Welcome back to another Sales Training series!
These posts share some of the key insights I give clients during our trainings.
Note: I intentionally keep the descriptions vague for privacy reasons.
What we’re covering in this post:
- What questions to ask in order to get access to senior stakeholders + How to create those questions
- A new variation of a cold call opener to try
- Reframing a salesy question into one that educates and gets the buyer to reveal the impact of their problem
**There is audio narration included in this post.
Getting access to a senior stakeholder
A common issue I see with trying to get access to a senior stakeholder is being too direct with it.
Budget and timeline are not good enough reasons for the buyer to introduce you to them (unless they are sufficiently motivated to do so)
“Needing [Director’s] buy-in in order to [do next step]” can sometimes work too depending on how motivated they are. But it doesn’t happen often enough for it to be a winning strategy.
You need more tools in your toolbox.
Ask yourself:
What’s in it for the buyer to put you in touch with a senior stakeholder?
Put yourself in their shoes.. Why would/should they introduce you to them? At this point in their awareness they believe you’re the only one benefitting from the intro.
So, what’s in it for them?
Remember, every sale comes down to self-interest. and getting the buyer to send you up is also very much a sale.
So here’s what to do instead:
Find out what they (your current contact) care about regarding the deal. And then Frame the value of your solution to what they care about (i.e projects they’re involved in that will make them look good internally, set them up for promotion, etc)
If what they’re looking to get done is part of a larger company initiative, then find out what part of the initiative your buyer “owns” .. What’s their scope of work and authority?
This is in order to understand their underlying motivation for why they want to do this (more motivated = more likely to be your champion)
Ask your buyer questions that only the senior stakeholder can answer. Their inability to answer will begin creating the “need” to introduce you to them.
Putting the above 2 points in this Frame:
Your conversations should be centered around the issues/technical issues your contact is experiencing in their current domain and its respective scope, how that issue fits into the bigger picture/issue, why your current contact cares, and then asking questions only the senior stakeholder can answer.
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Let’s start with the first point of Finding what your current contact cares about regarding the deal. You want to get comfortable asking questions like:
🐲: So how’d you get involved with this project? I’m sure it’s a good story
🐲: and you wouldn’t rather be working on something else?
🐲: Who else / Which other teams are working with you on this?
^ Is the project silo’d? Or are multiple people / different teams collaborating on this. Looking for energy / movement here.
🐲: Who’s responsible for what? I’m assuming you’re leading [this part]? What about [other part/function]? Would be helpful to understand what that looks like
🐲: How does this project fit into wider company/department priorities / initiatives?
or
🐲: I heard how [company] is trying to create more offerings down market.. How does this initiative/project fit into that? How much of a contributing role does this play?
**Do you understand the technical issues with their process / current environment / workflow at a level you can comfortably have a conversation with them? (without needing your SE’s yet)
**Audio narration of the questions:
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Now the second point.. asking your buyer questions that only the senior stakeholder can answer.
Use this framework in order to help you create the questions:
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