How to sell more to your Key Accounts with MEDDICC - 5 proven strategies

This article provides methods to effectively expand the network of important customers. How you can motivate and engage your contacts to open new doors - with the aim of gaining a greater understanding of the customer's needs, creating more business opportunities and expanding your business. With more contacts, your risks of losing the account are minimized if your most influential champions change positions.

?

The problem to be solved

Often the salesperson finds his champion, a team or a person with the customer where liking arises. These are the decision makers who use the product or service and where there are many touch points. Even if the deal has been created at a C-level level, it is easy to quickly land at the operational level. Management has a lot to deal with and quickly loses interest in operational details, even if they are important. When the time comes for the renegotiation of the agreement, the top managers may have quit or received new priorities. In the worst case, new competitors have entered and you lose parts or the entire contract.

But in order to expand business to new parts of the organization and build a wider base of contacts, you need to move outside your current contact surface. It can be very difficult because your champion "owns" the relationship with you. It can feel like your champion is losing control if you start meeting "others" in the organization. This resistance causes most sellers to settle for the existing deal and stop trying. It becomes too conflict-filled and there are other customers to grab onto.

Lots of business is missed and the potential is not reached for the customer.

?

Strategies for expanding the network and finding new business

Before you start expanding the network, it is good that you map out which areas you want to sell to the customer. It will help you prioritize and find which decision makers you and your team need to meet. Create a matrix with all your services and product areas - mark with an X those that the customer has already contracted, an O where there is potential and with a - where the customer currently has no need. Put a money potential on all the O's. Prioritize and create a map of possible managers you need to connect with, Linkedin Sales Navigator is a great tool - you can even create an org map there. Now you are ready to build new networks.

I will describe different strategies to expand both networks and business. They will require work from you and a good sense of the way you carry them out.

TOP-DOWN

One of the best companies I've seen to take advantage of the customer's potential was IBM, their solutions were next to every part of their customers. IBM had an effective TOP-DOWN approach. Their method was to meet the customer's top management 1-2 times a year and together plan the next period's investments. This process drove the KAM seller. The various specialist sellers built the network required to create and win the various deals. The specialist sellers built up a pyramid structure with contacts - where the highest in the specialist seller's pyramid was the champion. It is much easier to build a network downward than sideways and upwards.

?

BOTTOM-UP

Most sellers I know start by finding a champion who has the need and wants to buy and then gets introduced to higher managers. This is an opportunity to build up a new contact network with new managers. In order for you to be relevant to them, you need to find their pains & metrics. It might be wise to bring your boss along. Although titles do not have much importance, it should not be underestimated. Using your own manager in these meetings is a way of showing respect. The manager can then join in and bridge over to other specialist salespeople. You need to actively ask to be introduced to champions' managers. Please ask – and explain that you are interested in seeing the whole picture of the business – in order to propose the right solutions.

POLICY

Everyone understands the word POLICY. I worked with a company whose CEO created a simple policy:

- All the KAM salespeople needed to interview their customers' management team about needs, strategies, priorities

- Partly, make a drawing for the management team about how the seller's company could support the strategies

The sellers took on the task by explaining to their champion about the new policy and asking for support. In 9 cases out of 10, the champion appreciated the seller's policy – the strategy led to many multiple deals.

?

LAND AND EXPAND

This strategy involves securing a champion, often in a specialist function such as IT. In order for the joint business to go well, the delivery to work and the operational work to run as smoothly as possible, the specialist function needs to cooperate with the rest of the organization, suppliers and other partners. The business, as it is often called, is the claim setters. Their business-based requirements need to be translated and interpreted into functions to be delivered. The business lacks the detailed knowledge required to t act as a good setter of requirements and the specialist function lacks the business knowledge required to ask the right questions. But specialist function is dependent on the business's willingness to pay for the services. C-level management will provide budget to the specialist function based on the business's perceived needs and judgment.

Interacting with the business takes a lot of energy and time from the specialists. They prefer to do what they do best – doing their job. It is in this interface that you as a seller come in. You and your colleagues can help map, update and ensure that the business's requirements are balanced with the specialist function's ability to deliver with the resources available. Interviews with the business - and gather facts - that provide support from the business.

To create opportunities to contact the business yourself, something your champion probably doesn't want - they will lose control - you can start by coming up with suggestions for questions they can ask their business. You need to show that you want to create the best conditions for the delivery. Your questions will take time to ask and interpreting the answers will take even more time. After a while you will notice that your champion has not kept up. You can offer to set up meetings and help with information gathering, your champion can come along. After a few encounters, you'll notice that your champion lets you take care of the encounters - the champion has other things to do. You have now approached the point where you get your own entry badge and can start moving freely in the customer's organization. See if you can get your own office space where you and your team can create a workspace. The goal has been reached – you are now a virtual part of the customer's organization.

?

SOCIAL STRATEGY – create a common point of contact

Some of my clients are experts in organizing large and small events - it could be the annual golf tournament, a fair or a summer party. The common denominator is that the activity is mostly social - where both operational champions from the customer's organization and their C-level managers are invited - and your managers are there. Everyone can make contacts and create their own network pyramids. This activity can start on a small scale and be repeated annually. Social strategy gives you a great opportunity to introduce your champion to your managers and vice versa. After the party, you can freely contact the senior managers. Innovation event.

External events such as Burning Man and Almedal's week have exactly the same effect - you have something in common with your new contact - you were both "there" and therefore a common point of contact

?

Summary

A network often has a pyramidal structure - with you and your champion forming the top of the pyramid. Building connections down the organization is rarely a problem – but can be very valuable. Building new pyramids requires work – an introduction of your champion and an acceptance – but it's usually best to bring your colleagues so that more contact surfaces are created between the organizations.

Preorder Jens Edgren new book - MEDDICC S?lj mer, snabbare | MEDDICC salestraining (teachable.com)

Jens Edgren, CEO MEDDICC Master Instructor

MEDDICC.se provides MEDDICC sales training to Hightech and SaaS organisations - with e-learning, special programs and coachin

www.meddicc.se [email protected]