Leverage Internal Resources to Win and Expand Business.pub

CRITICAL PATHWAYS
Leverage Internal Resources to Win and Expand Business
by Jeanne Buchanan
Selling internally is as important as selling externally. A substantial challenge for you as a salesperson is effectively convincing
your internal colleagues to help you advance a particular opportunity or account. You often need their support, commitment, and
participation to secure a piece of business—what’s the best way to get it?
One of the toughest things for you as a salesperson is to compete for scarce company resources that will help you be successful with your accounts and in your territory. That’s why it’s essential to
cultivate relationships with your internal colleagues so that they are more than willing to help you grow your business.
In much the same way that you demonstrate trust with a customer, you need to demonstrate trust with your colleagues. The way you do that is by demonstrating credibility, reliability and intimacy,
mitigating risk and making sure that it isn’t all about you. You need to prove to them that you have a well thought out account plan and that you are specifically identifying their role/part in the plan.
You want to get them excited and confident about the plan. Here’s how.
Critical Path Strategies’ Customer Vision is the ideal tool to use to brief your colleagues about the account and your relationship:
1. The Customer Business Gap Assessment helps you ground your colleagues in your customer’s business.
2. The Customer Enterprise Value Alignment will show them how your company’s core competencies or top capabilities support your customer’s needs. Then you can share the Value Statement
that articulates the value that you can provide to meet your customer’s needs. Ask them for their thoughts about both of these tools…What have I missed? What would make these better?
3. The Opportunity Landscape is a good way to share the top three High-Value Opportunities within your account. And the Business Goals with Customer section will help you discuss the meaningful, clear business goals you have with your customer.
The second page of the Customer Vision focuses on your customer relationship strategy. A number of tools examines your relationships within your customer and how they can be leveraged.
They are all useful for familiarizing your colleagues with your desired future state with the customer, as well as the path (or key initiatives) to get there.
1. Discuss the Customer Relationship Gap Assessment to demonstrate how your activities are aligned to achieving the desired future state of the customer relationship. 2. Review your Relationship Goal to illustrate how you plan to drive relationships with the most important people at your customer to a higher level.
3. Use the Key Customer Executive Relationship Plan tool to identify customer roles and show where you need to gain support and overcome resistance in the customer organization.
Again, encourage your colleagues’ questions and constructive criticism to make your customer relationship strategy the best it can be.
A CPS sales resource article. © by Critical Path Strategies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
CRITICAL PATHWAYS
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CPS’ Customer Vision is a copyrighted sales training tool of Critical Path Strategies, Inc.
A CPS sales resource article. © by Critical Path Strategies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
CPS’ Customer Vision is a copyrighted sales training tool of Critical Path Strategies, Inc.
CRITICAL PATHWAYS
The Opportunity Critical Path is a great way to talk to your colleagues about the specific opportunity. It helps you demonstrate that you have a long-term plan to grow with the customer...and now it’s time to sell a deal. Now your colleagues are
grounded in the strategy and you’ve put the deal into context for them.
The Work Plan can be used to highlight where you recommend that your colleagues contribute. They will see you have
thought this through and it will be clear what their role is.
Once your colleagues are engaged, it’s important to keep them up-to-date. Ongoing open communication about the sale’s
progress keeps traction and momentum behind it. These are some best practices:
 Relationship accountability
How do you make sure that you get more than your fair share of
the help that you need from your colleagues on an account?
1. Demonstrate that you’re prepared—there’s a plan in
place, and it’s innovative and well thought out.
2. Tell them how winning the opportunity will make a difference for the company.
3. Show them how they can make a significant contribution.
4. Continue to nurture relationships with your colleagues
after the deal is done.
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Help your colleagues develop call plans
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Debrief them on any conversations you have with their assigned relationships
 Involvement in opportunity pursuit
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Invite your colleagues to attend team meetings on the opportunity and review progress on each milestone
 Trusted advisor
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Leverage your colleagues’ expertise to act as trusted advisor on key milestones (e.g., solution scope, proposal)
If you create excitement around your potential to succeed and the importance of your colleagues to make it happen, they become energized by the possibilities. And they’ll help you the next time you ask them!
Just like with a good customer, the best salespeople proactively develop relationships with colleagues within their company.
They share their account plans, ask them for input, and are clear about what is needed from them. Then, they continue to
invest in those relationships long after the deal is done.
A CPS sales resource article. © by Critical Path Strategies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
CRITICAL PATHWAYS
CPS’ Opportunity Critical Path is a copyrighted sales training tool of Critical Path Strategies, Inc.
CPS’ Opportunity Critical Path-Work Plan is a copyrighted sales training tool of Critical Path Strategies, Inc.
ABOUT CPS. Critical Path Strategies helps clients improve the effectiveness of their sales organization. Our portfolio of services addresses the strategic, organizational, and relationship issues that impact selling performance. Our powerful
processes enable clients to transform their sales culture, enhance their competitive position, and accomplish strategic business initiatives. Our clients—emerging companies and members of the Fortune 500 alike—typically measure 100 to
500 times their CPS investment in revenue growth.
A CPS sales resource article. © by Critical Path Strategies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
www.criticalpathstrategies.com  LinkedIn Group: The Best Best Practices in Sales Effectiveness