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Whether you are approaching a new prospect for the first time, or selling to an existing customer, it’s vital to understand how their organization is structured, and who does what. Doing this will help you target the right people with the right messages.

 Broaden your horizons. Your likely starting point with a new customer is often a single person. Find out who else works alongside them, above them and below them. The more contacts you create across the wider organization, the more chances you will have to discover ‘pain’ and determine how and if they will buy.

 Draw the organization chart. As soon as you can, you should try to draw out the whole of the customer’s organization on a sheet of paper, showing the different departments, divisions, teams, individual job titles

case study Alison represented a large software company as the account manager for British Telecom (BT), an enormous UK company. She made it her business to try to talk to every part of their organization, and make contacts at many levels of their hierarchy. It took some time, but eventually she had formed a pretty good picture of how these different teams and departments influenced each other and even competed against each other. One day, a BT director told Alison he always enjoyed speaking to her, because she knew more about how their company worked than he did!

“ If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room”

Dame Anita Roddick, Founder, The Body Shop

and people’s names. This is a great way of discovering what you don’t yet know, and encouraging you to go and find out!

 Identify spheres of Influence. The organization chart will only tell you the official version of the customer’s hierarchy. The next step is to take an interest in the unofficial ways in which people within organizations group together in loose ‘spheres of influence’. Whose opinions command respect? Who do the senior people listen to? You can map out these connections as you learn more about the people involved.

 Pick up clues about the culture. Of course, every organization is different; not only in the way they are structured, but also in the working culture they have developed. It’s important to pick up clues about the way things get done, and observe the accepted norms of behaviour. For example, how much authority is delegated to managers? Is it a sales-led or an engineering-led organization? Is everything done by committee?

Find out how decisions are made at your target customer’s organization.