Ever been ghosted by a prospect? It's probably because you’re going too narrow. Here is the bare minimum number of stakeholders you must cultivate.
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Everybody inside your target prospect can provide a piece of information. They're all smart contacts. Don't let anybody tell you that there's a bad contact to make inside an account. I believe everyone from the CEO down to the intern can provide you some intel on how to approach a customer.
I often characterize this as, you know, stakeholders, advisors, spies, influencers. Other people call them mobilizer or blockers, coaches or anti coaches, buyers or economic buyers or technical buyers. It doesn't really matter what you call them, as long as you're building out your network, inside the customer that you're trying to close, your target wide and deep.
The biggest single mistake that I see salespeople make is that they go in with a single view or a single threaded approach, and when they only have one contact, they've created gatekeepers. They have a narrow view of the value that they can create. They create an environment that's easy for the customer to ghost them in, and they create an environment where the customer can keep them their best kept secret. You can't rely on a single point of contact to close a sale.
And so at a very minimum, I recommend that you work on building 4 active stakeholders who are engaged with you throughout this process. Some of you, it might be seven. For many of you it could be 11, But 4 should be your absolute minimum inside every account you're working in, in a B2B environment, to help you close the sale more quickly and at a larger volume.
Don't forget to check out: Is Your Social Network Big Enough?!