Expand and Elevate the Right Relationships: Introduction

Learning Objectives

After completing this topic, you'll be able to:

• Explain the key elements of the Altify relationship map methodology.
• Describe how revenue teams use the relationship map to help expand and elevate the right relationships.

Account Relationships

Managing your relationships in an account starts with understanding the people and the politics in the customer's business.

With this understanding, your revenue team can develop and maintain relationships with the right people: those who can help you achieve your revenue target. If your competitors do a better job of this than you, you’re likely to fall short of that target.

The right people to connect with in the account are those who influence buying decisions related to your offerings.

In any account, the business will typically look to these people for guidance on key questions such as:

• Which initiatives have the highest priority?
• Which vendor should we contact to help scope the next project?
• Should we expand the use of this solution to other regions?
• Should we renew the contract with this supplier?
• Do we take reference calls for this supplier, or partner together on case studies or co-marketing programs?

To meet your revenue goal, you may need to expand and elevate your relationships with the people influencing these types of decisions.

An account's relationship map is a visual representation of the people in the account which you can use with your revenue team to consider:

• The relationships between those people.
• The politics that may affect their business decisions, and the roles they play in those decisions.
• Your level of support and coverage with those people.
• The high-priority relationships you need to develop with them.

Each person on the map has a contact card. This makes it easy for the revenue team to see how everyone is connected, formally and informally, with each other.

You can also see each person’s level of support for you and your coverage (level of contact) with them. We’ll look at this some more in a later topic in this section.

In this section, you'll see how an account executive and her revenue team use an account relationship map to profile people in their customer's organization and to develop an understanding of the politics that affect the customer's buying decisions. This will enable them to follow a relationship strategy that will help them to grow revenue in the account.

Meet Lynn and Her Customer, Oriole Health & Fitness

Lynn Benfield is an account executive at Riley Retail Solutions, a company that specializes in advanced point-of-sale (POS) systems, including cash registers and card readers. They sell not only the hardware itself, but also POS software and related training and consultancy services.

Riley Retail Solutions recently won an opportunity with an account called MyHealth, which is a subsidiary of the Oriole Med group.

Following her white space analysis of the opportunity map, Lynn identified a potential opportunity for new business with Oriole Health & Fitness account.

Oriole Health & Fitness run a chain of health-food retail outlets. She has targeted this account because they're likely to have problems similar to those experienced by MyHealth’s pharmacies.

From her experience of MyHealth, and other companies like Oriole Health & Fitness, her instinct is that she'll be able to cross-sell new business in to this account for point-of-sale (POS) hardware, software, and training services.

Lynn and her team will need to expand their relationships in Oriole Health & Fitness and elevate them to the executive level. They also need to understand the full relationship landscape in the account to ensure that they know each of the key players who influence Oriole Health & Fitness’s investment decisions.

Oriole Health & Fitness's Key Players

Who are the key players in an account? Typically, they are the most important people in the company, which usually – but not always – relates to their level in the hierarchy.

Lynn and her team begin by considering the top executives in the business, and the people who are important to those executives. All of these people are key players.

Lynn will focus on developing relationships with the key players. This will help her to gain access and credibility with Oriole Health & Fitness's executive team.

She starts with the COO Jo Masterson, the CCO Ian James, and the CTO Michael Crabtree.

Wendy McGraw, the Vice President of Customer Experience, is a key player who is in Ian's inner circle. Ian trusts Wendy to define company goals and to decide on what should be prioritized. And because of her track record of success, Wendy is often sought out for advice.

Bryce Philips, the Information Security Manager, is a key player in Michael Crabtree's political structure. (People in a political structure people are those who 'make things happen' for inner-circle people and who are trusted by them.)

Who Influences the Key Players?

Lynn and her team also want to understand the informal influence that people have with the key players at Oriole Health & Fitness. People with informal influence (either positive or negative) can often play an important part in commercial decisions. So the team will capture those informal influence lines on the map.

One person with informal influence is Emilie Gutierrez, the Enablement Manager.

Although her direct report is Monica Nowak, the Director of Sales Enablement, Emilie has successfully led several important projects sponsored by the CCO Ian James. As a result, Ian particularly values her opinion.

This could work in Lynn's favor because Emilie has a long professional history with Lynn going back to previous companies they worked for. Emilie trusts Lynn's advice on POS systems. She has shown Lynn that she actively supports her in the company. Lynn's path to Ian could include Minerva.

Lynn adds an influence line between Emilie and Ian on the map, and sets Emilie as a mentor (someone she expects will advocate for her within the business).

Another Oriole Health & Fitness contact whose influence may be important for future deals is Todd Grant, the Digital Procurement Manager. His thinking counts for a lot with COO Jo Masterson.

They have a long-standing working relationship, and Jo sees Todd as someone who has a clear vision of what's good for the business. Jo is likely to be involved in future Oriole Health & Fitness initiatives, so Todd will probably be an important player too.

Another possible source of influence is the Data-Operations Specialist at Oriole Health & Fitness. This position is vacant at the moment, but whoever fills it will probably influence the thinking of key players the next time Oriole Health & Fitness goes in search of a software solution. For now, Lynn represents the position on the map using a placeholder.

What about people with negative influence? Lynn has heard that there's some interpersonal friction between Lara King and her department head, Jo Masterson.

The friction might impair the way they work together and share information, so this is something that everyone on Lynn's team needs to be aware of and strategize for. For example, they may need to double-check that Lara has shared with Jo all the information she receives in conversations with Riley Retail Solutions, and vice versa.

Discover Other People

Lynn and her team know there may be additional people to consider. There's an external consultant who influences the CCO, for example.

They'll work to find out more about Oriole Health & Fitness's enablement team through their strong relationship with Emilie Gutierrez.

They'll also try to deepen their understanding of Oriole Health & Fitness's operations team and technology team. These teams are likely to be important to any future opportunities that may arise at Oriole Health & Fitness.

The Oriole Health & Fitness Account Relationship Map

Lynn uses the map to assess her team’s relationships with the executives and their key players.

The map helps Lynn and the team to see and understand:

• Who influences whom, and what is the path to power for Lynn and the team.
• Whether her team’s relationships with Oriole Health & Fitness’s key players provide the access she needs to the executive team, and if they don't provide access what she needs to do differently.
• Who her supporters are, and who she can develop into a mentor.
• Who her enemies and nonsupporters are. (When Lynn and her team find they're struggling with a key player relationship, they may be able to leverage their mentors and supporters to resolve those difficulties.)
• What are the relationship gaps that need to be addressed? For example, Lynn can see on the Oriole Health & Fitness map that there's been no contact yet with Carrie Dreyfuss; the team will have to work on a strategy for developing a relationship with her.