At some point in our careers, many of us business developers in the AEC industry read books or take sales training courses. One common approach is Miller Heiman Sales Performance; they wrote The New Strategic Selling, which speaks to navigating to—and positioning with—prospective buyers and influencers.
So we take these crash courses (either formally, or as on-the-job-training). Some of us rise to the top as accomplished sellers/business developers. Even so, I do find that the accomplished sellers in our industry overlook the value that can be reaped from informants. Informants are rarely, if ever, referenced in any of the formalized selling processes that I’ve seen. Instead, the emphasis is on buyers (aka decision makers) and their influencers (which could be human beings, or something else such as a news source or book).
The reason I am prompted to write about informants today is because I reviewed a tweet by blogger Tamar Weinberg: How to get an influencer’s attention. She states: “{For this post}, I selected influencers in all different “walks of life” and areas of influence, from the blogosphere to the power users of Digg to founders of successful startups and authors of bestselling books. The question I asked, simply, was ‘How do you recommend people grab your attention?'”
This made me consider the range of influencers out there. Sure, there are influencers that might be located directly at the client site (another human being….perhaps a facilities planner at private college makes some level of influence on the President of the College, who is the final decision maker). But there are also indirect influencers. They could be authors and thought leaders similar to what Tamar mentions in her article. We know that if our decision makers are reading certain publications/information, then by all means, the authors of that information can serve as an influence on the buyer’s final decision.
So, in that regard, there are at least two types of influencers: direct (person-to-person) and indirect (person-to-something else).
But rarely, if ever, have I heard much talk about the third category that I call informants.In my mind, informants are those people that can give you some good intel (ie about a prospect’s culture, for example), yet, they likely have zero influence whatsoever on the decision.
Why are informants overlooked? We treat them more casually, and perhaps only loosely consider their information. We are also less likely to record their information in our CRM (client relationship management) system. This is a real shame, because when opportunities arise for a particular prospect, any level of intel is essential……even if it’s from someone who will make no difference in whether or not your firm is selected for the business.
So the purpose of today’s post is to encourage a “connect-the-dot revamp” within your CRM system to include informants. Let’s say you have a contact that is currently a sales representative for a commercial carpet company. In a ‘former life’, that sales rep used to be an facilities planner at a large corporation (a corporation with whom you’d like to provide A/E/C services). It’s alltogether possible that person may still have intel about the corporation’s culture, previous decision-making processes, personalities, etc. Sure, it may not be wholly accurate, but it’s worth considering that intel to shape your strategy. But you can only use it if you have somehow tagged the contact within your system, so that a moment’s notice you can recall that she worked at your prospect’s organization.
By tagging and adding detailed information on your informants in your CRM system—just like you already do with your buyers and influencers—creating your strategy will be easier and more robust when real business opportunities arise!