Account mapping is a powerful way to identify key decision-makers, discover how organizations function and understand the “best path of sale.” By using this process of visual depiction, you can multiply the force of your sales organization.
You’ll have a clear picture of relationship dynamics and informal hierarchies that can help you streamline selling within an organization.
The question is…once you do the account mapping (i.e. finding the partner and customer overlap between you and your partners) — what’s next?
What Is A Win?
What would you consider to be a win?
If you are doing partner account mapping right, you’ve got a clear view of the “account health”, who has decision-making power, and who can influence the sale. The goal is to define all the people who you can build relationships within your partner ecosystem in order to get sales insights and/or warm introduction and close the deal.
Unlike old school methods, the account mapping process provides valuable strategic insights. This may be far-reaching such as understanding more about your customer, changes in corporate focus, or hiring a new decision-maker. Surfacing the prospect and customer overlaps with your partners can easily enable the sharing of sales insights.
As your understanding of each account deepens, you may see connections within your sales team as well as with your co-selling partners.
Information is knowledge. The more you know about the company, individuals, and relationship dynamics — the better prepared you are to win trust and close deals.
Net New Logos
It’s a numbers game. If you’re selling a complex solution or dealing with global organizations, you may not be thinking in terms of more logos. In fact, you might be looking for more contacts within a division, region, or nation.
However, new logos are powerful. It’s important to keep the pipeline full and expanding your reach into new companies not only fuels passion, it is smart business.
One company could suffer economic setbacks, affecting your sales strategy in all departments. By expanding your reach across different organizations, you are building a stronger fabric in your sales strategy.
If one company or one industry suffers, you won’t go down with them. By having a broad base of companies, industries, and geographic locations, you can do your best to prevent dips in sales.
A simple way to achieve this is to think in terms of net logos. Track your sales activities by logo. You’ll quickly see opportunities to leverage efforts from one industry to another; from one logo into new ones.
Understanding The Ideal Customer Persona
What we are going to understand in account mapping is: the ideal customer persona.
This varies across organizations. Think about your ideal customer persona. Is it a C-level decision-maker in a certain vertical of the business? Is it someone who is highly motivated? Is it someone who has sole signing power, or is it someone who is the influencer behind the scenes?
Spend some time with your team, and with your co-selling partners to identify your ideal customer. Interview high performers in your team to find out what criteria they are using. You just might discover they’ve got a crystal clear picture of the ideal customer persona.
Certainly, it makes the most sense to closely work with partners that are targeting the same buyers as your team. Do the legwork upfront and this will pay dividends later on.
Identifying Key Accounts
Let’s get 5–10 intros for your team.
As you are selling complex solutions and working within large enterprises, it’s important to identify key accounts. When working with partners to understand co-selling opportunities, use your account mapping data to touch base with key decision-makers.
Sharing account mapping data with partners is smart business. You may know people who share similar decision-making roles, yet have diverse titles. It’s easier to focus the conversation when you’ve got specific targets.
In interviewing clients, the high achievers always get incredibly specific. They aren’t just looking for “more.” They identify specific goals, specific timeframes, and specific metrics. One of the simplest is: 5–10 introductions to key decision-makers in a specific number of days. Depending on your industry, reach, and aggressiveness — I’ll let you fill in the blanks.
Of course, once you do…it’s important to look beyond the numbers. That’s why engagement is the next focal point.
Roadmaps of Engagement
In key accounts, there are certain ones that could be called, “low engagement.” Others are, without question, high engagement. After finding the prospect <> customer overlap with your partner, work with closely with them to judge “account health” for specific targets based on engagement.
Much like the colors of a traffic light, think of identifying engagement by color. Go for green, your most important accounts are those with marks for high engagement. The red/yellow ones can be seen as “low engagement.”
What qualifies an account for its appropriate green coding? Here’s a starter kit:
• Top C-level decision-maker
• Sole signing authority
• Recent purchases have been seamless and swift
• Known to be a responsive communicator
• Expresses an interest in finding a solution
• Finding a solution is a top priority
• Has urgency and allocated funds
• Expresses personal motivation
• Enjoys being a leader, thought leader
Defining your criteria will vary from sales organization to sales organization. Use the ideas in the starter kit to build your personal set of ‘green’ criteria. Once you determine the coordinates, use this with precision and persistence. In a short time, you’ll find that you’re working with key accounts that are not only ‘good shots’ but instead, are ‘highly engaged.’
What Is Success?
Think in terms of customer success…
It’s time to switch seats. You may have been thinking about account mapping and the sales process from your perspective. That’s entirely natural and understandable.
But when it comes to success, it helps to think from the customer’s perspective. If you’ve been able to connect directly to the top decision-maker, you have helped your customer move quickly and smoothly through the purchasing process.
You’ve eliminated setbacks, steered clear of hindrances, and enabled your customer to begin using your awesome solution.
Just take a look at how you’ve leveraged account mapping and co-selling to streamline customer success. Here’s a quick taste:
• Prospecting: You helped your buyer quickly become aware of the business problem, challenge and potential solution.
• Connecting: By reaching out to your buyer, you saved them time, energy, and research. Your availability helped them streamline the process of connecting and qualifying.
• Research: You anticipated your buyer’s need for data and evidence. You provided the necessary research and helped them evaluate why your solution is the one to go with. This may have also included sharing data on why your solution is better than comparable alternatives.
• Presenting: In many cases, you provided a demo presentation to the buyer, and other key people in their organization. This may have included a pilot test, and answering concerns from other stakeholders.
• Handling Objections: You asked for questions and offered solutions to concerns.
• Closing: You professionally handled negotiations, arrived at agreements, finalized contracts, oversaw payments, and initiated service.
In Conclusion
An exceptional sales organization requires the best tools — and the knowledge of how to use them. Account mapping enables collaborative and strategic selling, essential to high impact Partner Co-Selling. With a strategic mindset, skillset, and toolset, Partner Co-Selling is easier than ever before.
Using a platform like CoSell.io is the simplest way to get your sales team on board. CoSell is a robust platform that makes it easy and fast to help automate and scale co-selling across sales teams.
If you’d like to explore how this can help you and your team boost sales and win major clients fast — please reach out to us. To learn more, check us out.
