How to connect departmental initiatives to corporate or company initiatives is a great way in the conversation in your discovery to naturally move to other people that are probably going to have to be involved in the conversation.
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Hello and welcome to the Audible Ready Sales Podcast. I'm Rachel Klett Miller. Today we are going to talk about best practices for engaging other departments so critical. John Kaplan joins me today.
Hi John, Hey, Rachel. You know this is such a great topic. I think it's probably one of the biggest obstacles to sell our success today. Single threaded deals where you only have one way into an account or a single relationship, that really should be a red flag.
Yeah, getting multi threaded it is always a goal because we know it helps us sell larger deals. It also helps us move deals forward faster. But we want to do it in a calculated way. So let's talk about some steps to take first. John, Well, the first thing is getting an intro to the other departments, right, But you want to do it in a way that's meaningful. How do I approach getting the intro with my contact to other departments?
I think that's a I think it's a great question, and I think the one of the best fundamental ways to do it is to get them to think about the larger scale of a problem that you both are addressing, and like think about like who else is impacted by the problem. And of course, when you are always trying to connect yourself to the business impact of a technical problem, many of us are talking to people that are in technical roles and there are technical problems and capabilities and features.
When you expand the conversation to think about a business outcome or business impact, you're going to naturally move out of those technical departments, or a natural need to move out of those technical departments. And then when you're thinking about it, you're connecting departmental initiatives to corporate ones and the people who are responsible for them. So when you think about it, two big things there how to connect
technical problems to business outcomes. How to connect departmental initiatives to corporate or company initiatives is a great way in the conversation, in your discovery to naturally move to other people that are probably going to have to be involved in the conversation.
Yeah, so what are your best practices? So you have the contact, maybe you get an intro, and you need to do some discovery. I imagine there's going to be a lot of times when you're going to get some objections like, hey, that's not really my area. You need to work with this person on that. How do you deal with that?
I think it's really valid. I think you know, you have to encourage all of the people that you call on to think bigger about the problem and about the potential solution. Just think bigger. You should like write it on a piece of paper, think bigger. How big is the problem? And then one of the things I tell sellers all the time is that you first have to get yourself yourself emotionally connected to what you do matters. So it's like your own why why do you do
what you do? What problems does it solve? What are the proof points that you're kind of emotionally connected to and then you have to get the customer emotionally connected to what they do matters. And many times what I find is many customers that I call on, especially in technical environments, sometimes they've lost their own emotional connection to what they do for their company and why it matters.
So discovery is all about out helping the customer stand in the moment of their own reality and their own pain and their own possibilities. And I think the more that you do that when you ask questions, you know, you get people to give you real examples. Always look to connect technical pain to business outcomes. As we talked about, always find out who cares about the impact and why they care about it, and then what you will naturally
uncover is what's in it for them. And then when you start talking to people about why something matters and what's in it for them to solve it, you are now on your way to really really good qualification and qualified conversation.
Yeah, that's a great point. I know that sometimes if I've ever had to do this, one of the tactics that has worked, it's like because sometimes when you approach people in other departments, they're like, oh God, you're going to give me some initiative. I have no time for this. I've got all this other stuff, and approaching it with like, hey,
we're working on this over here. I want to make sure we're not stepping on your toes or not going against something you are doing, like almost making it say like hey, we know you're busy, we're doing this over here, Let's just make sure we're not messing you up in it any way can be a great way to enter the conversation with some empathy and also potentially open the door to learn more about their need.
It's also common courtesy that what you're working on, you're assuming that is going to impact, potentially impact. Do you want to make sure whatever impact that it's going to have, it's going to be positive. So whenever anybody approaches me like, hey, I'm working on something and I just want to make sure that we have your best interest in mind, or I want to make sure that you know if you're going to be a benefactor of this, or I just want to make sure that this is going to be
good for you. Whenever anybody has approached me any time in life with something like that, it's always a courtesy and it's always appreciated. So I think you're in really warm water there.
Yeah, exactly. And the other person I want to talk about when we talk about getting multi threat is finance. Right, that finance persona is a big one, and I know it creates some anks for our salespeople out there. How do you approach getting the meeting with finance? I know that there's some nuances there you and how do you prep for John, let's hear your tip.
