Podcast episode
How Mapping the "Shadow" Org Chart Got Me to 305% of Quota
30 Minutes to President's Club15 Sept 202643 min
Description
Laura McDonald breaks down the enterprise multithreading strategy that helped her hit 305% of quota by mapping the hidden power base inside her accounts. Learn how to uncover real influence, neutralize blockers, get access to key stakeholders, and activate your entire company to help you win. 🕸️ Map the “shadow” org chart to uncover who actually influences the decision 🚧 Identify blockers, understand competitor support, and build a plan to neutralize resistance 💘 “Play Cupid” by matching your executives and experts with the right customer stakeholders 🏢 “Wire the building” by creating multiple relationships across both organizations You’re one step closer to President’s Club!: 🏋 30MPC Training: https://www.30mpc.com/course/team-training 🛠 Weekly Newsletter: https://hubs.li/Q02NJQ8p0 📚 Things you can steal and use today: https://linktr.ee/30mpc_youtube
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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. What 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, all these people sit here and they sit everywhere and you'll see as well, I have little notes.
positive influence on the deal. One of the things you were talking to me about in the prep call was neutralizing blockers. Could 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.”
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 Cofi's pushing Sigma, you, Nick, you're pro-thoughtspot. Are there any other tools that you're looking at? No, no, no, it's just you two. Oh, okay, cool. So Cofi, like does, where does kind of she fit in with Pina? Like, does Pina listen to Cofi? “Because I know from previous that Pina is influential over Scott.” And then they might say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, like Pina and Cofi work really closely together, et cetera, et cetera. So I'll say, oh, okay, so should I be, should I be nervous then that Cofi is kind of pushing my competitor? And then, you know, depending on the situation, but sometimes they'll say, yeah, yeah, I'm nervous about that as well, actually.
So I'll say, oh, okay, so should I be, should I be nervous then that Cofi is kind of pushing my competitor? And then, you know, depending 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 Cofi 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 going to go, you know, we're going to go around to everyone in Cofi's team and get them all excited about our product. And I'm going to make sure that my CEO is meeting with Scott to give influence there, et cetera, et cetera. But again, no one understands the politics except the people on the inside.
they're gonna be very hesitant about doing that. If in this scenario, the person I'm talking to is like, yeah, I'm not gonna introduce you yet. So 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 kind of surprised because you just told me that they're gonna be an important person and they're gonna be part of the decision-making criteria. I don't know, I just would have thought that you would prefer to have all of these people kind of involved upfront before you then go
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.” What 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 a budget set aside? Like, do you coach your exec on what to ask here? Cause 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, is this actually something that they're intending to buy and kind of what's their timeline.