The decision maker is a term that is very familiar to most people in business – especially those in sales – but to someone outside of the business world, it might not carry quite the same weight.
Boiled down, it’s exactly what the name says, it’s the person who makes the big decisions at a company. Or at least for your particular product or offering they are the one who will ultimately decide whether to purchase it.
The goal when working through a sales process is to get to the person you can actually sell a product to and then they make the decision to do it.
It can be okay to talk to the gatekeeper (I’ll explain this one in a second) for some things, but in general, you are wasting your time if this is your only correspondent. The gatekeeper can only do so much and just adds an extra step to the process.
That being said, gatekeepers are people who you want to really impress and flatter. They are your window to the decision maker. You want them to so enjoy talking to you that they’ll do everything in their power to make sure you get a call with their boss/decision maker.
What’s a gatekeeper?
In reality, it’s really anyone who’s not the decision maker. Not totally true but that’s kind of a way to see it. Gatekeepers are people who keep you from being able to talk to the person you want to talk to. Their job isn’t to turn away everyone who calls or enters, but instead, it’s to make sure their boss gets only the meetings he wants to have. Only the ones that will be valuable for him to take time out of his busy schedule to have
When prospecting or looking at your Salesforce accounts, look for the decision maker role. If they’re going to buy your product, this is the person who’s going to make it happen. They might not be your main point of contact, but you must eventually connect with them if you are going to sell your product.