Mastering the Art of Selling to Multiple Levels of Clients.

Hi Curious Salesperson,
How many LAYERS of Buyers do you have? Do you know all of the layers required to say "Yes" to the sale?
What do I mean?
There are certain sales roles where you have to convince one level of an organisation to give you permission to sell to the next level.
Many times, it’s actually that secondary or even tertiary layer of customers who drive your sales.
Ignoring any one of those layers can put you in jeopardy.
I learned this the hard way:
About 12 years ago, I was hired to start the Canadian branch of a health and wellness program. (Loved that job!)
In one of the early years, we signed a big Fortune 500 company with thousands of employees.
I was so proud to add their logo to our repertoire and website.
It had taken a lot of work to meet the criteria of the Head Office and get our program approved to offer to employees.
However, leading up to the start date of the event, my team and I started to panic.
The employee headcount of people taking part in the event was much lower than my projections based on a percent of their employee base.
We quickly realised that many of the thousands of employees- my potential customers- had no clue about the event.
Naively, since it had taken so much work to get permission from the Corporate office to even introduce our event to employees, I had just assumed that this large prestigious company would promote us internally.
That assumption hurt our Canadian numbers that year.
I hadn't paid attention to what communication (hardly any) was being offered to the Regional offices and the employees themselves.
We got paid per employee who signed up.
The employees- that tertiary level of the sale- were the ones who really mattered to our top line.
We strategized and starting making phone calls. As one does when numbers are falling short of projections.
Throughout the following year, we focused on educating and energizing a group of hand-picked, enthusiastic Health and Wellness staff at the various client offices to help them champion and mobilize their local staff to take part in the event.
We trained and worked directly with these champions to bolster awareness...not only in that company, but we followed this model with our other clients as well.
We improved (tripled. Heck, yes!) the number of participants from all of our Fortune 500 customers, and vastly increased our overall revenue.
Does your sales activity reflect this kind of layered selling?
Many sales roles require permission from the Head Office to approve you as a vendor allowed to access their regional leaders.
If you're in Financial Services, you may have to convince one level of buyer (Advisors) to accept your offering into their repertoire, before those Advisors are interested in offering your product (Fund) to their clients.
SaaS- Software as a Service-operates the same way: it's based on an internal employee or location “subscription” model, and so the salesperson has to have buy-in from several levels in the client organization to be really successful.
Even if you're thinking to yourself "Hey Jenn. I'm lucky. I've got just one layer."
Well, first, thanks for reading this far anyway. lol
My second question for you is...Do you actually, though?
Have you truly got just one layer? Because research shows otherwise.
Even within a single organization, the buying decision gets vetted through a number of people at various levels.
Keep in mind, there are different requirements at each of these buying levels.
So get curious about the "Layers of Yes" because each of those layers may affect how you actually make money and tailor your conversations, messages and marketing accordingly.
You Were Made to Sell Better.
Below is a chart that synthesizes the different sales considerations at various layers, using my own example from earlier.
Layers of Yes:
Employee Wellness Event Example
Buyer Level | Their Focus | My Sales Communications | Logistics |
HEAD OFFICE |
| employee engagement scores, wellness statistics, Professional marketing campaigns, financial and technology integrations | Boardroom meetings, suits were worn, found an Executive Champion |
REGIONAL OFFICES |
|
| Lunches, side by sides at their desks and over the phones showing them tools to market and monitor engagement |
EMPLOYEES |
| Fun, Low risk, high gain, You're In It Together, Don't have to be a marathon runner to take part, Brighten your day with cheeky (but professional) encouragement | email campaigns, Team Meeting challenges, posters for lunchrooms and office walls, direct email address for employee questions |
Cheers,
Jennifer Krueger
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