#608 - How Mapping the "Shadow" Org Chart Got Me to 305% of Quota

0:00So today we're going to go through the critical thing, especially in enterprise sales, which is not just how do you map the org chart in a company to figure out who's your champion, who needs to be your exec sponsor, who's your detractor. What you really want to be thinking about is how do you map the power base, the political invisible spider web in your customer and your prospect. I spent a lot of time learning this technique and it's definitely one of the things that helped me get to 305 % of my number this year and finishes the number one rep out of almost a hundred sellers. I've learned this from sales leaders.

0:33I've learned this from a book called The Power Base. So I'm going to consolidate these learnings and take you through my exact strategy for how I do this. Perfect. So we've split this episode into three chapters. We're going to start by the exact way that you map the power base, the shadow org chart, the political org chart with your champion. Then we're going to talk about how you get access to the different people that you need to win over and the blockers you need to neutralize. And then we're going to talk about your playing Cupid matchmaking. Why are the building strategy that you use to make sure that you win the deal?

1:04So, Laura, you were telling me when we were prepping for this, this is not something that you are wasting your time with before you even spoke into somebody. You're not even doing it after like the first or second call. Give me context for when you map the power base. And then I would love for you to show me this crazy diagram that you are using to get your champion to basically coach you how to win over the whole org. Absolutely. And thank you for having me. It's my favorite topic. So excited to hopefully share some learnings here. And you're spot on. Like you cannot do this until you have real trust with someone on the customer on the prospect side.

1:40So if you're in enterprise sales, this could be a couple of months even into your cycle. And it might be a champion. You can even do this with a coach, to be honest. Doesn't really matter. Champion is ideal, but just someone who you trust enough and who trusts you, that they're going to open up the kind of kimono on the organization here. I'm going to show kind of what this looks like, and then I'll work backwards to sort of how I get here. I mean, this is real life. I'm obviously not going to zoom into individual names on here, but you can see this is where I do all my org chart and power base mapping.

2:16There's so many ways you can do this with AI or in other tools. I just prefer it in mirror. It's just my preference. I'm going to zoom in on one here. This is a fake company. Next, Var Chemical Group. I made it up, but this is kind of what it would look like in real life. And you'll see this one's been a little bit built out. I'm down to, you know, like six layers in in some of the teams in this particular chemical manufacturing organization. So I'll just rewind as to where this starts. So I will always build the initial framework of the org chart. And I will always start with pretend, you know, selling to PepsiCo.

2:57I will go to their leadership page first. This is obviously super easy. You can find CEO, CFO, SVPs, etc. So I would just manually kind of build these into my org chart. I will just guess, presumably, in this case, Scott reports into Jordan. I can presume that COO Valentina reports into Jordan. And so I will build out that first layer. I'll then also go to LinkedIn. Again, easy. Go to PepsiCo's page. I'll open them up in Sales Navigator and kind of do the same thing. you know, PepsiCo. And then I'll probably seniority title, like I'm looking to build out at least CXO and maybe SVP, VP type level.

3:47And then I'll kind of filter a little bit by if I'm looking for building out analytics org, for example, I'll look at analytics and kind of see who comes up at that title, senior director, maybe I'll add Vomesh VP here, Jeremy, I'll add them in. So I'll build out that first couple of layers. So maybe here I've gone down to, you know, I've added Fatima in, Nadia, et cetera. And you're just taking your best guess at this because I'm an idiot. I have zero idea how to build something like this. I mean, you're smarter than me, but it seems pretty comfortable. I mean, PepsiCo is a massive company, Nexvar Chemical Group, not a small order.

4:24I mean, you're selling to massive companies, Laura. But it's just guesswork. And the point is you kind of want to get it wrong. Once you got to this point in your sales cycle with your champion coach, whoever, I will get on a call with them, you know, I'll make up some excuse to have a one to one, or maybe we just have a weekly one to one or something already as part of our engagement. I will say, hey, I've been selling analytics for a long time. I know how many people are involved typically in in these kinds of decisions, as do you, you've been at the company for a while, you've been in this role, what I would love to do if you're open to it is can I just walk you through the different people who I think will need to be involved in any kind of decision on ThoughtSpot?

