3 Ways to Cater CFO Buyers and Accelerate Pipeline

While end-user buy-in is vital to successful sales conversations, volatile markets can cause many businesses to become fiscally conservative. When this occurs, it is common for stakeholders within an account to require C-level approval before a purchase can be made — creating an added hurdle for BDRs and sales reps to overcome. This has led to a notable uptick in CFO buyers taking part in purchase decisions.  

As the overseer of all financial activities of the company, the CFO has a holistic view of that company’s financial strengths and weaknesses. This viewpoint tends to give the CFO all the leverage they need to make — or break — a deal.  McKinsey’s research states that CFO involvement can lead to better outcomes for organization-wide performance improvements.   

The CFO is now the stopgap between your sales team and a closed deal. It is important to cater to them, as well as the end-user, as early as possible in the buying discussion so alignment is being built from the very beginning. This will guarantee deals are not being stalled due to a lack of communication with the CFO and may even shorten sales cycles.    

To carry this out, here are three suggestions: 

1) Clear, Efficient Communication

It is vital to clearly articulate how your products and services make the prospect’s company run smoother. For the CFO, that means you must prove that this investment can increase employee productivity, lead to more revenue generation, and help cut costs by dropping other technologies. Therefore, sales reps and BDRs must understand the prospect’s business and industry to clearly and efficiently communicate that value. 

2) The Power of Advocates

Oftentimes, the end-user is the one that provides a foot into the door of a potential deal. Once you have shown the value to these users, they can become helpful teammates to ensure everyone on their team can see that same value. Use your end-users as advocates to help remove the CFO as a bottleneck or help find specifically what is preventing the CFO from giving the go-ahead on the deal. 

3) Getting to the Bottom Line

While your offering may not speak directly to the CFO on a user level, your offering does affect their part of the business. Find ways to articulate the value your offering brings to the company’s bottom line. Key areas to focus on include how the offering:  

• Affects revenue numbers;   
• Improves pipeline; or even   
• Provides more data to work with when reporting on the company’s wellbeing.   

 Addressing these areas upfront will result in fewer hurdles during in-depth conversations later in the sales process. 

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