A typical B2B buyer journey consists of three broad stages: Awareness, Consideration and Purchase. In the Consideration and Purchase stages, the sales professional occupies centre-stage, and conversion depends on the salesman's sales skill and overall competence. Awareness is created by Marketing, though in smaller and newer organizations, this responsibility too may be carried by Sales. 

Today's B2B buyers today are well informed and are very proactive through all the buying stages. They research products and solutions extensively before they initiate contact with suppliers. As a result the role of Sales professionals has changed from being messengers, relationship managers and anchors to having to play the role of solution and business advisers. They also continue to play their traditional role of being negotiators and owners of the relationship remains unchanged.

Where indeed does Critical thinking fit into this scenario? To recap, the enablers of critical thinking are logical reasoning, clear thinking, and a knowledge of fallacies and cognitive biases.

Inductive Arguments: 

Argument = Claim + Premises.    Claim = A conclusion, statement or opinion
Premise = A reason that supports the claim

Strength of inductive arguments: The greater the support of the premises
or the claim, the stronger the argument. To produce a strong argument, all 
you need to do is to ensure that your premises support the claim, and 
that they individually offer strong support, and all the premises together 
collectively offer logically persuasive support.

Critical thinking through the buyer journey

Awareness: This stage is usually addressed by Marketing, and there are several areas that critical thinking comes into play. To start with, knowledge of inductive reasoning helps in building persuasive marketing communications across all the different media. Cognitive biases can be used to advantage, and some of the biases that can be used by Marketing are:Framing effect, anchoring, priming and decoy effect amongst many. Knowledge of these can play a significant role in moving the customer from the Awareness stage to Consideration stage. 

Consideration stage: In this stage, the buyer is evaluating various solution and technology options. He has done some independent research on the internet, has developed alternative solutions, and evaluating them against his organizational needs. He is essentially working towards finding the best solution that solves the problem/meets requirements.

It is the Salesman's job to now convince the stakeholders in the buyer organization of : (a) Why this solution and (b) Why my organization for this solution. For those who understand logical reasoning, addressing both these issues is conceptually a simple affair. What is needed is a strong inductive argument on both counts. The first argument's claim being: 'This solution is the best for your requirement' and supported by premises that offer strong support for this claim. The second argument's claim would be 'My company is the best organization to provide this solution for your company'. This claim would need to be supported by premises that offer strong support for the claim.

This conceptual approach of treating the sales propositions as inductive arguments provides a very powerful conceptual framework for producing very strong and persuasive reasoning, because the salesman now looks at this part of the sales process with a clear understanding of what's required, and also a clear idea of how to produce the required strong arguments.

It is also at this stage that Sales presentations and Sales proposals are made, and critical thinking provides a simple perspective on how to consistently produce logically persuasive sales presentations and proposals. Treating the sales proposal as an inductive argument, backed by credibility building facts - certifications, skills, testimonials etc provides a simple and easily executed framework.

Purchase stage: At the purchase stage, the salesman is negotiating prices, delivery periods, support and various other contractual parameters. The skills that come into play are the salesman's negotiating skills.

Cognitive biases play a very significant role in negotiation, and a knowledge of these biases along with strategies for countering them will play a significant role in determining how successful one is in getting a good price, favourable and fair terms. There are many cognitive biases to be dealt with in this stage, and here's a listing of some very common biases: Framing effect, Anchoring, Priming, decoy effect, WYSIATI bias , Escalation of commitment, Overconfidence bias, confirmation bias and Availability bias amongst a few more.

Today's Sales professional will be severely handicapped if they do not learn Critical thinking especially since buyers are equipping themselves with a whole range of negotiation tactics meant to put them at a psychological advantage. Critical thinking provides an understanding of tools and concepts that protects us from various buyer psychological tactics. Of course you can use these tools and concepts to your advantage in various stages of the sales process including negotiation.