5:06And you tell me if we're thinking about things in the right way, and then together we can kind of figure out if we need to involve these people and when that might be. So you said something really interesting a second ago. You said the point is to kind of get it wrong. And I thought I was supposed to be clairvoyant and get everything right as a sales person. Don't I look silly if I get it wrong? No, the, um, there's a book by, uh, Chris Voss, you know, the never split the difference. We've had him on the show, Laura. Okay. So you, so, you know, and I'm sure so many people watching this will know as well, the whole, the psychology of getting people to know or getting people to correct you.

5:44So if, if you show someone an org chart and they see people are in the wrong place, they will tell you that you've got them in the wrong place. How do you tee this up? Cause I imagine you don't just like pull this up and you're like, so I built this thing, I guess, what do you say to like introduce? So I'll say, so I've, I've kind of taken my best guess at your org chart in this scenario. I really want to understand, you know, selling analytics or whatever. I want to be in the data analytics org to start off with. So I'll say, okay, so I, I mean, I presume your CFO reports into your CFO and then Mr.

6:15Prospect, Mrs. Prospect, you've talked a lot about Scott Thomas, your chief AI officer as probably being the sponsor of this. I see this in different companies. Sometimes CAIOs report straight to the CEO. Sometimes I've seen them go into the CFO. Do I have this right here? Does Scott report to Scott? And they'll say yes. Or they'll say, no, actually, Scott Thomas reports to Valentina over here. There's one really subtle thing that you're doing there. You're not just saying, who does Scott report to? You're saying, hey, I've seen this at different companies. Sometimes it's this, sometimes it's that.

6:52And what that is showing is that you are, one, you know what you're talking about, which again, continues to raise your status in the eyes of the prospect. Okay, Laura is somebody that I can trust. She's done this before. But also, it's just like you're making their cognition easier here by suggesting as opposed to making them do all the thinking work. And it's this really subtle thing. But when you make this exercise feel heavy to your prospect where they're doing all the giving, even if you get through all this, they're gonna be less apt to help you again in the future. And so subtle thing you're doing, but I've noticed you do it at multiple different places.

7:29I really like it. Thank you. Yeah, well, yeah, exactly. Like if you just say, hey, can you draw out your org chart for me? That's massive cognitive load. They probably don't know as well. So anyway, and then I'll kind of continue a little bit. Some of these names who are lower down in the org, every single time I have a call with a prospect company, regardless of who's on there, I will add them to where I think they sit in the org. So this is a continually evolving thing. And it also just helps me remember who's who and who have we met and who haven't we met and things like that. If I fast forward here, what ends up happening is you end up having a discussion with your champion where you get a sense of not the shadow org or the power base, but you get a sense of like the real org structure.

8:11What you're doing here is you're trying to understand who are the people that care about this project. But I think then you're going one step deeper and you're figuring out who has influence over the Scots of the world and the other key executives here. So could you take me to what are the types of questions you are asking your champion in this discussion? And what are you trying to understand? So once we figured out, you know, all these people sit here and they sit everywhere. And you'll see as well, I have little notes. Like if I'm on a prospect call and someone mentions, oh, you know, if Pina says I love tennis and she's got two sons and things like that, I'll just kind of add some of this stuff along the way.

8:51Again, so that I remember for later down the line. Then I will start to ask questions to figure out who actually matters here. Because what we find is that usually it's not always who you think it is. So Pina, so she's, okay, VP of AI. So I will ask questions like, okay, so like do Pina and Scott kind of get on? And then the prospect would either say, oh yeah, you know, like, you know, they're super close and they work together at a previous company. Pina really is Scott's kind of right-hand person for this, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then you can kind of pull on that thread like, oh, interesting.

9:28So does Pina know about this analytics project that we're working on at the moment? oh yeah she's you know we keep her regularly updated and and things like that and uh you know we send her a summary every week of the different tools that we're looking at and where we are etc etc okay so do you do you reckon Pina is telling Scott that like I'm presuming they meet pretty often etc etc and then they'll say oh probably not because Pina doesn't you know tell Scott things until we've made a decision on the technology oh interesting okay so Scott has absolutely no idea that this evaluation is even happening.

10:01No, no, no, no. So you can just learn little things along the way. One, you're trying to figure out, do these people have influence over the EB? But then you can go deeper into, does the EB even know this is going on? Kind of a red flag if they don't, because then that means probably not their top three priorities. Today's show is brought to you by ConsenSys, which helps your demo keep selling even when you're not in the room. Before I show a demo, I set it up like it might have to work without me. I include these three slides before I drop in. Number one, the biggest problems I learned in discovery.

