One of the most common questions and concerns we get from sales professionals is “what do I say and share with a prospective customer to really get their attention?” These sellers are stuck in the “Account Planning & Storyboarding” stage of their sales process, right between Account Selection and Account Engagement.
I’ve decided to write a five-part series that you can share with your sales professionals on Account Planning & Storyboarding best practices. These are taken from customers around the world, and you can leverage these five sales plays in any particular order. I’m writing them in the particular order I personally like to engage with.
The “Sphere of Influence”
I use this sales play specifically if this account was selected using the “Sphere of Influence.” This means that I’ve chosen to activate this account because it fits my Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) + has a high Social Proximity to successes my company has already had. Basically, I reverse-engineer all the companies and social networks of our customer base and determine:
- Who now works inside new accounts who meet my ICP who were previously decision-makers, champions and influencers from my customer base? How can I create an automatic job change alert to monitor these job changes happening in real time?
- What competitors, vendors, and partners do my customers have?
- Within the social networks of my champions (within our customer base), who are they connected to and which ICPs do they have the greatest Social Proximity too?
I take all this information to now build out my Storyboards. Think about the creation of a cartoon or movie script. The movie is broken down into tactile squares, and information is placed inside each square. You’ll do the same, except each square is filled with rich digital-media to complement your story. I personally highly recommend you place this rich-media inside a digital platform like GoVideo or LinkedIn PointDrive to make the information more accessible, sharable, and trackable.
This Storyboard should be quite straightforward. You’re sharing a connection between you and the prospective customer that’s bridged by a common relationship to success. You’re both humanizing yourselves and demonstrating that you’re only a 1st-degree connection away from each other. People buy trust, and that’s what you’re starting to try to build. “Trust me as I’m really close to trusted sources for your business.”
