The Bottom Line Vine

On piece of advice, rarely addressed in traditional sales training is the importance of communicating with multiple individuals on the buying side.

Once you know the lay of the land and have established a need for your good or service, including the key players in follow up calls, emails and reviews is critical.  This type of sales approach will shorten sales cycles, increase the quality and type of feedback and allow you (the sales rep) to properly access the sales opportunity.  With direct lines of communication to all constituents, the sales rep will be in a position to accurately assess viability and forecast the deal.

Including multiple decision makers, champions, influences and end users will allow a rep to:

1. Speed up the decision making process; feedback will be collective, immediate and accurate.
2. Establishing multiple points of contact will keep a deal going in the case of a layoff, vacation, sickness, side projects, etc.
3. The sales rep can sell direct to the key players.  You are not reliant on an unknown person to act as your salesperson.

How do you establish these relationships?  Create a people map of all the potential players involved in the deal.  Ask for referrals, emails, etc., from your initial point of contact.  This is a good way to test collaboration.  If they are unwilling to share this information, you need to reassess the opportunity.

Begin the process of introductions to the key individual, including:

1. The person with budget
2. The influencers
3. Any evaluators
4. Anyone else who can shape the decision related to buying your offering (if you do not know who this might be, you cannot accurate forecast the opportunity).

Take a look at your existing opportunities.  Do you have multiple points of contact?  Will the inclusion of additional decision makers’ speed up the sales cycle?  Are you truly dealing with the end decision maker?  How have you been able to validate this?  In our next entry, we will address how to validate you are engaged at the right level.

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