10:35Number two, how we solve those problems. And number three, a what does success look like today slide. You can steal that exact 30 MPC demo deck template powered by ConsenSys. Go check it out in the show notes. Today's show is brought to you by Full & Rich, which compiles 20 plus premium data vendors in one place to dramatically improve your call connect rate. When you're cold calling, you have to make sure you're not showing up as spam-likely on your prospect's end. And one way to do this is to stop calling bad numbers over and over again. Mark your disconnected or fax lines or wrong numbers so you know not to dial them again.

11:06Or even better, make sure your data provider only gives you verified numbers to start with. We partnered with Full & Rich on a guide of nine ways to improve your call connect rate. Get it for free in the show notes. Today's show is brought to you by Pipedrive's easy-to-use and customizable CRM with built-in meeting intelligence. My favorite discovery question is the multiple choice question, which sounds like typically when I'm talking with folks like you, they're focused on A, B, or C. Which is it for you? Now, A, B, and C have to be problems that you can solve because that's how you steer the conversation in the direction of places you can help them.

11:36Now, Pipedrive's built-in meeting intelligence helps you focus on your follow-up question, not on scrambling to take live notes. And we built a full discovery toolkit with them free in the 30MPC closers hub. There's a link in the show notes. I think for folks that haven't done this to the level that you have, it might not seem obvious that Scott and Pina, like if she reports to him, you would think, oh, cool, she has influence over him and they work well together. But one thing that I learned is like another executive could come with the exact same initiative. And depending on who it was coming from, look, there's a big orgs, especially like there are politics, there are relationships.

12:15There's stuff here that like you might not want Peanut to bring it to Scott. You might want Fletcher all the way down here to be the one to bring it to Scott. And so your question of, do they get on? Do they get along? It seems basic, but you're walking into a world of hurt. If you have the wrong person, bring the initiative to somebody that matters. If they say no, then obviously you go into, oh, that's interesting. I mean, well, you can go into, you know, how come they don't? Like I would have expected if she reports into him, they have a good relationship or, you know, however that conversation goes.

12:53But then you want to understand, say Scott has a couple of ideas that he's bouncing off. Like, who is he bouncing those ideas off? And then they might say, oh, well, Scott always goes to Priya. And you're like, oh, interesting. How come? I wouldn't have expected that. She's not even, you know, she's three levels below Scott. Oh, well, when Priya started in the company, she was in Scott's internship team, whatever it might be. Or, oh, well, their kids go to the same school. So they're actually friends outside of work. They've been friends for about 20 years. Oh, OK, interesting. But I will draw these dotted lines.

13:31and this is basically me mapping the power base on top of the org chart after the call i'll add kids same school dot t so i'll note that down and then you know you can continue you can do as much of this as is natural i find that people kind of like taking you through this because you know everyone likes talking about it's basically gossip about their company in a way there's sometimes you want to be cautious and people will clam up if they see you putting notes on screen. But in my experience, when somebody talks and they see me typing, they end up talking even more and sharing more because they're like, oh, this person is listening.

14:11And what I'm saying is valuable enough to them that they're writing it down. And so again, it's one of these like subtle signals that I think at the enterprise level gets people to open up that most folks would take for granted. If they say like, oh, everyone hates Priya and et cetera, et cetera, I probably wouldn't write something like that because then they were scared that it's going to come back to them but i'm adding afterwards so you get the idea so you just keep kind of layering in and and figuring out things uh they'll also usually tell you like oh no declan isn't with the company anymore um you know that that's had that's no head count or it's actually this new person they've just started and so they can kind of fill in in gaps there so you've figured out who is going to be a positive influence on the deal one of the things you were talking to me about in the prep call was neutralizing blockers.

