In sales, your most important asset is your business intelligence. Whether working with a customer or prospect, your ability to understand the pain points of their company’s operation and position your product as the solution is imperative.
Despite the fact that the importance having this kind of information on hand is common knowledge, most salespeople go into calls with little preparation. They probably have a contact name. They might have spent some time going through the company website, but often that is about it. There are a few reasons for this, the most prominent of which is the fact that many sales teams place a high emphasis on quantity over quality. Sales teams are pushed to contact as many people as they can, rather than making the most of every opportunity.
An org chart can be a great way to go into a call with a lot of information at your fingertips and help to alleviate the pressure that is created by these environments. Consider these 7 reasons why charting external companies should be a go-to strategy for sales teams:
Develop Relationships Outside of Your Company Contact
Most salespeople have a single contact within each company. They are the person that they interface with throughout the sales process. Once the sale is secured (or lost), no further attempts are made to connect with people inside of the company. While in some cases it might be required, it is always best to develop relationships with multiple people inside of a prospect company if at all possible.
By taking the time to chart out the internal structure of a prospect company, you give yourself more tools to secure the sale. You can develop relationships with others within the company, and better understand their needs as an organization.
It is a risk to maintain only a single relationship with a client or prospect. If your contact were to leave the company, you would have no relationships to turn to. By introducing yourself to others within a company, you can make sure that you have a fallback option when your current contact leaves for greener pastures.
On-The-Go Sales Intelligence
Any salesman probably knows the feeling of having a phone call or sales meeting scheduled at the last minute. To walk into a meeting like this without time to prepare can be difficult. But, having a sales org chart at the ready can alleviate some of this stress and provide insight into a prospect company on short notice. Including org charts in your sales intelligence books can help you to quickly brush up on a company on short notice, and access vital information when you’re out of the office.They are especially critical for outside sales teams that are required to be on the move often, with limited business intelligence tools at their disposal. Arming your team with high-quality sales org chart will make any sales team more effective.
Pinpoint a Lack of Internal Resources with a Sales Org Chart
Organizational charts provide a lot of insight into the internal practices within a company. Having an understanding of where a company invests its resources can be hugely beneficial in sales. For instance, identifying a lack of software developers within a company suggests that they do not have the internal resources to create their own custom software. This could be incorporated into your sales pitch for your own software product. Having information on hand about a company’s resources can help sales reps to sharpen their pitches and speak more directly to the pain points of their prospect companies.
Impress with Your Understanding of Their Business
A big part of a sales rep’s job is to show prospects that they truly do care. Taking the time to understand a company, their customers, and their problems goes a long way toward earning trust. Having a sales org chart of a prospect organization gives you an easy way to impress them at your next meeting. By knowing who the important managers that you will be working with by name, you display a level of competence that is often unexpected in sales calls.
Track Contacts that are Climbing the Ladder
When a prospect declines or offer or just falls through the cracks, most salespeople put them in the back of their mind and never think about them again. They look at it as a missed opportunity. Because of the high-paced nature of modern sales positions, they rarely revisit former prospects to see if the product has become a better fit sometime down the road.
Keep track of the people who champion your product in prospect companies, even when the sale ultimately doesn’t happen. You may find that down the road that same person who championed your product is now in a position where they can make decisions. A regularly updated sales org chart is a smart idea for high-value prospects that managed to slip through your fingers.
Identify Upselling Opportunities
As we mentioned earlier, org charts provide a lot of insight into where a company invests its resources. They are excellent tools for identifying gaps in an organization. In identifying those gaps, you can position your product as the solution to those issues. With current customers, org charts can be useful for finding unique ways to upsell larger packages.
Additionally, having a fleshed-out sales org chart for current customers gives you the ability to reach out to executives and upper management who may be required to sign off on these kinds of upgrades.
Knowledge is Power
To effectively sell solutions to companies, you must understand them. Knowing the problems that cause issues and ultimately affect their bottom line is a powerful tool for sales teams. But there is only so much information that you can extract from a website, marketing materials, and limited conversations with a single person.
An org chart should be a part of any business intelligence effort as it relates to a high-value prospect. It can help you to develop more than a single relationship inside of a company, come into sales meetings prepared, and identify areas of need within their internal structure.
Organimi can help you create org charts quick & efficiently. You can add photos to help you put a face to the name and custom fields to track important information about contacts that you may need to remember for future meetings and discussions. Register today and get started!