I love that you've brought this up. I think there's several ways to think about this. I think you first always have to ask yourself questions on how things are going to be measured, because finance is always all about
measurement and performance. Always. There's always metrics in the financial world, in good financial worlds, And so what I mean by that is when you start asking questions about how things are going to be measured and how things are going to be measured financially, many times the people that you're calling on might not have those answers. And so when you ask somebody a good question that they don't already have the answer to, a lot of times you're going
to get the opportunity. You're an open door to go get other people involved, and specifically, I find this happens in finance all the time. So naturally, when you are asking questions about the decision process or the paper process and metrics and measurements that you're going to uncover, those financially oriented individuals who are involved are going to pop up.
So when you're talking about the paper process, you're talking about metrics, you're talking about how this will be viewed financially, most people are going to identify individuals inside of their environments that are really responsible for evaluating that. And it's just kind of it's kind of an art and a science.
The way that you prepare is you prepare to ask about how things are going to be measured, how things are going to be evaluated, and then you look for opportunities in that conversation where that's going to come up and those names are going to come up, and then you always try to get Like, for me, I know that financial people are going to be involved in all of my sale situations, and I can't think of many sale situations where a financial impact will not be uncovered
or discovered. If it isn't, then you're probably not selling things that are you could probably be selling things that are more impactful. So I always like to just assume that this is always going to happen. And I try to get to financial people. I try to get them involved early in the process, prior to putting them on the spot to react to a proposal. And I always like to say this, you go early and you get advice,
you go late and you get critiqued. So many times when I'm building a champion, what I like to do is I like to encourage that champion to take me to the financial if it's an economic buyer, if it's somebody that's going to help in the economic feasibility or viability of my solution, I like to go to them early and ask advice, and I say things like or I have the champion say things like, hey, we're not sure if we have a solution to this problem yet or not, but what we wanted to do when we
start to put this solution together early, we want to do it under the confines and the constructs of what would be easier for you to evaluate. I've never had that fail, Rachel. When I go early, now, the champions don't always like it. They don't like going to financial people without the solution. How much is going to cost? But it's I you know, stick to your guns. You're in really really warm water. I have tons of examples of this in my life where financial people thanked the champion.
They're like, thank you for asking. So you know you have a budget and you know this is the way we're going to evaluate it. And if you have anything that goes outside of your budget, it's going to have to have these type of sign offs and it's going to have to and when you give them the courtesy to make sure that you're not creating a problem for
them later, it's amazing. It's really absolutely amazing. Now thousands of people will hear that from this podcast, but a very small number of people will actually go try it and welcome to the world of being uncommon. Go try it. Send me an email John dot Kaplan at forcemanagement dot com, let me know how it worked. Reach out to me on LinkedIn, because I'm just waiting for somebody to come back to me and tell me it didn't work. It's
been twenty years since starting Force Management. I've never had anybody come back and tell me didn't work.
It's so true, and I think you know, as we kind of wrap up here, John, I think if you're asking these questions about your deals, like who else do I need to talk to? Let me get to finance early. You mentioned being uncommon, that shows you're thinking about your deals in the right way.
Totally. Yeah, give us a boatline, John, Yeah, you're not only thinking about where you are right now, but where you have to wind up. And that's all about preparation. So basically, in the bottom line, it's very rare today that anybody is selling single threaded. If you just look at the components of deal qualification, like in medpick, it's going to be hard to find one scenario where all your interaction for an opportunity would be and all your
qualification would be with and through one person. And it's always been this way back thirty years ago when medicant pick were first developed, it always highlighted that there's always more than one person. Now when you just look at like champions and economic buyers. In the last thirty years of selling, for me, it's always been a red flag when someone tells me that the champion is the same person as the economic buyer. And I'm not saying it
can't happen, but it is definitely an outlier. And so anytime somebody tells me that the champion and the economic buyer are the same person, I just considered a red flag and I dig deeper. In ninety percent of the time they are not the same person. So you need to get multi threaded. That's what the most elite sellers do. They don't ever rely on one track deal, one entrance
into an opportunity. So just assume, when you're preparing right now to go into an opportunity, what are the other threads that I'm going to discover around that are there? And I won't get sucked into somebody telling me, yeah, I'm the only one, I'm the only way inside the account. I'm the only one and all the information will go through me and I'll make the decision and blah blah blah. That's a red flag. So just be on the lookout.
There we go.
Thank you, John, You're welcome, and thank you to all of you for listening to the audib Already podcast. At Force Management, we're focused on transforming sales organizations into elite teams. Our proven methodologies deliver programs that build company alignment and fuel repeatable revenue growth. Give your teams the ability to execute the growth strategy at the point of sale. Our strength is our experience. The proof is in our results. Let's get started. Visit us at forcemanagement dot com.
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