14:55Could you give me a sense of like, how are you exploring that Laura? So either I will have a sense already of who's a potential blocker, just vibes on cause and things like that. So if I have an idea of who it might be, then I'll firstly call that out. So Kofi, for example, if I've had a few calls with Kofi and she's being really difficult on cause, challenging us and just giving very negative energy, then I will say like, so Kofi on cause is really challenging and I'm not sure if she's doing that because she is tasked with getting this right and kind of her head's on the line or if she's anti-thought spot and is kind of pushing for one of your other tools so I'll call it out in in that sense and then you know they will correct you oh well yeah Kofi is she is the lead on the Sigma evaluation so etc etc oh okay so is she is it fair to say she's kind of the sigma champion yeah she's yeah she's Kofi's pushing sigma and then I'll say okay interesting like how come what does she see in sigma that she thinks is is the right fit so then I'll get try and get a sense of like how is sigma or my competitor being talked about internally how are they being positioned and then I'll go into understanding how important is this and so then I'll say oh so okay so Kofi's pushing sigma you nick your pro thought spot are there any other tools that you're looking at no no it's just you two oh okay cool so kofi like does where does kind of she fit in with pina like does pina listen to kofi because i know from previous that pina is influential over scott and then they might say oh yeah yeah like pina and kofi work really closely together etc etc so i'll say oh okay so should i be should i be nervous then that kofi is kind of pushing my competitor and then you know depend on the situation but sometimes they'll say yeah yeah I'm nervous about that as well actually so then I'll say kind of when you've seen this sort of situation before how do you kind of bring Kofi along to your side of the table because you might have an idea as the sales rep of how to mitigate a blocker like oh well we're gonna go you know we're gonna go around to everyone in Kofi's team and get them all excited about our product and I'm gonna make sure that my CEO is meeting with Scott to give influence there etc etc et cetera.

17:10But again, no one understands the politics except the people on the inside. So I will ask the prospect, champion, coach, et cetera, what do they think we should do about Sophie? Well, she probably wants to hear about your implementation plan and kind of what resources you provide. And then this is starting to go into like, what is the action that you can then take off this whole all chart power base mapping? So to recap what we've talked about so far, Laura, Step one is you are taking your best guess at building out the org chart using both the company executives page, and then you're also going to LinkedIn sales nav.

17:47And in your case, because you sell analytics, you are searching the word analytics and basically throwing anybody who you think you might want to get access to onto an org chart. The intent here is not to get it right. It's actually to get it corrected live by your champion. So not only do you get the real org chart, the most up-to-date version, you then also are able to start asking questions about the different people involved in this and figure out who has influence, who's on your side, who's not on your side. And because you've got this thing up, it gives you a chance to do some discovery about the real power base.

18:21What we just talked about was our friend Kofi over here, who you think might be a blocker that you need to address some of their legitimate concerns. And then there's also some other people that my guess is as you're looking at this, you're like, ooh, I really need to get access to Simone or Fletcher. How do you use this as a way to then get access to stakeholders that you have previously not been given access to? Yeah. So let's take Simone, for example, director of AI. Say the person I'm talking with, the champion coach, whoever I'm going through the org chart with, they will say, you know, Simone is going to be important in this because they're going to look at, you know, how accurate is your AI or whatever it might be.

19:04And then if I haven't met this person yet, I'll usually say, oh, okay, how come I haven't met Simone yet? Simone will come in, you know, once we've actually, once we've decided on the technology, and then they will just do some final checking on, you know, whatever it is they want to check off. I'll say, oh, okay. Yeah, that's, that's fair enough. I get that. They don't want to waste their time on, you know, multiple tools that you're evaluating before you've actually shortlisted down to the one you want. But what I've seen happen so many times is that there's a number of people who get involved right at the end and they will have some kind of criteria that no one knew about.

19:40My advice ideally is we kind of meet with Simone now and just make sure that we kind of fully understand the criteria and I will give them an out of me meeting with them. So I'll probably add something like, obviously you can maybe you should meet them now before we go ahead with this POC and kind of make sure their requirements are added to the requirements doc and then they'll say oh yeah true yeah that's a good idea actually yeah I'll I have my weekly with Simone next Monday I'll do that so I'll say okay cool also I mean if you're open to it I can always kind of connect them with our AI team as well like I know I've been through this so many times the AI people usually like to meet our people to understand really not just the tech, but more kind of philosophically, how are we thinking about AI within our product and where they see us going on things like, you know, we're going to go more open source or Simone's probably going to come up with those conversations in your, those questions in your meeting with him.

20:40So do you think it would be helpful if we maybe connect him with that person on my team, just so he can get all of those answers up front. This brings us to my wedding anniversary was four days ago, but I think I smell some love in the air, Laura. This is actually the first entry to you're playing Cupid. Playing Cupid is this strategy where Simone does not want to meet with a sales rep. As much as we might know about our AI and our models and our product. And as much, even if we were a director of AI or a VP of AI and analytics before, the second that they see sales rep title, there's a higher level of skepticism, less trust.

