Unlocking relationship strength to reach your B2B prospect
If you are in B2B sales, you’d be looking for that one, ONE streak of light to build an influential relation with that prospect of yours, John.
Many a times you would ask your colleagues, friends or family for a warm introduction if they know John really well and then with your skills, you would just zap ⚡️ it through!
But many times, it won’t be the case.
You may not be able to uncover common connections in spite of looking very hard or the lack of time would only allow you to glean so much.
Or, you may find out that John is a 2nd degree connection on Linkedin, with a lot of mutuals (company colleagues, friends from previous organization or school). Who would you approach to provide an introduction then?
An effective approach would be to figure who amongst your mutual network you are very closely connected to. Say, that’s Linda. Linda and you worked on the same team in your last organization and know each other very well. Now if you contacted Linda for an intro, it would be successful attempt or not depending on how well Linda knows John.
So the question then is — was Linda the strongest advocate for that successful intro? (Although you’re close to Linda, Linda may not be an influential connection of John).
Imagine if there was a way to determine the signal strength between your mutual connections and your prospect John. You’d definitely pick that friend to get introduced to John.
Now if your company has 500+ employees, would you be connected to all of them? Most likely, not.
Imagine among all employees of your company, there’s Tim who worked with John in the previous company on the same team and has lots of mutual connections with John (a strong signal), and Tim has a recommendation in LinkedIn from John, in the previous role (another strong signal), and has endorsed Tim and even interacted on a few posts of Tim (another strong signal). And maybe there’s Bryan too, who’s a buddy of John from school, and has too many common connections with John, from the same school, same years (a strong signal), and Bryan has endorsed John as well (another strong signal).
If you reached out to Tim or Bryan for an intro, there’d be a definite motivation for them to introduce you to John, being in the same current company (a strong motivation) and possibly opening new doors of partnership between your company & John’s.
What could be a better way to establish the strongest connection to your lead, than from within your own CRM tool? As you enter the lead’s info, your CRM would analyze all connections of your network and your current company’s employees, to find you the strongest advocate for you to reach out to your sales prospect ordered by the signal strength to help you succeed.
What has worked for you; How did you find your best advocate for that intro; What factors made you choose the one?
I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas, reach out to me at athahar at gmail.
