Org Charts – structuring your target personas
Our final blog in the Strategic Account Planning series covers how to consider org charts when thinking about our top accounts.
Often when asked to draw an org chart for our accounts we focus on who we know rather than who our targets should be.
One of the best ways to consider our persona targets for a year’s worth of pipeline generation is to take a big step back from the account and rediscover the organisation.
So, here are our 4-steps to building an org chart that targets the right persona's for your business:
- Start with the Corporate Structure
- Focus on Personas You Should Know
- Complete the Picture. Add the Names
- Add to Your PG Plan
Step 1: Start with the Corporate Structure
It’s easy to jump into the org chart and think about all the people we know. But, before we start thinking about the people, we should think about the company structure itself.
- What do we know about the company?
- How are they structured to deliver their business?
- How do they structure their shared services like IT, HR and finance?
By considering these questions, we can start to prepare a structure for the organisation – almost a company organogram – which will inform our lines of enquiry. We may even end up with an org chart for each of these divisions.
The above example might be for a bank. It will help us structure our thoughts as to who our targets could be.
One of the great benefits of starting here is we consider not only:
- Where is the power?
- Where is the urgency?
But also:
- Where are the personas we need to talk too?
- Who do they report to?
We often find in the larger organisations, there may also be duplicate roles within multiple divisions which can then lead to multiple opportunities.
Step 2: Focus on Personas You Should Know
Again, before we start on a back-slapping mission of detailing all the personas we know already, we should consider drawing a ‘vanilla org chart’ of all the personas within an organisation who we should know.
This is a great exercise to do as a team. Play personas bingo and think through every persona who either could see value in your solution or who could be a stakeholder in buying your solution.
We hate the generalise, but the reality is you will end up with an org chart that looks something like the one above.
Shared services like HR and IT should be listed, then all of the lines of business (which you can name from the annual report), plus all the detailed personas you might want to target.
Perhaps you might take this one step further and highlight who could be potential Champions, those senior enough to have the power and influence.
Step 3: Complete the Picture. Add the Names
Now complete the picture with the information you have. Remember this may not just come from you. Some initial ideas:
- What’s in your CRM?
- Who do your colleagues know?
- Who do your executives know?
Then we can start to enrich the information from LinkedIn and services such as Lusha / Cognism.
By following these steps you’ll find you’ll have a much fuller picture of the potential pipeline targets, rather than just starting organically with who you know.
Step 4: Add to Your PG Plan
The test of the exercise isn’t a beautiful org chart. The test is to now use this and start systematically working through all of the contacts to generate pipeline.
The last task before you hit the phones is to categorise the contacts into value or benefit areas so you can target your sales campaigns.
By categorising the contacts into message areas, it will help to make your outreach more efficient in terms of emails and live conversations on the phone (yes, live conversations still do happen!).
Summary
When creating org charts for any account, whether strategic of not, think first: how is the customer organised? Then consider who you really need to get to.
It’s easy to pat ourselves on the back for who we know, but progress is measured by our new contacts, meetings and information gathered. These are all pieces of the pipeline generation puzzle we are trying to solve.
If you are interested in new ideas, inspir'em sales meeting exercises and lesson plans are available to continue the development of your teams.
Contact us today to boost your sales and see your revenue grow.
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