What is a complex sale?

What exactly is a complex sale? We all use that phrase, and most of us think we understand what it means… but how do we actually define it? Everyone has an opinion, but it’s tough to agree on a single definition.

One thing that makes this definition difficult is that complexity is relative. At one end of the sales complexity scale are transactional sales that operate in the thousands or millions per minute, such as day trading stocks. At the other end are massively complex sales that take years to develop, such as major government contracts for region-wide infrastructure projects.

Between the two extremes is a wide spectrum of sales types. Checkout line candy sales are obviously transactional. Large-scale software integrations like a new CRM  or ERP system at a mid-sized company can be complex. But where is the line between the two?

Is it based on decision makers? And, if so, does a simple sale become complex when there are two decision makers? Surely not, as it is common for a buyer to inquire with a spouse before purchasing an item on Amazon, for instance. And that is hardly a complex sale. But what if there are three, or five?

Another common metric for defining complex sales is the length of the sales cycle. Five minutes? That’s transactional. Six months? That’s complex. But, again, this definition has limits. Someone deciding on a gym membership might take six months to decide which one is right for them, trying out different specials, talking to friends, debating whether to go to the one close to home that is less expensive, or the one farther away with a sauna and a swimming pool. Most sales professionals still would not define that as a complex sale.

A third common metric is purchase price. This metric implies: Higher price equals complex sale, lower price equals transactional sale. But this also isn’t always the case. Investors often make large purchases in a transactional way, such as through day trading. Some purchases that seem low in cost, such as a low-priced license for an integration between IT systems, can actually be quite complex because of the way that one system intersects with other systems in the company.

So, what then, are the defining traits of a complex sale?

A complex sale, in its simplest form, is one that involves a high degree of perceived risk on the part of the buyer. This higher perceived risk drives all of the other features of a complex sale:

Multiple stakeholders, because higher risk means the necessity of involving more people

Higher purchase price often causes a sale to be perceived as “high risk”

Longer sales cycles reflect the due diligence necessary in a high risk purchase

So we can expand the definition, then, to this:

A complex sale is one in which the buyer perceives a high level of risk.

With the additional clarification: Complex sales often involve multiple stakeholders, large transaction amounts, greater potential disruption to the buying entity, and longer sales cycles.

It bears noting that a complex sale can be business to business (B2B) or business to consumer (B2C). A complex B2B sale is what most sales professionals think of when they think of complex sales.

But a consumer purchase can be complex too. For instance, a home purchase is generally perceived as high risk by the buyer. For this reason, a home buyer will usually consult with multiple stakeholders (family, friends, lenders), bring in expertise (home inspectors, real estate agents, and attorneys), and, on average in the US, take four to five months from start to close of the purchasing process.

How Does Complexity Change Your Way of Selling?

Once an organization understands a sale to be a complex sale, this should inform their unique Way of Selling. The impacts of complexity on the Way of Selling can be broadly categorized into:

Impacts on salespeople
Impacts on sales strategy
Impacts on sales process and methodology
Impacts on sales technology

How Does Sales Complexity Impact Salespeople?

In simple transactions, sales can be simple. Salespeople are often primarily order takers, who may or may not be trained to upsell or cross sell to increase transaction size. The job may require some skill to do it well, but the skill sets are vastly different from the skill set of a highly effective complex B2B salesperson.

Among other skills, salespeople operating in a complex B2B sales environment must:

Possess excellent people skills, including how to build trust, be productively curious, navigate multiple relationships, perceive risk-averse cues and address them effectively, and build a shared mental model across all relevant stakeholders

Have outstanding business acumen. In a complex B2B sale, high-level management is likely to be involved, and salespeople must be confident and capable of professionally discussing business-level stakes and decision making

Demonstrate patience and skill in navigating long sales cycles, maintaining cadence and following sales process without skipping steps

Be skilled in systems thinking to understand the impacts the purchase will have on systems within and external to the company, the differing perspectives of various stakeholders depending on their relationship to the project, and the relationships between stakeholders and systems that contain important clues to building a shared mental model that produces a beneficial outcome for all

Be collaborative and team-oriented. Individual salespeople in a transactional environment can afford to be competitive with each other. In a complex sale, salespeople must be capable of effectively collaborating with multiple members of their own team in order to effectively serve the stakeholders on the purchasing team.

Some companies make the mistake of thinking that a salesperson who did well in a transactional environment will automatically know how to thrive in their complex B2B environment. That is rarely the case, due to the vast difference between the two types of environments, and the skills required to succeed in each.

How Does Sales Complexity Impact Sales Strategy?

Transactional sales strategies often focus on volume and messaging over technique or relationship. In a complex B2B sales environment, the focus needs to be flipped. Fast-paced automation that peppers the market with emails and robo calls and texts is a fast way to poison the often limited well of complex B2B buyers.

In complex B2B sales, the market is often much smaller, meaning your company’s relationship with the buyer matters more. And while strong messaging might get your salespeople in the door, it won’t win them the deal on their own.

A sales strategy for complex sales must focus on relationships across multiple stakeholders at varying levels of the organization, effective problem and opportunity analysis, and developing a shared mental model for a solution agreeable to all relevant stakeholders.

