Building Champion's Power, Value in Prospecting, & Growing Accounts | SSA

Question 1:

“How do you prefer to multi-thread into an enterprise deal where you've had a discovery already, and want to get more power behind your champion?”

Getting to power early in your deals is important. Firstly, identifying who has power is key.

“Typically what we find when our customers are looking to solve a big problem like this, it usually means it’s driven by an executive on their side who cares about solving this problem. I’m curious, is there an executive on your side that’s driving this initiative?”

Secondly, there are a few ways you can align to that executive. 

Have your manager or director on your side reach out to the exec with a note (without an ask) that reads something like,

“Hi Linda - our team’s been working closely with your Marketing team to better understand and help solve your customer data challenges.

I understand how important cross-sell and conversion rates are given your goal to 2x revenue in EMEA.

Over the next few weeks the team will be proving out your key use cases.

Wanted to keep you up to speed as I’m the head of our Central region.”

You could also send a similar note to the exec. You could even have your exec send a note, with an ask for a meeting.

Question 2: 

“Every sales influencer these days talks about providing value. In prospecting they say don't provide a case study, provide value that is relevant to them, something so good they would pay for. 

That’s easy advice to give but much harder to do in practice. I’d like a framework on what that really means vs a simple self serving case study showing how great the product you're selling is.”

Value is defined by your prospects. It's not defined by you.

But providing a case study is pretty pointless if there isn't a problem to solve for. Now that doesn't mean you can't share a social proof in a cold email, you should.

Because you believe there may be value in it. But to provide value that's relevant you have to:

1. uncover a problem; and
2. find out if they even care about solving that problem or someone meaningful in the organization cares about solving that problem.

If there is, share how you can help solve those problems. If it resonates with them then there's value and if it doesn't resonate, there's no value. So how do you position yourself? 

For example if you lead your conversations with:

“hey we help you centralize your customer data that's siloed in one place so you can drive better personalized experiences for your customers in real time, increasing conversion rates and revenue.” 

 But that's just talking about your capabilities. In no place did I talk about the problem.

 But if I flip that around and say:

“hey listen I speak to marketers like yourself everyday and two of the biggest challenges they're facing is (1) their customer data are scattered across a dozen different systems and (2)  it's really difficult to access that data and make sense of it. It takes up a lot of time and therefore their teams cannot share personalized experiences for their customers in real-time on digital channels, which results in lost revenue and lower conversion rates.”

So everything that I said talks about the problem and if it resonates, then you can talk about the Valley.

Question 3:

“Assuming the client is happy with and fully understands the product, what are your best strategies for getting referrals quickly?”

There are a few ways… and  I'm assuming you're talking about internal referrals, across the organization.

Number (1)  is don't be lazy.

Don't just ask them, “hey, who else would see value in your organization?” 

Because that puts a burden on your champion.

Number (2)  is doing your own research and finding a few names of personas across the organization that have use cases you could align your value to.

 Sharing those names with your champion saying, “hey, Bob and Linda in Marketing, I believe they could see value. What do you think?”

 But it still puts a burden on them. 

 Number (3), which is my absolute favorite way - put your hard hat on and go multithreading yourself and uncover who those personas are across the organization that may have problems and use cases you can align to and leverage the internal success that you're having at the account.

 Then send them a note like this:

 “Hey Linda,

 been working closely with Devon in your marketing department. They’re using our platform - which is an approved platform - to solve for [this problem].

 They've seen a 12% increase in reply rates over the last six months. If this resonates with you, I'm confident we can do the same for your team.

 Would it be worth a chat?”

 You do that across the org with key contacts and you will find those referrals.

 You will find those opportunities. 

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That's it for episode number three of Sales with Salman. Don’t forget to submit your questions.

I'll see you next week!