Tactical Plays Every Sales Leader Needs to Crush 2019

In this post I’ll share 3 simple, quick and effective ways you can take to control your sales number and help your sellers by playing “air traffic control”. Do this and you’ll have way more action and results in 2019. It’s a bold claim but play close attention to the real-life examples.

While ideally someone should be running this play for everyone in your org, this is a new habit that needs demonstration for purpose. If you’re a forward-thinker and like taking on new challenges, lean in to this one for some slick results.

Know Every Key Stakeholder Moving Into Accounts

In order to know every key contact and stakeholder moving into your accounts, you’ll need to tame the beast known as LinkedIn and have it focus purely for your accounts, territory or account segment.

One of our clients, an RVP took the top 50 named accounts that each of his 11 sellers were targeting. Then, he set up a LinkedIn advanced search for all of those accounts with all of the key titles and geographies.

This search effectively gave him direct visibility into every person that was joining the accounts that was going to be help make his overall number. And the results were powerful to say the least.

Within 2 days, his first alert was a new CXO and 3 VPs entering his sellers’ accounts. Now, instead of sitting on the sidelines wondering what’s happening, he’s actively coaching his players and strategizing on which plays they’ll use to land the meeting.

Not only this is a more productive use of time, but if you believe that two heads are better than one, this leader is now able to share expertise and insights to propel that deal forward.

Know When Past Employees Join Named/Key/Target Accounts

The other strategy to set up is to know when past employees of successful clients are joining key target accounts.

Think about it, you’ve got a great case study-type customer and now key players have left and joined actual named accounts you’re pursuing. On the flip side could be the scenario where contacts from a successful customer are joining an account but they don’t know you.  Even in this case, they are worth pursuit because out of all the people you could be spending time on, they would be the most likely to be receptive to your message.

Let me give you a real-life example.  A Sales Director for a notable SaaS company has 8 sellers reporting to her.  By doing this, she reports that LinkedIn reveals 10-20 contacts per month that her team should be chasing.

These are people that have the right buying titles who used to work at her company’s most successful clients and are now going directly into her Central US territory.  Her sellers are able to land meetings with the majority and in 2018 alone this one strategy has generated 16% of her pipeline.

Create a Power User List to Seek Rapid Referrals

Whether you’re an RVP, Sales Director, Sales Manager, this is one that everyone can do.

Get a list of all of the key contacts in your most successful customer accounts and begin to decode their LinkedIn networks.  If their networks are open, you’ll be able to search for other key people they can introduce you to.

As a side note, this is great cause for company executives to rally around.

In one client, the CMO was able to break a direct intro because she served on the board with a prospect that one of her sellers was targeting.

The linkages and relationships that LinkedIn can help unearth are fascinating. What’s fascinating also is how these little relationships are left unutilized and underutilized.

Sale is anchored on relationships, yet Executives at some of the largest companies in the world leave them untapped.

The Bottom Line

By implementing these 3 simple best practices as a sales leader, you can enable actionable and timely information that can accelerate making your number.

If you’ve got the free version of LinkedIn or even LinkedIn Sales Navigator, begin to set up and run these plays today.  Doing so will allow you to spend productive with sellers, with strategy and coaching at the heart of your meetings, instead of double-checking activity and asking them for details.

What a brilliant win-win:  provide simple air traffic control for your sellers while helping them make your number.