Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing
From Gatekeeper to Door Opener: Part 2
How to build relationships with the most misunderstood sales resource
Part 2 in a 3 part series
Monte Resnick, Founder Ambition Partners International
In the first part of my series, I talked about how often gatekeepers are misunderstood and how instead of holding salespeople back, they can really create great opportunities. Let’s take a few minutes and dig deeper into the role of the gatekeeper within your sales department.
The Gatekeeper is often a very trusted resource of your prospect / customer. Beyond simply knowing the favorite restaurants, hobbies and family relationships of the decision maker (all important information for you!), they also have a keen sense of their:
Business style: The Gatekeeper knows the business practices and moods of your prospect / client better than most. Want to learn how to have the most impact during your next meeting with your prospect / client? Would it be helpful to understand their communication style before you open your mouth? Is your prospect more likely to respond faster to a personal note vs. email? Interested to know the best time to reach them by phone? Just ask the Gatekeeper!
Business Challenges: Want to know how hot (or not) business has really been recently? Do you know in which area the company has most recently shifted focus on? How are year to date sales versus expectations? What resources would be most helpful to their business at the present moment? Just ask the Gatekeeper!
Relationships: Who is your real competition in the eyes of your prospect / client? Who are your prospect’s allies in the organization? Which trade / industry organizations are they most actively involved with? What other area businesses do they tend to collaborate or network with? Who are some of their most satisfied clients (provided this is publicly available information)? Which charities are most important to them? Just ask the Gatekeeper!Here’s another critical piece of information regarding the Gatekeeper: Among their very top priorities, decision makers want to keep their Gatekeeper’s happy. So how can you begin building better relationships with the Gatekeeper’s in your universe?
My next post will discuss a few proven steps you can apply immediately. Stay tuned.
Posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 3:34 pm and is filed under Marketing, Sales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
