How to coach your team members to identify and engage more stakeholders

Hello Sales Reset Leader

One of the most reliable ways of increasing the probability of customer success is by involving more stakeholders.

However, some of your team members probably struggle to extend their involvement beyond their conversations with their initial contact.

This week, our Weekly Sales Reset focuses on successfully involving more stakeholders.

This newsletter will help you coach your team members to build more trust with their initial contact. You will help your team members to identify and engage more stakeholders.

And sell more!

Our first newsletter focuses on building trust with these initial contacts. The goal is to inspire the confidence these initial contacts need to introduce your team members to their colleagues.

Our mid-week newsletter will introduce ways of identifying and engaging these stakeholders.

The rest of this email newsletter assumes you have read this week’s first Weekly Sales Reset“:

• Title: Engage more stakeholders by focusing initially on building trust

• Subtitle: How to give your principal contact the confidence they need to introduce you to their colleagues

How to improve your team's results this week

• What evidence is available before your coaching se …

• Expected pushback

• Role-Play Recommendations

• Invitation to Weekly Sales Reset Stories - LIVE! o …

What evidence is available before your coaching session?

We strongly recommend reviewing the evidence before your coaching sessions with each team member. The evidence you find will make your coaching significantly more effective.

Here's the evidence you need before you meet with your team members for your 1:1 coaching sessions this week. 

• Stakeholders: How many stakeholders have your team members identified when you look at CRM records for significant opportunities?

• Roles: What evidence do you see that your team members have clarified the roles of each of these stakeholders in choosing and using your products and services?

• Trust: As you accompany your team member, review call recordings, or look at notes, what evidence do you see about the effort your team member invests in proactively building trust?

• Outcomes: As you review your team members’ proposals, what evidence do you see that a range of stakeholders have contributed to the outcomes at the heart of the proposals?

Expected pushback

So you know what to expect and can be prepared, here are three areas of possible pushback from your team members.

1. My principal contact won’t introduce me to their colleagues: This is the fundamental priority of this week’s Weekly Sales Reset. The reluctance to introduce your team members to colleagues is likely a result of a failure to build trust. These people don’t want to waste their colleagues’ time and lose credibility.

2. Involving more stakeholders takes too much time. The bigger the opportunity, the more necessary it will be to involve more stakeholders. How can you help your team members analyse their pipeline more rigorously to decide where best to spend their time?

3. I’m intimidated by senior business leaders. This is entirely understandable, especially in your team's more junior and less experienced members. The more senior the person, the more care will be required to make the best use of their time. Emphasise the need for even better preparation, especially role-play.

What are your best responses now that you know these potential pushback areas?

Role-Play Recommendations

1. Best Current Opportunity: Review the stakeholders currently identified and engaged in your team member’s best opportunity. What roles are missing or insufficiently engaged? Role-play the conversations with the principal contact to identify and engage these stakeholders.

2. Most Significant Next Meeting: Role-play the stakeholder component of your team member’s next big meeting, where these ideas can be most quickly used.

3. Biggest Recent Loss: Review the biggest recent loss. How many stakeholders were identified and successfully engaged? With the benefit of hindsight, how might this have been managed better? Role-play the discussions that should have taken place.

(You may find these recommendations about using role-play helpful.)

Invitation to Weekly Sales Reset Stories - LIVE! online

We’re hugely interested to hear how you and your team members get on with these recommendations about prospecting.

You and your team members are welcome to join us for a 45-minute discussion to share experiences in a weekly Sales Reset Stories session in our FREE Sales Reset Together community every Tuesday from 16:30 to 17:15, UK time.

The session is designed to allow participants to share their experiences and stories about each Weekly Sales Reset theme.

Click here to join the community and learn more about the Tuesday session.

We hope you’ve found this edition of Sales Reset Leaders valuable.

Have a great week!

The Sales Reset Team

Do your team members subscribe to our companion weekly newsletter, Weekly Sales Reset?