ‘super supporter’ who will work hard to help and even on behalf of the salesperson.

So how does the salesperson work out who is who? They map the DMU.

Mapping a DMU

One effective way to do this is to draw an organigram and try to assign bits of information to each individual that could have an influence. Lots of different pieces of information could be captured and potentially all would be useful. The following are what a salesperson should aspire to understand as a minimum.

1. Name: Everybody has one, it is how we are identified. It is important when dealing with people that we use it and get it right.
2. Title: Different companies label different jobs with different titles. We want to work in a way consistent with their approach and demonstrate we are willing to do so. Whatever the title, we should also get a clue as to the function the person actually performs. For some people it is almost as important to get their title right as to get their name right.
3. Role: People will play a different role in how the decision is made. This is not the same as their job, which we capture in ‘Title’. It is related to the influence they have with the DMU. Specific labels help focus on this:
   • ‘users’ tend to be people who have hands-on experience with the product or service
   • ‘criteria buyers’ have different ‘criteria’ that need fulfilling, perhaps ‘commercial’ – buy at x price, make y margin, pay in z days – or ‘technical’ – specification, functionality, packaging required
   • ‘economic buyers’, the person that brings all the various opinions together to ultimately make the decision
   • ‘coach’ can be one of the other roles or someone different who really helps the sale, giving extra information, lending support, opening doors and the like.

 Economic buyers have the final say so there tends to only be one. We deliberately avoid the use of ‘decision maker’ as the whole point is to understand the ‘unit’ and its dynamics rather than focusing on one individual who may seem to have all the control but is really relying on the input of others.

4. Influence: This can be graded on a scale of 1–10: for = 10, against = 1. It can also be useful to gauge how strong that influence is (again on a scale of 1–10), so indicating whether that person is a detractor or a supporter.
5. Personality: It is useful to recognise personal style as it means the salesperson can quickly adjust behaviours to fit with individuals.
6.  WIIFM: ‘What’s in it for me?’ Answering this question for all concerned is a key to successful selling. Can also be expressed as their particular Win.

Finding out this information tells the salesperson who they need to know more about and how to tailor their approach.

It can also be quite a frightening experience when some realise that they are not as close to their customers as they think. The expletives uttered on many a training course when participants do this for the first time are testament to this!

(Extract from Hybrid Selling, Fred Copestake, Rethink Press, 2022)