High and Wide – Understanding the People in the Business
When you’re selling to business you’ll often aim to contact a specific person, or a single person will contact you. This person naturally becomes your main point of contact for the sales opportunity. However, for the opportunity to close successfully, this person must not be your only contact, unless that person is of course the CEO for example.
Generally, the first person you speak to isn’t going to be the one that makes the final decision. They may not even have much influence in the decision making process. A lot of the time, the biggest role your initial contact will have is making a recommendation. To be successful, you need to not only convince this contact that your product or service is right for their needs, but learn who else would be involved in order to sign the deal off.
A great strategy to discover this the right people to talk to is this:
- Get on great terms with the contact
Establish and build rapport. Build a fantastic relationship. One that is akin to a friendship. You want your contact to feel comfortable talking to you about things other than business or product. This takes time and interaction. A relationship built over the phone or email will not have as great an impact as a relationship with real, face-to-face interaction. - Ask “What is your process for purchasing such a solution?”
If the relationship is solid enough, your contact shouldn’t have a problem explaining what needs to happen in order to proceed with the solution you are offering. Of course, there may be other steps involved that your contact isn’t fully aware of. But, you will have discovered what the next level up the tree is. The tree being who your contact reports-to and their peers. You will have also learned what the process may look like in order to close your deal. Use this knowledge to plan a sales strategy. - Contact The Next Level. All of it.
Now that you know who is involved in making a decision, you will need to speak to them directly and, if needed, repeat from step 1. People by from people. And if the people buying are on friendly terms and know the real person behind the people selling, then the chances of being successful are greatly improved. Learn about the people involved in the decision making process. Uncover their roles in the business and in the sales process from your perspective (very important) and some of their history. LinkedIn is a great resource for profiling. There are a couple of ways to contact this level of person. - Have a Call or Meeting Scheduled for You
Ask your main contact to setup a meeting with you, the contact and as many of the decision makers as possible. This is a great way to have the contact introduce you and, by this stage you and the contact are already on great terms so when the decision makers see the relationship you’ve built with the business already they will be more inclined to drop their guard. It’s difficult to be able to schedule time in everyone’s busy days to meet at the same time. If this is the case, have you contact setup a number meetings. As many as needed so that you can meet, in person, each of the decision makers. - Call through the Switch
Often, the contact is reluctant to let you talk to the decision makers directly. This could be for any number of reasons. You’ll often hear that “they’re very busy”, or “they’ve asked me to compile a list of options” or any other number of excuses. If these decision do exist, then they’ll have a phone on their desk. If you hit a brick wall with your contact, and they are refusing to let you speak to the decision makers, try cold calling them. Call the main business phone number (usually on their website) and ask to speak to whoever you need to speak to. Unless asked, there’s no need to divulge what company you’re calling from or what you’re calling about. In fact, if you can avoid letting on the company you’re calling from then you’ll likely have a better chance of getting into a conversation. - Call Directly
If you’ve tried calling through the switch line and reaching a dead end, then it’s time to go hunting. There a number of tools online that act as people and company directories. Many give you an amazing amount of information. If you’ve exhausted LinkedIn, try Hoovers, JigSaw or ZoomInfo. And don’t forget about the common social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Google+. People will often express a phenomenal amount of information online. Finding their social presence is also a great way to learn more about them, what their passionate about and what irritates them. Valuable. Very valuable.
When you do get to meet the decision makers, again establish rapport. Don’t assume the sales is over now that you’ve reached the right level. Far from it. However, you’re now in a much better position to understand what is going to make the decision makers look like heroes to the business. You’ll need this in order to present the right solution.
If you are simply unable to reach the decision makers, don’t keep leaving voicemails or sending “reminder” emails or calendar invitations, you sound and look desperate.
Once you’ve established a conversation with the decision makers, you’ll want to keep in touch with them regularly to ensure they their thinking is inline with how your solution works and how your sales process flows. If you reach high levels in the business, it’s time to go wide. Find out about peers and meet them too! Peers will influence each other and the more high level decision makers there are that think of you and your business first, the better.
Take these tips and do them in your next sale. Actually do them in the sales you’re working on right now! Take care when asking about the decision making process. You need to warm up the conversation before jumping right into that.
