If you want to make money, you have to follow the money.
Therefore, if you want to make BIG money, you have to follow the BIG money.
And where the big money is, is in big corporations.
How do you then sell to corporates so that you can start getting that big money, and how do you get your foot through the door in the first place? It often feels daunting, intimidating, and sometimes impossible to do so especially when it’s your first time.
The good news is through my 20 over years of experience, selling to multimillion-dollar companies, and consistently getting successful results, I have developed a way to get my feet through those doors consistently. I’m about to share with you the strategy that I train my paying clients within this video and writeup that I wish I knew during my earlier years.
Imagine this, what if you could not only get your foot through the door, but you have someone from the inside to champion your deal, your solution, your product, or your services all the way to the top? Wouldn’t it be a much smoother process that gives you more certainty in closing the deal? This is where the concept of finding corporate influencers comes in.
To ensure that we find the right person we have to understand that within the context of B2B selling, in a corporation there are influencers, evaluators, decision-makers, approvers & gatekeepers.
So How do you find influencers that can champion your opportunity?
They exist at various levels of an organization, from the low, mid, & high levels of the organization.
Once you have identified at which level of the organization your influencer is at, you will then have to start building a relationship with them.
There are 2 types of relationship:
1. Personal Relationships
Get to know the prospects on a personal level. Meaning, you know about their family, whether they like sports, whether they like certain charity organizations for example.
2. Professional Relationships
Give them ideas, insights, and inspirations so that they are able to do their jobs better and help the organization grow, turnaround, reduce wastage, or whatever that you are selling.
The professional relationship is very important, this is why you need to shower your influencers with lots of creative solutions so that they are able to help their organization.
All these, to foster a close relationship with your prospects, to build a great influencer that champions your proposal and deal.
The next thing we have to understand is that Influencers are typically tasked to find solutions to organizational needs. So, you must be able to find the influencer that has the agenda to help the company solve a specific problem. Because they have an agenda, they will have very specific pain points which makes it our job to find out what they are.
There are 3 pain points that we have to identify:
1. Organizational
2. Departmental
3. Individual
Once you have identified the 3 pain points, in order to activate an influencer that will champion your opportunity, push it up to senior management to approve your contract, your deal, or your proposal, you will have to link these 3 pain points together.
Now, just because you think you have an influencer, it doesn’t mean that he or she is an actual influencer.
How do we identify a real influencer?
1. Passionate
You know you have a real influencer when you can see that they are really passionate about their jobs. They work after hours and go the extra mile. These are the people who truly care about the company
and wants to help you sell into their bosses and sell-in to their company.
These are people who really love their jobs and the organization, they will want to help you to win so that they will win to help the company do their jobs better.
2. Nothing to Hide
Influencers will reveal a lot of information to you that you are able to use and formulate a better proposal, find a different solution, for them to help win you the deal. So, influencers are very transparent. If you see anyone in the organization trying to hide information from you, these are not your influencers.
3. Very Responsive
They want to push you to help hit their targets because they are very KPI driven and they will do whatever it takes to win. Win what? Win the budget, win the contracts, and help you win the bosses to approve your contracts. They truly are, very, very proactive. You can quickly spot this in any corporate organization that you sell to.
Without influencers, you will be unable to sell to big corporations because they have multiple layers of decision-makers, and you need the influencer, to push through your deals and innovative ideas.
When there are so many people in the corporation that may resist new ideas, you definitely need a great influencer to open up the minds of the stakeholders to accept your proposal.
That’s how you can find and build your influencers. All the best to you, in finding your influencer.