21:25And so what you're doing is you are matchmaking your AI team and their AI team. And that is how you are getting at, you are getting access to these people because you're getting your team access to these people. And frankly, they're in some ways better equipped to sell than you are because they are the true technical experts to what these folks care about. A lot of the time people are hesitant to introduce you because obviously as soon as someone introduces you to someone higher than them or just elsewhere in the org, they're then attaching their name to your product. So if they're not fully bought in or fully trustworthy, they're going to be very hesitant about doing that.

22:03If in this scenario, the person I'm talking to is like, yeah, I, I'm not going to introduce you yet so you know let's circle back on this later down the line once we're further along with our evaluation then that tells me one is this person who I'm speaking with actually a champion because a real champion would be more strategizing with me on how to get to Simone and how to bring him in so I'll challenge back a little bit and I'll say like oh I'm you know I'm kind of surprised because you just told me that they're going to be an important person and they're going to be part of the decision making criteria so I don't know I would I just would have thought that you would prefer to have all of these people kind of involved up front before you then go and invest your time in doing a POC with us if someone like Simone who's going to have a voice in the decision doesn't think ThoughtSpot's the right fit and so I'll test again like to try and get them to connect me with someone else if they fail that test again then I'm like oh I don't think I'm with the right person here it's also this whole exercise is yes to help you understand the power base and to get you to the people that you need to but it's also a great champion test as well.

23:08I think the reasons that you shared with me, you do this. We already talked about the trust piece. There's just like some people on your side are going to be better at building trust and selling than you are. You're hooking a head of AI up with your head of AI. They both can just like talk at a level that you're not going to be able to. You also talked about the ego piece. If you're trying to get access to a CXO, they are far more likely to take a meeting with a member of your executive team than they will with you as a rep. And so if you ask for access to the CXO, probably not going to happen.

23:45But if you say, hey, I want to hook your CEO with our CEO, it is more likely to happen. This happened to me when I sold the law firms. I would want to get a meeting with the managing partner of a big law firm. They wouldn't want to meet with me. I was 26 years old and my voice sounds like this. But if I got my CEO who was grizzled and had worked on Wall Street, like, oh man, he would just go in and they would immediately get into talking shop. And like, he was just way better than I was. And so you should use that to your advantage. So you got the trust piece, you got the ego piece, you've got the practicality piece, which is you have limited bandwidth as a rep, Laura.

24:22And it's really tough to hit 305 % of your number, literally selling what the equivalent of what three salespeople are supposed to with limited time. And so what this allows you to do is extend the amount of selling time that you have available to you. And then also just like from a geo perspective, if you're trying to meet with somebody who's in London, you're in San Francisco, like you just might not be able to make it work. So you hook them up with someone in London. And then the last piece, meeting with a salesperson. Again, people are a little more guarded. If your head of AI is meeting with their head of AI, you can send them on a mission to be like, Hey, I need you to figure out what our competitors priced at or what features on the roadmap they're promising you.

25:02And your prospect will be a little bit more willing to like open up to someone who's not a salesperson. So that's the why behind all of this that you shared with me. Can we get into the how? Maybe we can start with like how you choose, how you make your matches. You're an expert matchmaker and love is in the air. So I look at it across the lens of their role, their professional role and then also their personality so we can go back to Scott for example so I want to get to Scott a couple of things this was actually I learned this from someone else was to ask your champion and say hey you know my um my CEO loves to reach out or connect with kind of the executive sponsor for this initiative on on your side and then I'll tone it down they don't have to meet he just likes sending a note to say you know hey thank you for giving us a chance um we're really excited uh you know i'm following this personally laura's keeping me updated you know open to chat through all things you know ai analytics um you know whenever you you need to so i'll kind of bring the pressure down on my champion like hey i'm not asking for all these intros necessarily some of it is just like a warm touch point it's also you know a champion test to see if they say oh yeah yeah go for it uh if they say that it's like okay cool this person wants my ceo to message their chief ai officer and then i would ask what kind of person does scott typically like to meet with is he more technical is he more business org chart titles can be deceiving my champion might say oh no scott is like super business focused like he's actually more business than than tech so i'll say okay and what's he like what's scott like is he kind of you know fun bubbly guy is he very like analytical no smile kind of thing and oh no he's like super straight late he's you know he's ex-army he's very direct etc etc mentally my roster of our our execs in my head like okay i'm not going to put him with someone who's like super bubbly extrovert kind of vibes i'm going to connect him with maybe our coo who's pretty straight laced to the point can like match that kind of persona so that's what i mean by like I'm trying to match the professional side of things and then also their just their personality like who are they going to vibe with this all sounds very like foxy and snaky a little bit but it's also just good partnership because especially in enterprise when you're in these long sales cycles and then you are I mean their success is your success so all of this as well is just really making sure like is this the right company is this the right tech is this the right fit for our product tech wise and culture wise.

