Relationships

SalesAccelerate — Opportunity Planner: Relationships

How to map the people in a deal

Every person on the buying team is four things at once: how they take to change, what they decide on, whether they want you to win, and how far you have earned your way in with them. Three of those you read. The fourth is the only one you control — and it is the one that decides whether you get the meeting that matters.

Axis 1 — Adaptability to change

How much newness can this person absorb?

This tells you how to pitch. The same solution described as a breakthrough to one person and as a proven, boring, out-of-the-box choice to another is not inconsistency — it is aim.

Wants what is newWants what is safe
Axis 2 — Decision orientation

What does this person actually decide on?

Bring the wrong evidence and you will lose to someone who brought the right evidence for a worse solution. Match the proof to the person in front of you.

Axis 3 — Contact status

Do they want you to win?

Be honest here. A map full of champions is a map nobody checked. Every deal has at least one neutral and most have someone who would rather you lost.

Wants you to winWants you to lose
Axis 4 — Your relationship level

The only column you can change

The first three describe them. This one describes you — how far in you have earned your way, one person at a time. Vendors respond to RFPs. Trusted advisors get told what is coming before it is written down.

One caution at the top. If it becomes obvious to the rest of the team that your champion is carrying you — especially if they are pushing a solution the others do not like — the access that helped you starts to cost them, and then it costs you.
The map

Put the buying team on one page

Fill a row for every person who can influence this decision. The gaps in the map are the plan: a decision maker you have not met, a non-supporter nobody is working, a room full of people who see you as a vendor.

The single relationship most likely to decide this deal — and what you are doing about it this week

Working the map

A map you drew once is a guess

People move. A supporter becomes a champion when you make them successful; a neutral becomes a non-supporter when a competitor gets there first. Re-read the map at every stage gate.

    Before you call it covered

    What the map is really measuring

    You do not have a relationship.
    You have a relationship with each person, at a different level.

    Coverage is not how many people you know. It is whether the people who decide would take your call before they take the meeting.