Sell more by finding and engaging with more stakeholders

Hello Sales Reset Community

Do you remember when you first started out in your selling career? You thought your only job was to convince the person you were talking with?

That was before you understood the big idea of “stakeholders”.

As you know, stakeholders are all the people who will be affected by decisions to purchase your products and services.

At Sales Reset, we focus on prioritising your customers’ success. Understanding the priorities of all key stakeholders in every customer situation is one of the most important ways to help your customers achieve greater success.

How you'll improve sales results this week

• Why you need to work with more stakeholders

• How to work with more stakeholders

• Potential Challenges

• How to practice stakeholder engagement this week

• End of Week - Reflective Practice

Why you need to work with more stakeholders

In the first stages of selling to a new customer, you normally speak with just one person. You help them understand how your products and services will work in their unique situation.

Here’s the problem. It’s almost inevitable that the first person you speak with will pay the most attention to how they will be affected personally.

But if this customer buys from you, the decision will almost certainly affect other people. It’s highly likely the first person you speak with will not understand the full impact on these other people.

Especially in larger opportunities, you can seek to identify all the most significant stakeholders and help them understand the implications of buying from you.

Ideally, these stakeholders will see the value of what your products and services will do for them. As your stakeholder skills improve, they will contribute to the process of developing proposals and become advocates of your recommendations.

How to work with more stakeholders

Here are six recommendations about how to work with more stakeholders:

1. Identify stakeholders: As you coach your customers about a potential purchase, ask them who else will be affected.

2. Clarify impact: When you’ve identified the stakeholders, ask questions to understand the impact on each stakeholder of your proposed changes

3. Prioritise: Now you know the stakeholders and how they might be affected, you can prioritise. Who are the key stakeholders?

4. Engage key stakeholders: Your goal is to actively engage all the most significant stakeholders. Ideally, they will all play some part in co-creating your proposals.

5. Win over or neutralise: Your best hope is that every stakeholder becomes an enthusiastic champion of your proposals. However, you might not be able to win them over. You can then work with other stakeholders to minimise the risk of undermining your proposals.

6. Include in proposals: Now that you’ve successfully identified and engaged key stakeholders, you can include their priorities in your proposals.

Potential Challenges

• Time: The more you look for stakeholders, the more you’ll find! You must judge how much time you should invest in finding and engaging stakeholders.

• Reluctance to involve other people: For all sorts of reasons, the first person you speak with might be reluctant to involve other people.

• Relationship complexity: Navigating how people are connected in organisations can be challenging. You’ll need to understand functional differences based on organisational roles and, potentially, all the various family and personal relationships!

• Proposal focus and priorities: As you work with a growing range of stakeholders, you’ll need their help to guide the focus and priorities of your proposals.

How to practice stakeholder engagement this week

1. Make a list of typical stakeholders: What are the roles of the key stakeholders in your typical customers? Prepare a list of these stakeholder roles, and then make notes about their typical priorities.

2. Review current opportunities: Have a good look at your most important current opportunities. Use the list you’ve prepared about typical stakeholder roles. How many stakeholders have you identified in your best opportunities? Who else should you find and engage?

3. Prepare for your next meetings: In every meeting this week, ask about the range of stakeholders who might be affected by what is being discussed.

End of Week - Reflective Practice

At the end of this week, ask yourself these key questions:

We hope you’ve found this Weekly Sales Reset valuable.

Have a great week!

The Sales Reset Team

Here’s a link to a page explaining how these weekly newsletters are designed to help you learn and practice your customer success selling skills.

Please feel free to unsubscribe using the link at the bottom of this email if these newsletters are no longer valuable to you!

Community of Practice

Ask Questions, Share Your Experience

If you have any questions or experience to share:

• LinkedIn Group - Join our World-Class Customer Success Selling Group on LinkedIn to ask questions or comment.

• Sales Reset Together Community - Click here to learn more about our private community of members committed to achieving and maintaining their Sales Reset.

Does your sales team leader or coach subscribe to our companion weekly newsletter, Sales Reset Leaders?