While a such a sales strategy might include some transactional style engagement early on, such as sending out letters or packages to a list of potential customers, once the sales team has direct contact with a stakeholder, it’s critical to move immediately into building shared understanding, rather than simply trying to “sell” them on your product the way you might sell a candy bar.

How Does Sales Complexity Impact Sales Process and Methodology?

In transactional sales, a sales process can be very simple: Buyer expresses interest, seller suggests a solution, buyer makes purchase, seller moves to the next customer. In the case of larger transactional purchases such as, for instance, construction materials from a vendor, the sales process will have more steps. But ultimately, these steps can often be effectively captured in a dropdown box of stages within a traditional CRM.

Complex sales require a much more in-depth process. That sales process must be dynamic, detailed, and responsive. Instead of dropdowns in the CRM, it should include not only stages, but milestones within each stage, steps and guidance to achieve each milestone, activities within each step, checklists to ensure nothing gets missed, and skilled salespeople who know how to execute on the process using your company’s chosen methodology.

Zoomed out, sales engagement in a complex sales environment involves three core processes: prospecting, opportunity management, and account growth or management.

Each process requires unique skills and activities, as well as its own process and workflow. Prospecting is often focused on volume, though in a complex sale, it’s still important to ensure that every contact is meaningful and valuable to the customer. Developing a sale requires detailed attention to discovering customer needs, opportunities, and risks, identifying relevant stakeholders, building relationships, discovering the perspective of each stakeholder, providing value, and creating a shared mental model among those stakeholders. Finally, account management or account growth requires salespeople to be attuned to the ongoing needs and growth of existing customers, and skilled in suggesting added value opportunities to support them while growing the account.

How Does Sales Complexity Impact Sales Technology?

In highly transactional sales, technology platforms focus on volume, speed, and automation. The fewer times a human has to touch the process, the more money the company makes.

As complexity grows, however, more human interaction is necessary to help manage the buyer’s perceived risk and navigate the complexities of the deal. In complex B2B environments, technology must serve as a support to the sales team, rather than a replacement.

A certain degree of automation can reduce work load and enable salespeople to focus on the complex aspects of the purchase. But most of the technology must be focused on providing salespeople and their buyers with the tools, reminders, analytics, research, and resources they need to do their job well.

The ideal complex sales technology environment will be built on a platform into which the company’s unique Way of Selling is built in stages, milestones, steps, and activities. Once the Way of Selling is built into the workflows for each major stage of the sales process, salespeople can “live” inside the technology as a supportive tool that reminds them where to focus their energy, how to move sales to the next step, where to access information, support, and skills training in context, and prevents them from skipping steps that could undermine the project.

Having a technology platform based on the salesperson’s workflow also enables the sales organization to gain greater insights into how their Way of Selling is working, and make adjustments that are easily scaled to the entire team.

In Complex Sales, the Role of the Salesperson Is Not to Sell

Bottom line, in a complex B2B sale, the salesperson’s job is not to sell the product. Rather, a salesperson must become a decision-making catalyst within the customer’s organization. Change is difficult for individuals, and even more difficult within a large organization. Salespeople must be able to help the organization navigate the necessity for change, as well as the how and what of the change.

This requires salespeople to be able not only to understand the product you are selling, but also understand how it will impact every stakeholder and system within the customer’s company. They must also understand what problems the customer is trying to solve, what opportunities they want to take advantage of, and, importantly, help them uncover what they don’t know that they don’t know, so that they can achieve what they want to achieve. And they must do this for every relevant stakeholder within the company.

To do this, salespeople must learn much more than good skills. They must learn to think effectively about systems. When you have many systems interacting with many other systems as in a complex B2B sale, it’s easy to get lost in complexity and make it more complicated than it is. Good systems thinking tools help avoid this tangle and keep salespeople focused on outcomes and capable of navigating complexity.

The DSRP framework developed by Derek and Laura Cabrera offers simple tools that do exactly this.

Distinctions (D) tools help salespeople understand what systems and people are relevant to the problem the customer is trying to solve. This helps reduce overwhelm and identify the stakeholders who actually matter (link to the paper).

Systems (S) tools enable the salesperson to zoom in and zoom out on problems to understand what a company’s priorities are, how they impact various aspects of the organization, and how the proposed solution will affect it at different levels.

Relationships (R) tools help salespeople understand the interconnected relationships among stakeholders, as well as find the hidden gems that live inside those relationships.

Perspectives (P) tools remind salespeople not to assume that their own perspective is shared by the others, and instead provides them with a method toward developing the shared mental model that will result in a positive outcome.

Conclusion

Complex sales, fundamentally, are defined by the level of perceived risk on the part of the buyer. This perceived risk has multiple impacts on the buyer’s approach, usually involving more stakeholders, slower decision times, and a need to understand the purchase and its implications in depth.

A complex sales team must become decision-making catalysts for their buyers, helping them understand themselves, each other, the problem, their needs, potential solutions, and, ultimately, a shared mental model of what a successful solution will look like. Only then can the sales team bring the sale to a satisfying close.