Selling Multiple Stakeholders
Leveraging multiple stakeholders, executives and your economic buyer to gain consensus and win more deals
Hello Friends -
It’s something that I’ve seen time and time again. Your “champion” leads you to believe the deal is done…
But when the time comes to move that deal across the finish line, something inevitably comes up. That signature keeps pushing, a new “stakeholder” is introduced (or replaced), and the deal falls apart.
While there isn’t a fool-proof, money-backed guarantee approach for any of this, there are key tactics and tips to help mitigate the risk of that deal dying on the vine.
Solution?
Selling Multiple Stakeholders (aka Multi-threading).
In this week’s edition of Stretch Weekly -
Another really good checklist from the folks at Gong on winning executive buy-in.
Ian Koniak shares a quick video with 6 steps on how to win large deals by gaining consensus from multiple stakeholders.
And don’t miss this week’s snippets from Lemkin, Gong, People.ai, Lucid and Jeff Swan on leveraging multiple stakeholders, executives and your economic buyer to gain consensus and win more deals.
THANKS for reading!!
-Grant
And lastly - as always, if you find this newsletter valuable- subscribe or share it with someone who might as well 👊.
STRETCH SHARES
7-Point Checklist to Win Executive Buy-in
Another really good checklist from the folks at Gong on winning executive buy-in. No introduction needed so we’ll jump straight to the highlights:
Don’t confuse role with title. Takeaway: Talk to people inside the buyers org to figure out two things: 1) Who is close enough to the problem to do something about it, and 2) Who is involved in the decision making process.
Maximize their time. Immediately clarify why this meeting matters to
this person. You’ll earn the right to influence them for the
rest of the meeting.
Keep the conversation flowing with targeted questions.If you ask discovery-level questions or too many questions, your win rate will drop. Why? Because senior decision makers have discovery fatigue. Don’t ask standard questions, ask them strategic questions no one else can answer.
Solve for external factors. Reference specific external factors early in the conversation to demonstrate that you understand their business and establish your credibility.
Mention their strategic initiatives. Understand which initiatives are essential to their growth plan. Make the connection between those initiatives and your solution, and show your prospect the impact you’d have on the initiative.
Uncover their hidden needs. Discuss an external trend that threatens their
status quo.
Paint their desired future state. Build a business case with relevant before and after customer stories.
Win Large Deals by Gaining Consensus From Multiple Stakeholders
I’ve shared insight from Ian Koniak before, but really enjoyed this quick 5 minute video with 6 steps on how to win large deals by gaining consensus from multiple stakeholders. Summary:
Step 1: Find a change agent in the company, ideally one who has successfully spearheaded deals before. Make sure you are solving a problem they care about deeply.
Step 2: Work with her to identify the additional stakeholders who need to weigh in or provide final approval
Step 3: Set up interviews with each of these stakeholders to understand their role, challenges, and needs in more detail before developing or building the solution.
Step 4: Develop the solution, demo, and story to address the needs of the collective group. Often this results in a larger deal with more capabilities.
Step 5: Get the entire customer team together to share the vision and demonstrate how the solution.
Step 6: Work through your change agent (mobilizer) to ensure that each of these folks are on board after the meeting. If necessary, set up individual meetings to address any concerns thereafter.
STRETCH SNIPPETS
📧 Jason Lemkin says you can reach almost any CEO or executive via cold email.
“Yes, it works. Almost every top exec reads their email every day. If you craft literally the world-best email, it will get read by almost any leader.”
💥 Multi-threading on sales calls increases win rate by over 161%! Gong research from over 53 thousands sales opportunities found that winning deals have (on average) at least 3 people from the buyers side participate in meetings.
👉 People.ai analyzed over 512K deals and found the more people from the prospect’s company you engage in the deal, the more likely you are to win the deal. In fact, each additional person increases the win rate by 4.5%.
Looking at data of more than 250,000 deals that included between 2 and 24 external participants, those with 24 external stakeholders were more than 400% more likely to win the deal, compared to deals with only 2 company contacts.
🧵 What is multi-threading exactly? Lucidchart released a pretty thorough outline of the what, why and how of multi-threading in sales.
Includes a great find from book The Challenge Customer stating: As many as 6.8 customer stakeholders are directly involved in the typical B2B purchase!
👌 Jeff Swan walks us through 3 ways to engage the economic buyer in a sale.
Ask your champion: “Who would need to be involved?” or “Who would feel left out?
Act as a resource. Help them achieve what they NEED to achieve!
Be transparent. Ask for an intro to the Economic buyer.
🧠 Mindset
Thanks for reading!
My hope is if you find this valuable, consider sharing it with friends (or signing up if you haven’t already).
— Grant 👋
About stretch vp: confessions, learnings, and insights from sales leaders in SaaS
Compiled and aggregated from a network of sales leaders in SaaS, Stretch VP showcases learnings, insights, and experiences as well as best practices to overcome common hurdles, obstacles, and setbacks in your quest for excellence as a sales leader in SaaS.
Are you a VP, Director, thought leader, or content producer in the SaaS space? We’d love to have you contribute. Just reply to this email and I’ll be in touch.
Also… check out the blog or follow on Twitter