s e s s e c o Selling from the influencer up r M p B III 7 A t e r (and out) a h P T The leads that fill out an online form or come to Here are Mark’s tips for leveraging the inbound lead • Recommend to the champion that the next call your tradeshow booth are often influencers, to get the insight you need to go higher: be with a wider group including decision-makers. recommenders and researchers, not true If they can’t get the meeting, you should go high decision-makers. • Ask these questions: yourself… call high and wide with your discovery data. If you’ve done a thorough needs Instead of treating them as hot leads to jump on, — What has [decision-maker’s name] been assessment, you should have discovered the use these as signals of account-level interest and talking about in team meetings lately? organization’s pains and challenges. So call high engagement. Research the account to find out the and wide anyway. The key is to translate what right person to contact, then make that approach. — What has [decision-maker’s name] been on you heard on the first call into a reason the Use the influencer as a critical source of insight your case about? decision-maker should care about you. and an ally. — What was discussed in the last company meeting? “ If you successfully sell the value of • The key to the first call is needs assessment. The your product to the influencer, that sales person needs to understand the challenges person will be more likely to provide (realized or unrealized) the organization faces any information you need to make the today and use that information to sell. With the critical sell to the decision-maker.” data collected in the first call, sales can craft relevant messaging directly to the decision- Mark Roberge, maker or other stakeholders. Chief Revenue Officer, Hubspot • An example: During the first call with the champion, spend less time on the product and more asking questions that allow you to create a customized benchmark report with real prospect data. Then turn that benchmark report into a reason to have a meeting with the decision-makers. It works. (Executives love benchmark data) 98