Social Selling – Connect the Dots
- by Elay Cohen
- September 14, 2015
- Sales Skills
Social Selling – Frank van Veenendaal and Jim Steele shared their relationship building and networking secrets on stage at a Salesforce sales kick-off event when they introduced thousand of us to the phrase “connect the dots.” We adopted “connect the dots” as a mantra. It became a big part of our sales values and go to market.
It’s amazing that “Connect the Dots” is even more relevant almost ten years ago.
We pushed our teams and managers to make connecting the dots a big part of how we won. It helped us and avoid late deal surprises.
Reps were coached and trained by sales managers to answer these questions in deal reviews, account planning sessions, and forecast calls:
How have we connected the dots across all direct and indirect influencers and decision makers?
Whom have we not connected the dots with to move the deal forward?
What help is needed to more effectively connect the dots?
I’m sharing “connect the dots” to bring this winning mantra and best practice deal execution to every team on the planet
Connect the dots is the act of engaging all direct and indirect relationships in conversations to better understand challenges and priorities of decision makers and influencers. It’s who do you know.
You know a sales team has successfully conducted a “connect the dots”strategy when they are multi-threaded versus single threaded, their organizational chart is complete, and influence maps are known.
Here are some of the revenue benefits of connecting the dots:
Connecting the dots in deals helps us uncover all the people we don’t know, that we don’t know. Think about it. By not directly connecting with as many decision makers and influencers as possible, we risk not knowing what’s really happening. Sometimes we fear reaching out because we don’t want to find information out that isn’t favorable.
How can we solve big problems if we’re not connecting with the real decision makers? How can we solve big problems if we’re not understanding what’s really going on? If we don’t look up the management chain and engage in conversations with the right people, we risk spending too much time with folks who aren’t really plugged into real pain and real go to market challenges.
Don’t underestimate the power of peer-to-peer collaboration to connect the dots. Your network is only as strong your relationships. Our teams help us avoid blind spots by helping us to connect the dots. Connecting the dots is best done prior to engaging with a lead to plan a prospecting strategy approach and an account strategy. Team based deal reviews give us a chance to explore new angles of power and influence. Team-based account planning sessions open up doorways to extended team members contributing their networks to connect the dots and open new relationships.
Here are rules of engagement and tips to up-level how we engage with peers to connect the dots in our deals, accounts, and territories:
How do you instill the culture and action to always “connect the dots” on deals?