27:45And then you just become a better partner to your customer. If you can then help your champion also navigate all of these politics. I actually think what you're doing is if you flash forward to, they sign a contract with you all and they actually decide to start working with your org, Tobias and Emma, your tech person, who's asking about football and gaming, they're going to be working together a lot. Like they're going to be working together a lot. And what you're actually doing is you're almost like forward deploying the relationship before the contract is signed. And this gives them a chance to be like, hey, like these people are already trying to build a full relationship with us.

28:24They're already connecting with us. You're actually just like, you're matchmaking before the marriage, which I think you want to go on a couple of dates with all of the people at the The other, oh boy, that analogy is not extending. I apologize. But yeah, I don't think it's sneaky. I actually think it's extremely customer-centric. Today's show is brought to you by ConsenSys, which helps your demo keep selling even when you're not in the room. Before I show a demo, I set it up like it might have to work without me. I include these three slides before I drop in. Number one, the biggest problems I learned in discovery.

28:57Number two, how we solve those problems. And number three, a what does success look like today slide. You can steal that exact 30 MPC demo deck template powered by ConsenSys. Go check it out in the show notes.

29:32partnered with Fullenrich on a guide of nine ways to improve your call connect rate. Get it for free in the show notes. Today's show is brought to you by Pipedrive's easy to use and customizable CRM with built-in meeting intelligence. My favorite discovery question is the multiple choice question, which sounds like typically when I'm talking with folks like you, they're focused on A, B, or C, which is it for you? Now, A, B, and C have to be problems that you can solve because that's how you steer the conversation in the direction of places you can help them. Now, Pipedrive's built-in Meeting Intelligence helps you focus on your follow-up question, not on scrambling to take live notes.

30:04And we built a full discovery toolkit with them free in the 30MPC closers hub. There's a link in the show notes. Yeah, it is very customer centric. So yeah, so you get the idea. So I'm trying to matchmake across professional line and personality line as well. And then it's also really important about the kind of champion building and org mapping and things like that, that you do on your own in your own company I mean obviously I've been at Thoughts Bowl for a while so I know I mean pretty much everyone but if I was a new rep like you want to also make sure that the execs know who you are because obviously they're just as busy as the execs on your on your customer side every sales rep is saying hey can you reach out to my prospect hey can you meet with this person so you also want to show them that you're kind of going above and beyond to make their life easier.

30:54It sounds great that your CEO loves sending a message every now and then to a customer to say, I want to support this, but it's not like you're working for a small company. You almost have to sell them on putting their attention on and doing this. So why don't we talk about now how you actually action these pairings, particularly with your execs, because if you do this wrong, you kind of look like a dork internally, and they're also not going to help you out. Your job, when you want to get your execs involved, is to make it as easy as possible for them to do whatever action it is that you've asked them to do.

31:28So you basically want to give everything up front. Like if I want Catan to send an email to someone, I need to give him the email that I've ghostwritten, the email address of the person I want him to send it to. I need their EA, their exec assistant to CC them in. I need to give the subject line. I need to tell him, should I be CC'd or not? should I be in BCC just for visibility? And then a bit of context on like, usually this is a Q4 deal. We're competing against these people. Like I need you to send this ASAP kind of thing. We need it. A example of what this looks like, Laura, do you have one?

