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Multiple Stakeholders: Now that you've found them, here's how to engage them

Multiple Stakeholders: Now that you've found them, here's how to engage them

It’s always a good idea to make your customer a hero!

Peter Button
October 10, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Hello Sales Reset Community

At the start of this week, we looked at why you should engage more stakeholders in your selling conversations. By moving beyond the needs and priorities of just one customer contact, you will:

Include a broader range of priorities
Build more support
Accelerate decisions
Increase win rates
Reduce risk
Make successful outcomes more likely

We recommended that you coach your customers about these stakeholders with questions like:

Who else might be affected by what we’re discussing today?
How do you and your colleagues typically approach situations like this to ensure everybody’s priorities are considered?
Who might feel left out if they were not actively involved?
Where will the outcomes of these changes be most significant?

And we gave you some follow-up questions after you’ve identified some of these additional stakeholders:

You mentioned [insert stakeholder name]. From their perspective, what might be their key priorities?
How would the changes we’ve discussed impact them?
What might be the best outcomes for them of these proposed changes?
How might their priorities change how we approach these early stages of discussion?

How to involve and engage these additional stakeholders

Great, you’ve identified the range of people affected by a decision to purchase your products and services.

How can you successfully involve and engage all these additional stakeholders?

The obvious answer is to try to meet and speak with these stakeholders to learn about their specific needs and priorities.

The more sophisticated answer is to lead a process that develops proposals that include all of these different stakeholders’ perspectives.

Only sustained collaboration between multiple stakeholders will produce the best and most compelling proposals. Leading these collaborative proposal development processes is fundamental to your selling role.

As you lead these discussions, remember that it’s always a good idea to make your customer a hero!

How can you ensure that your principal customer contact receives praise from their colleagues for a successful project involving multiple stakeholders?

You’ll be happy to have the signed purchase order! 😀

The Sales Reset Team