The Indian fable about the blind men and the elephant gives good insights into the difficulties involved with qualifying large multi-location companies.
In the story six men, blind from birth, come upon an elephant at the edge of their village. Each touches the elephant in turn and draws his own conclusion about what the elephant is. The first man feels the elephant’s side and concludes that it is like a wall, the second touches one of the elephant’s legs and decides it’s like a tree, the third gets hit by a flapping ear and concludes it’s like a giant fan, and so on.
Taken literally of course, they all were right. But because they didn’t take the critical step of sharing and then analyzing their observations, they were unable to figure out what the elephant really was.
It’s the same qualifying multi-location accounts. Each piece of information obtained in a qualifying call to an individual location of a large company like IBM or Ford is like a single touch of the elephant. As with the elephant, developing the big picture understanding necessary to pinpoint the key decision makers and locations where your product could be sold requires a greater degree of organization and analysis than that normally required for single location prospects.
The good news is that once established, the process is very straight forward. Following are some ideas that you might want to keep in mind as you develop your own.
1. Develop a framework. Prior to calling, develop as detailed an understanding as possible of the prospect company’s locations and the activities conducted at those locations. Identify headquarters, regional offices, manufacturing facilities, etc. You’ll find much of this information on the prospect’s web site. Use a business information service like Hoover’s or Harris Infosource to fill in any holes.
2. Review it with the rest of your team. Some members of your team may have had isolated contacts with the targeted company in the past. Prior to calling, review the framework that you’ve created with all relevant players in the sales and marketing organization for any insights that they may be able to provide.
3. Use your SFA software to organize the effort. Most sales force automation software allows users to group records by common characteristics. The more advanced ones can even display the relationships between grouped records graphically. Use these capabilities to their maximum to keep the effort organized.
4. Ask the right questions. As you would expect, your most accurate information source will be contacts at the prospect company. Be sure to ask
5. Analyze your results frequently. Take a minute at the end of each call to look at what you’ve just learned and see how it fits with what you already know. Update your framework as appropriate.
6. Review your results with team members. Periodically review your results with relevant team members for any additional insights that they may have.
7. Know when to quit. Your objective is to map the locations that use your products and identify the individuals responsible for purchase decisions. Don’t over analyze… pass the ball on to the sales force when you’ve achieved these goals.
John Grant is the founder of Take Aim, a marketing consultancy specializing in new business development for small and medium sized B-B marketers (www.targetedmarket.com). He also publishes On Target, a bi-monthly newsletter focusing on issues related to lead generation and management (see past issues and subscribe at http://www.targetedmarket.com/newsletter.htm).