32:01So we have a Slack channel called ELT Sales, which has all the execs, all the sellers and all the execs, executive assistants. It's actually a great, it's probably my favorite channel that we have at ThoughtSpot. But you can see, so this is an example here. um so what i've got is the emails for katan to send it to i've said like this is the person this is his ea put me and francois who's our chief product officer put us both in copy this is the subject line here's the email and you'll notice that you know i i tag the exec but then the real thing especially for the execs who don't maybe they don't even manage their own inbox is the ea so my ceo that's the person really who i will go to to say hey i need katan to send this email i need jeff to send this note on linkedin like you help them yeah usually it's the ea that will just send it from their inbox after kind of running it by them so that's you just want to give them everything up front copy paste send done then what i will do is i will put a reminder in my calendar for three days time you know check note went out and then i will have another reminder in my calendar and i'll probably make it repeatable depending on the sales cycle and the customer and it'll be something like every four weeks reminder ktan to email michael and i'll just you know do another ghost note of hey company product updates or checking in you know we blah blah blah whatever it might be um because that's the thing as well I think is you don't just want one touch point in the middle of nowhere you want to actually build a relationship between these people like my aim is to have I want my SVP to be texting with the equivalent on the customer side I want my boss to have a one-to-one with the boss of my champion every two weeks so it's not just a one and done it's like you want to cultivate those relationships so that you know It's not just a first date.

34:05It's like it becomes an actual partnership. Okay. We're coming back to my analogy, my, my, my, my plain Qubit dating analogy. Exec sends the note. Prospects responds and says, yes, we would love to meet with you. How do you make sure that your CEO goes in and runs this meeting the right way? Always have a prep call for sure. With any exec meetings. I mean, that's obvious. You're not going to read what you, if you just send something, they're not going to read it. You got to get them live. Yeah, you got to get them live. 10 minutes. Like that's all you really need. And then I will also make a prep doc.

34:42This could be something that it would look like, like high level information at the top. You know, what's the contract value that you're selling them? When's the date? Who are they meeting? What's the scale here? And then I'll have, you know, here, like who you're meeting? Sarah, chief product officer at T-Rex payroll, talking points, things like that. What do they oversee, et cetera? etc always have purpose of the core like what are you trying to get out of this even if it's just I just need you to build an exec relationship I need them to feel like yeah trust advisory this is a genuine partnership and then I'll put you know apex is concerned about rolling out thought spot to this many customers like you need to give them some guidance Dana is the fake name for one of our execs you need to give them guidance on how to manage the change management because that's a concern they have you even give them an agenda I mean you literally make this mind-numbingly easy for them it's paint by the numbers there's literally like no excuse to not to not have this and as usually happens with exec calls they might do the first first part and then they will just go off in another direction and that's that's that's fine that's kind of the point but as long as they have this and really just narrow it down to like what's the one thing i need you to get out of this call i need you to figure out is sigma still in play here or i just need you to swap phone numbers so you can text and start getting on a texting basis.

36:07Can you actually give me, like, if you think about all of the asks that you'll have of, because one of the things that you shared with me is you, you send them on a mission. So I heard from you is like, is this competitor in the deal? Swap phone numbers so that we can text. Are there other like FAAs, frequently asked asks? I really love for my execs, if they're in a, you know, exec partnership one-to-one for them to ask how can we be a great partner to you because it often I mean one it just shows like hey we're invested in your in the partnership here not just selling you the tech but it will often uncover things like well you know our last vendor that we signed they completely messed up the implementation and you know so I really need to know that we're going to have the best of your people on this and then obviously the other thing is budget just getting a clear answer from the EB or whoever it is that the exec is aligned with.

37:02What do you tell them to ask? Do you just say like, give us a sense of how big we should be swinging? Do you ask, do you have budget set aside? Like, do you coach your exec on what to ask here? Because I feel like there's lots of different things around budget you might want to actually know. By this point in the sales cycle, like you should know already, is this actually something that they're intending to buy and kind of what's their timeline? But it would be more things like just for them to ask again, you know, so how does it work getting funding unlocked for this kind of initiative? And there's a phrase that one of my SVPs told me once, which was, why are the building, which is basically like multi-thread and get one-on-one in front of everyone.

37:38And why are the building is how he described it. And then he said, get all the liars in one room. So he was like, ask the same question to multiple people. So like, I'll ask my champion. So how does funding get unlocked for this? My SVP, when he's on the call, their SVP, can you ask how does funding get unlocked? If they are saying different answers, then that's interesting. You know, there's like, okay, who's right? When you're next all on a call is when you make it a bit awkward in your circus. I'm kind of confused because I've, and you don't, you don't like name them in front of each other.

