Using Corp Org Charts To Drive Sales

Complex Sale? No Organization Chart? Why Not?

Posted on July 25th, 2011 by Dave Stein

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Why don’t sales reps don’t utilize org charts for complex opportunities they’re pursuing? Why don’t their sales managers insist that they do? Those graphic representations of a company/division structure are invaluable in a complex sale. The most effective sales coaches I know refuse to help a rep with a deal unless they have an up-to-date organization chart.

Org charts are so important that several sales training companies require them as a critical component of their opportunity and account management approaches. More advanced opportunity and account plans (and supporting software) allow you to overlay a political map on top of the org chart so you see the relationships between influencers, decision makers, your supporters and those who would gladly serve those functions for your competitors. (By the way, if you’re in a complex selling environment and your team isn’t taking the political landscape within the customers’ organizations into account when developing a strategy to win, you need help. Yesterday.)

If a rep can’t get someone in the account to give them an org chart, they should be able to build one with help from their contacts.

Here’s a link to Forbes Corporate Org Chart Wiki. Try it. Think about what impact org charts and the skills to understand them would have on the outcome of your team’s sales opportunities.