Complex Sale? No Organization Chart? Why Not?

Posted by Dave Stein on July 25, 2011

0 comments | 1128 reads

Why don’t sales reps don’t utilize org charts for complex opportunities they’re pursuing? Why don’t their sales managers insist that they do? Those graphic representations of a company/division structure are invaluable in a complex sale. The most effective sales coaches I know refuse to help a rep with a deal unless they have an up-to-date organization chart.

Org charts are so important that several sales training companies require them as a critical component of their opportunity and account management approaches. More advanced opportunity and account plans (and supporting software) allow you to overlay a political map on top of the org chart so you see the relationships between influencers, decision makers, your supporters and those who would gladly serve those functions for your competitors. (By the way, if you’re in a complex selling environment and your team isn’t taking the political landscape within the customers’ organizations into account when developing a strategy to win, you need help. Yesterday.)

If a rep can’t get someone in the account to give them an org chart, they should be able to build one with help from their contacts.

Here’s a link to Forbes Corporate Org Chart Wiki. Try it. Think about what impact org charts and the skills to understand them would have on the outcome of your team’s sales opportunities.

Would you comment and share with us how an org chart helped you win an opportunity?

Republished with author's permission from original post by Dave Stein.

Dave Stein

After a career in sales, then as a sales consultant, trainer, and author, Dave Stein is now founder/CEO of ES Research Group, Inc., which publishes independent evaluations and comparisons sales training companies and their programs and services. ESR is recognized as the leading authority on sales training programs and sales performance improvement. For the past twenty years Dave has focused on sales performance improvement, sales effectiveness and especially sales training.

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