Podcast episode
How to Partner with Exec Assistants to Tilt Enterprise Deals in Your Favor | Laura McDonald
30 Minutes to President's Club27 Aug 202642 min
Description
Laura McDonald breaks down how to multithread enterprise deals, reach the C-suite, and build buying committee consensus without getting trapped with one champion. Learn how to leverage executive assistants, map the real power base, and neutralize blockers before they kill your deal. 🎙️ ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS: 🪑 Build the three-legged stool: Get every critical stakeholder group to “green” instead of treating enterprise deals like a linear sales process. 🤝 Sell the executive meeting: Broker peer-to-peer introductions between executives instead of asking the C-suite to meet with another salesperson. 🗺️ Map the real power base: Whiteboard the org with your champion to uncover who matters, who has influence, and who you still need to win over. 🚧 Neutralize blockers fast: Find out why they’re blocking, how much influence they have, and either win them over or build enough support around them to overpower their veto. You're one step closer to President's Club! 📝 The Ultimate Multi-Threading and Selling to the C-Suite Report 🏋 30MPC Training 🛠 Weekly Tactical Breakdowns 📚 Things you can steal and use today
Show moreShow less
Listen
Loading the recording
0:000:00
This recording could not be loaded.Open the audio file
Quoted on this wiki
Every place a page here uses this source, in the order the words come in it.
We call this a three-legged stool. We know we need kind of tech, data analytics and business to be able to sell our product. “I'll build this all out and then I will literally screen share with my champion and ask them to help me navigate” hey, have I got this right? Are these people in the right place? And many other questions on top of that as well. So I want to go deep on this prospecting via EAs stuff that you're doing because we've had almost 600 episodes of 30MPC right now.
If I get a response, which is like, hey, thanks for your email. Lovely to meet you. I forwarded this to Jim. We'll let you know what his response is. Again, I'll say, thank you so much. And I'll leave it two or three days and then just follow up. Did Jim get back to you? Any ideas? And then either they'll say, yes, we want to have a meeting. “And then obviously I can coordinate it from there.” The other response I'll sometimes get is Jim is too busy to have this meeting, but he would like Cindy to meet with X person. And so you get an actual bounce, which is always arguably even better because it means that the exec knows exactly the person who is running these kinds of initiatives.
So I'll probably still keep the same exec on our side. If they bumped us way down into like senior director or something, yeah, I'd say, I'd ask Cindy, hey, who on your team should meet with this person? Just so again, it protects me so that then later on “I can have Cindy send a note to the exec saying,” you know, our team's met, had a conversation about this. You know, really exciting. Sounds like there's a next step. Looking forward to connecting with you later down the line. So I always want to maintain like enough space between the right people so that later in the sales cycle I can bump back up to the exec in a natural way. Today's show is brought to you by ConsenSys which helps your demo keep selling
If I'm doing this really well, then no, you just feel so much clearer. It's like being underwater and putting goggles on, you know. And sometimes we forget to just ask our champions for this kind of help. Like we're sitting there in a deal review, and we're being asked, you know, have you got this stakeholder on board? And what are they thinking about it? And you're like, well, I don't know, I don't “this is what champions are for, is to ask” them to help you with this kind of stuff and doing it early as possible. I think, you know, deals I've lost and things like this, I've done this way too late. And the competitive champions have been way stronger, or we didn't identify. Like I literally lost a deal once, I remember when I was in ThoughtSpot UK, we had CTO,
there's maybe job fear, you know, people have done the same thing with the same tool for a long time, they don't like change, they are strategically placed within the company because they know how to use the existing tool and that sort of thing runs off. So it's usually more of a kind of “I'd want to find out the why, first of all, from my champion.” ask, you know, are they so far onto the blocker side that they are literally, you know, best friends with the AE on my competitive tool? Like, are they unsaveable or are they are they saveable? Because that also determines what actions you take. Most of the time, I think they're saveable.
gonna focus elsewhere. I mean, no, ultimately, I won't give up that easily. But then I'll go into understanding, okay, how much influence do they have over people that need to say yes, the C level or whoever else like are they? Are they a blocker that's just going to be annoying “Or are they a blocker that actually is going to tell our exec sponsor,” do not buy ThoughtSpot. So I want to understand again, like what level of blocker even are they if they're the latter, which is like the red zone, then I mean, I was asked my champion is like, is this lost cause then should we even continue running our POC or whatever and get their advice?
into understanding, okay, how much influence do they have over people that need to say yes, the C level or whoever else like are they? Are they a blocker that's just going to be annoying when we do an implementation? Or are they a blocker that actually is going to tell our exec sponsor, “do not buy ThoughtSpot. So I want to understand again, like what level of blocker even are they” if they're the latter, which is like the red zone, then I mean, I was asked my champion is like, is this lost cause then should we even continue running our POC or whatever and get their advice? And I'll also ask, okay, who else has influence over CIO Alex, because if there's, you know,
is this lost cause then should we even continue running our POC or whatever and get their advice? And I'll also ask, okay, who else has influence over CIO Alex, because if there's, you know, four people that he really listens to, one of them is a blocker, then the natural next step is, “these other three, are they engaged with us? Are they potential champions? Are we building a” relationship with them? Because then in the room that we're not in at the end, and it's three against one, then our block is going to be overruled. So I'll still try and find out again, like what kind of blocker are they? How bad of a blocker are they going to be? And then are there other people who can override the blocker just in pure numbers wise and equal levels of influence
“if they're going to be part of the decision, like, surely we should bring them in now” And just like leading the way to basically try and get them to make an intro to this person. Again, if they're don't, if they don't want to do that, because they're not a champion, and you know, they're not influential enough in the org, then I'll just PG on my own into these people.
Quotes are verbatim and belong to their publishers. Where a quote has been translated, the original wording is kept below it.