Focusing on accounts with the most whitespace, how top performing salespeople build revenue at scale

In a recent post by Paul Giles of Linkedin, he talked about "The first Top Performing Habit is 'Focus on accounts with the most whitespace'." Paul wants salespeople to learn and understand how their sales teams can leverage #deepsales to empower their sellers to take the right actions at the right time, leading to better outcomes.

"Deepsales" is the new term Linkedin have created for connecting to multiple people across an account.

The background behind this is very simple.

If you think about how a decision is made, the business stakeholders will sit around a table, or virtually and vote on which solution they want. You, as the salesperson, need to have contacted, connected with and built relationships with as many people around that table as you can. Because you want more votes than the competition. As we know with sales, there are no prizes for coming second. 

In the old days in sales things were more simpler, you might have only one person to deal with, but today things are very different.

How many stakeholders are there in a sale?

One of our clients is a supply chain software company and they say they have 100 stakeholders for every sale, Gartner say there are 10 stakeholders per sale. So how do you get around around all the stakeholders, build relationships with them and build consensus for your solution? 

In a downturn, we also need to double up on contacts. We lost a deal during lockdown as we only had one sponsor and he was laid off. This meant we had put a lot of time and effort into a sale and it came to nothing. One of our clients told us that as soon as the downturn hit, discretionary spend was cut in a number of clients and decision making sign off went up a level, which meant a number of deals slipped a quarter. Which as we all know is a big "no no" in the corporate world.

Now, of course, you can use Linkedin Sales Navigator for this, but before we go all technical, let's think about how we build connections in real life with this metaphor. 

Now picture this

Tomorrow, you and I are going to meet at the lobby of your target customer's office. 

Imagine that I have a key card to get into the building, we wave to security and I let you through the security barriers. Impressive eh!

We walk over to the elevators and I press the button to go up to the relevant floors where we can meet with the people you need to sell to. Now you have never met these people before so i will introduce you. That will mean you will get to meet the people you need to meet in this target customer of yours.

Pick whatever department you want, I will take you there and introduce you. 

For example, say you sell accounting systems, ERP systems, then I can take you and introduce you to the people in Finance. Or maybe you sell human resources (HR) software and I take you to meet the HR people. Or maybe you sell CRM, customer experience (CX) and I can take you to meet all the people in marketing and sales.

Now if I walked you into finance, (or any of the other departments) and I started to introduce you to the people there one-by-one. Now, you wouldn't hand everybody a brochure and walk away, would you? 

This is your chance to get into the business, meet the people, build relationships. Kinda cool! 

As I introduce you to the people in your target department, you would hand them your business card. You might get people to scan the QR code on LinkedIn so you are connected. 

Either way you would also want to be remembered. So you might ask them a question about themsleves, maybe you spot that Manchester United mug on their desk, the Nick Saban bobblehead (doll). The photo of their family on their desk, you would start a conversation about them. You might crack a joke. You would start building trust. Maybe you would ask them about the business, be curious about them and the company?

As I walk you around the department, and introduce you to more and more people, you would get to know more and more people and the department would get to know you. In fact the whole department will know you, just think of the competitive advantage you now have.

We haven't needed to talk about product, we are connecting as humans, we are having conversations. We are being social. 

Just through this simple way of showing you around and introducing you to people, you are front of mind and your competition is not. This is so powerful!

I've now walked you around the whole department, they know you, you know them. It's time to see the big boss and I take you in and introduce you. 

You look around the office and see the photos of her fly fishing, you talk about when you had a fly fishing lesson in Scotland when you visited there last. You connect, you have a conversation. 

One of the things we do in life is find commonality with each other, because when we do that we start to know, like and trust each other.  

You then ask her some of the business related issues you picked these pointers up from her staff you have been talking to.  

If it's finance you might ask her about how long it takes to close the month end books, if it's human resources it might be about sourcing internal talent, if it's CRM you might ask about onboarding sales people.

I could go on, but you should get the picture now. 

It does not matter if you know nobody in this company, they could even be using a competitive solution. But by the time I've walked you around, they know you, they know you as a human, they are aware that you work for a company and you didn't even need to pitch to them. Now it's time to start moving some of those conversations to commercial interaction.

This is social selling

Now you can stop imagining, what I've described to you is social selling.

This is so powerful, so natural and is the killer blow you need today. 

Here at DLA Ignite, teach and coach you, to digitally walk into companies, build influence and trust, across the whole team from the ground floor to the top floor. From your ideal customers, to the stakeholders and the budget holders. We call it walking digital corridors and having digital conversation. 

It could be new business, you could be trying to displace a competitor, it could be "landing and expanding" it could be part of an account-based marketing (ABM) strategy. 

Either way, using social selling and influence from DLA Ignite is the fastest way to success and we can get you there. 

Now, the best tool to use to do this is Linkedin Sales Navigator, not as a way to make you the world's best spammer, but as a way to find the stakeholders you need, build relationships, have conversations and enable you win business. 

Want to know more about social selling, check out my new book

"social selling techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition".

In this brand new edition, I have updated all the text, I have also got 15 practitioners, so people who are doing this already to explain how they are get (practical) business benefit. From the CEO that has been running a digital business for over 18 months to sales leaders who use social selling every day. 

Articles on how these business have and are implementing digital, from Mercer, Telstra Purple, Ring Central, Cyberhawk, Namos, Ericsson, Crux Consulting, DLA Ignite and more.

What does Mark Schaefer, Marketing guru think of the book "social selling - techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition"? watch the video here

It's available on Amazon worldwide. Link to Amazon.com here and Amazon.co.uk here.