38:09I'll just say like, I've heard that funding gets unlocked in this way. Someone else told me that actually it's this person's budget who signs. I'm kind of confused guys. And then you see how they like play out internally and that's, you know, get all the lies in one room and figure out. You want your execs to ask questions that also you've already asked to other people to make sure that what you've heard is correct. Laura, this has been a freaking clinic on mapping the power base, getting access, winning over the right people, neutralizing the wrong people, playing Cupid, wiring the building. We're running out of time, so let's recap this thing.

38:49So folks, we have put together a lovely cheat sheet for you of exactly what Laura is doing. And so let's use this to recap. So step one, we talked about mapping their org chart and establishing the power base. What you are doing is you are going into your Miro board and you are literally putting all the people that you think you need to get access to and you are seeking to be corrected to understand the real org chart. And then you are asking about who has influence, who likes a competitor, who listens to who, whose kids go to school together. You're taking notes, you're drawing dotted lines, and you're annotating like crazy so that you understand what's actually going on here.

39:27And you didn't talk about it, but I bet this makes your pipeline reviews way easier because you can then just show your manager how you're doing these things. Then we talked about getting introductions from your champion to the very important people in this deal. You are usually saying, hey, usually this person should be involved for this reason. You are framing why it is in their best interest to give you access to other people. If they are not giving you access, you need to kind of fall on your sword and be like, shoot, maybe we did something wrong, or maybe I haven't properly explained ThoughtSpot.

40:00Or you're being like, hey, this is going to cause risk in this project where, again, it's in your best interest to do this. This is not seller centric. This is buyer centric. And then if they really reject you, you talked about you got to go back and just like PG, pipe gen back into the org. My favorite part was love is in the air. We're talking about playing Cupid and we talked about the reasons they trust other people more. Egos will get you access, get your CEO with their CEO. Their CEO is not going to meet with you as an enterprise AE, no matter how cool you might be. The practicality, you can triple, quadruple, quintuple your selling time by getting other people in your org to help sell on your behalf.

40:37And then the intel that you get, you send them in to say, hey, I need to know if Sigma is still in this deal. That is the one thing that you need to do. We talked about the different matches you can make. You get Tobias, the lower level AI engineer, talking with your AI engineer about how they love Red Dead Redemption 2. Then you get your CEO, your C-suite, connecting with their C-suite by using the EA, the ghost written message, and then the prep doc. So they go in and they at least follow the first five minutes that you set. And when you do all these things, you too can hit 305 % of your number like Laura.

41:12So Laura, thank you so much for joining us. Can I ask one selfish question at the end? Sure. I think you've gotten some value from 30 MPC over the years. I think for the folks who are watching this on YouTube, why should they subscribe? I want to see your, I know you're a good multi-threader. I want to see your sales pitch capabilities. Why should people subscribe to the 30 MPC YouTube channel? There is nothing that I've seen out there that has as much actionable things that you can literally implement the same day. We all have that phrase of, you know, get 1 % better every day. And the kind of feedback loop with having something that you can try that same day and see if it works.

41:53Like there's nothing better to kind of hone your craft. So you're so good at playing Cupid. My heart is pounding. My skin is flushed. That's so kind of you. Laura, thank you for joining us. We got to get you back on again soon. This was freaking awesome. folks. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. We'll see you on the next episode of 30 MPC.

42:21Today's show is brought to you by ConsenSys, which helps your demo keep selling even when you're not in the room. Before I show a demo, I set it up like it might have to work without me. I include these three slides before I drop in. Number one, the biggest problems I learn in discovery. Number two, how we solve those problems. And number three, a what does success look like today slide. You can steal that exact 30 MPC demo deck template powered by ConsenSys. Go check it out in the show notes. Today's show is brought to you by Full & Rich, which compiles 20 plus premium data vendors in one place to dramatically improve your call connect rate.

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43:21My favorite discovery question is the multiple-choice question, which sounds like, typically, when I'm talking with folks like you, they're focused on A, B, or C. Which is it for you? Now, A, B, and C have to be problems that you can solve, because that's how you steer the conversation in the direction of places you can help them. Now, Pipedrive's built-in meeting intelligence helps you focus on your follow-up question, not on scrambling to take live notes. And we built a full discovery toolkit with them free in the 30MPC closers hub. There's a link in the show notes.