Win more business by helping your team to find and engage with more stakeholders

Hello Sales Reset Leader

How often do members of your sales team engage with only a single person in their prospects and customers?

As you know, over-reliance on one contact leads to so many problems!

When these customers decide to buy from you, you can expect lots of implementation challenges because key people weren’t sufficiently involved.

Proposals are much stronger when a broader range of stakeholders have contributed their perspectives and priorities.

In this week’s companion Weekly Sales Reset email for your team members, we focus on helping your team members identify and engage with multiple stakeholders.

How to improve your team's results this week

• Evidence of engagement with multiple stakeholders

• Recommended coaching agenda about stakeholders

• Expected pushback about stakeholder engagement

• Stakeholder Engagement Role-Play Recommendations

• Leadership Reflective Practice

Evidence of engagement with multiple stakeholders

When you look at your CRM records, review emails, and speak with your team members, you should look for evidence of multiple contact names and roles.

It’s good news if you see that a range of people have been identified. It’s better news if there’s a record of how they will be affected by what your team member is proposing.

You hope to see evidence that your team member is actively identifying and engaging with all key stakeholders.

The best place to find evidence of effective engagement with multiple stakeholders is in your team members’ proposals. When you look at these proposals, what level of engagement with multiple stakeholders do you see?

1. Evidence of engagement only with a single contact.

2. Multiple stakeholders have been identified but not engaged.

3. Multiple stakeholders are engaged and are actively contributing to proposal development.

4. Multiple stakeholders are actively advocating for the adoption of your proposals.

5. Every significant stakeholder has been identified, engaged and is keen to proceed.

Recommended coaching agenda about stakeholders

/Before leading your coaching sessions on stakeholder engagement, ask your team members to review the relevant edition of Weekly Sales Reset.

Give yourself time to reflect on WIIFM, “What’s in for me,” and empathise with your team members about how they might be sufficiently motivated to find and engage with more stakeholders.

Here’s this week’s recommended coaching session agenda:

1. Start with a brief review of their experience and results from their previous coaching session.

2. Ask this team member for their observations about stakeholder engagement. What do they find easy? What’s hard about reaching out beyond a single point of contact?

3. Review the evidence of stakeholder engagement you found in your preparation with each team member.

4. Using the recommendations in the Weekly Sales Reset newsletter, identify and prioritise a small range of specific practical things this team member can do differently and better to improve stakeholder engagement.

5. Spend some time role-playing (working with these guidelines).

6. Finish the coaching session with agreed and specific action conclusions.

Expected pushback about stakeholder engagement

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

1. Reluctance to involve other people - Your team members might say: “The person I spoke with said they don’t want to involve their colleagues. They tell me this is their decision, and I should leave it with them.”

2. Lack of awareness - Your team members might be insufficiently aware of the various ways in which what they’re selling affects stakeholders.

3. Inability to empathise - It’s highly likely that your team members cannot fully understand the perspectives and priorities of everybody in this extended range of stakeholders.

Now that you’re aware of these areas of potential pushback, what are your best responses?

Stakeholder Engagement Role-Play Recommendations

1. “Who else might be affected?” - Choose a current opportunity and role-play the point of the conversation where your team members ask: “Who else might be affected if these proposals are put in place?” In your role-play, seek to develop a range of responses to the question to explore options about how best to respond.

2. “This is my decision” - Choose a scenario where the principal contact makes it clear they don’t want to involve other people. Role-play how the conversation might develop so that the principal contact realizes the value of identifying and engaging with other stakeholders. This is a great example of a situation where your team members will ideally coach their customers.

3. Who gets the praise? - A principal contact might have concerns about not getting the recognition they deserve if other stakeholders become involved. Role-play the part of the conversation where your team member emphasises that their proposal document will clarify the role of the principal contact in this situation.

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

Leadership Reflective Practice

At the end of this week, ask yourself these key questions:

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

Have a great week!

The Sales Reset Team

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