The Internal Evangelist Influencer – How to Find Them

When pursuing strategic partnerships or even sales opportunities there is a whole audience of influencers you have to infiltrate; the internal corporate evangelists. These are contacts that will embrace your product and/or partnership idea, they just “get it” and will passionately evangelize it to internal constituents. At the end of the day these influencers make it happen. The article below from George Kittredge’s Above the Line Blog offers some excellent advice on how to find those contacts using some common sense techniques. He also offers another article link that is worth pursuing from Ron La Vine, CEO of Accelerated Sales Results.

Using my Credibility Branding model I would also add a research element, digging out on who is the public speaker from your target company and who is the media spokesperson. You are looking for the corporate spokesperson that gets quoted most on the topics that are relevant to your strategic partnership project or related to selling your product. If you have the content of their speeches from trade shows or have a quote or two you now know beyond a shadow of a doubt where there passion and messaging is.

Now you can approach this person with a pitch that is in alignment with this messaging. They will also be suitably impressed with your research. If it turns out that they are not the contact that will ultimately help you, they will likely introduce you to the person who can. And, as George mentions below, when you are introduced you have that much more credibility and this new contact is more receptive as a result. So please read George’s tips, thanks George.

How Do You Find The Decision Maker?

By George Kittredge, Above the Line Blog

I'm currently involved in a marketing project that is requiring me to use many of the sales techniques I talk about. My challenge is to find the decision makers for a potential marketing partnership who work at seven specifically targeted companies. These companies are big and, unfortunately, I don't have any great contacts to get me in a door.

This is a challenge that many people in sales are faced with. And the best way of meeting this challenge is by establishing a "reference connection" for each prospect. Here are some dos and don'ts (and some of them may surprise you).

·        Don't try to guess who the decision-maker is and try to contact him/her on the first call.

·        Operators can be a great help if, when they answer, you tell them who you are and ask if they can provide the "guidance and direction".

·        Ask to speak to someone in the HR department. Usually their are very people-oriented and willing to help.

·        Be prepared to network from one department (person) to another until you find the right connection.

·        Once in contact with the right person, begin your conversation by "referencing" the individual who gave you the contact information.

This may sound pretty straight forward, but you'd be surprised how many telephone sales specialists don't take the time to adequately network through an organization. They don't use reference connections.

This morning I came across an article written by Ron La Vine, CEO of Accelerated Sales Results, Inc. Ron's 10 tips for successful telephone success are worth reading (and doing). Ron's first tip is "know the purpose of your call in advance." In other words be prepared - be prepared to explain yourself to anyone who asks you as you travel through the networking path. I would add that you should know your story so well that you don't need a script to read but can present it in a cordial conversational manner.

You must remember that the objective of the first conversation you have with the decision-maker is one of gaining interest rather than closing a sale.

By the way, in my initial telephone calls to the seven companies, I now have five contacts and have connected with two.

To read this article from the source, click here.

Comments

[George Kittredge]

Jennifer,
As a follow-up to my above article (that you were so kind to share), your readers might like to know that using the procedure I outlined, I was able to make connections with six of the seven decision-makers. The seventh, unfortunately, put me off to their PR firm. I haven't closed any deals, but at least I have their attention.