This document outlines three strategies to prevent deals from going dark: 1) Multi-threading, which involves finding and engaging all members of the buyer's decision-making panel; 2) Warm introductions, leveraging mutual connections to build initial trust and rapport; and 3) Quality engagement, sharing relevant industry insights throughout the sales cycle to establish oneself as a thought partner. Implementing these strategies can increase the likelihood of a vendor being selected by 46% and help maintain consistent engagement during deals.
10. 1. Find out who will be involved in the decision
2. Ask for an introduction or reach out directly
3. Engage throughout with tailored messages
Multi-threading Strategy
12. • Builds initial trust and
rapport
• Creates a positive,
non-deal-related
commonality that can be
referenced throughout
the sales cycle
Warm Introductions Explained
Seller Buyer
Mutual
connection
14. 1. Leverage your company’s network
2. Ask for warm introductions
3. Check in periodically with your introducer
4. Reference your mutual connection when needed
Warm Introduction Strategy
16. • Reinforces the seller
as a thought partner
and fellow problem
solver
• Provides a non-deal
related reason to
engage
Quality Engagement Explained
Share content React to company or
industry news
Follow their career
Respond to
their activity + interests
17. 1. Understand what matters to the decision makers
2. Share relevant content
3. React to individual/company news and postings
4. Avoid the “checking in” message where possible
Quality Engagement Strategy
Hi everyone, thanks so much for joining us today for our webcast.
I thought I’d start us off with a story – one that I think all of you can probably relate to and will help set the stage for our discussion today.
This is the story of Tripp, one of our Enterprise sales reps here at LinkedIn. He’s been in sales for almost 20 years and to this day, still remembers a deal that went dark on him years ago.
He was working for a company that developed contract lifecycle management tools, and was trying to sell into a pharma prospect. It was a multi-year deal that had a higher price tag than most of his other deals, so he spent a lot of time working on it to ensure its success.
Everything seemed on the right track. [CLICK] It started with a great first set of meetings. His buyer had challenges and problems that his solution could help address. They had the budget. His buyer was engaged and responsive and at one point looped in her boss. The momentum started to build conversation by conversation and everything he was hearing from her was super positive, so he felt like they were heading towards a signed deal. [CLICK] He also built a trusted relationship with his buyer. They would grab lunch together and talk not just about the deal they were working on but about their personal lives as well. Both of them had families with young children and would trade tips on great kid activities and schools in the area.
So weeks passed like this and the final deal seemed imminent. [CLICK] Tripp was feeling good about it and decided to include the deal in his outlook for that quarter. When all of a sudden…
….nothing. Darkness.
He sent an email to his buyer and didn’t get a response. So he sent another. No response. And that’s when a multitude of emotions started to set in. [CLICK]
He started to feel worried and anxious: Maybe his buyer was on vacation? No, he hadn’t gotten an out of office response. Had he said something wrong in their last meeting? Had he done something wrong? He started to wrack his brain on what had happened to identify what might have caused this. And then there was the anxiety about his own outcome in this situation. Would he make his number that quater? This deal was a big part of it.
[CLICK] He also started to feel frustrated. How come she wouldn’t respond? They had a great relationship and had spent a ton of time working on this deal – couldn’t she at least let him know what was going on, or have the courage to just tell him if they weren’t interested anymore?
[CLICK] And he started to feel disappointed. He probably wasn’t going to meet his quota. And his outlook was part of his manager’s outlook for the quarter – so he had not only let himself down, he’d let his team down.
The reality is Tripp’s story is all too common. [CLICK]
In fact research shows that 24% of forecasted deals go dark. That’s a LOT of deals.
As a sales leader this can present multiple challenges for you:
It makes it hard to provide an accurate forecast for your business.
It kills morale both for the rep and the team
It impacts other deals. I was speaking to a rep who shared that the frustration he might feel with one deal can sometimes carry over into the rest of the day’s meetings.
So how can your reps keep the lights on throughout the sales cycle? Well, while there are no silver bullets, our own sales team has found through experience and trial and error that there are three strategies you can put in place to help reduce the risk of a dark deal. These are tactics that we coach our reps on here at LinkedIn everyday.
The first is multi-threading, or ensuring your reps form relationships with the entire buyer panel. So what exactly do we mean by this and why does it matter?
Well, for many years in the sales professional, a seller relied on finding the main buyer at their prospect and build a relationship. That buyer often wielded full authority to make the buying decision. We refer to this as single threading.
And we’re not saying that can’t ever end in a successful deal, but at LinkedIn we teach our reps to multi-thread into every account. Why? Well, many of you may be familiar with the statistic from CEB that there are on average 5.4 decision makers involved with a typical B2B deal. [CLICK] So that network of buyers has suddenly become more complex and one that reps need to navigate.
It’s important to build relationships across the panel [CLICK] because if your main champion or point of contact goes dark [CLICK], you can still rely on others on the panel to inform you of any blockers and help you continue the momentum forward.
Multi-threading can have benefits beyond simply preventing dark deals as well. Our research finds that companies are 46% more likely to select a vendor that’s multi-threaded.
And for those of you who were wondering what happened with Tripp’s story, he learned the lesson of multi-threading the hard way.
It turned out his buyer was still supportive of using his product, but there was a bigger story unfolding at the company that he simply did not have visibility into.
His competitor had already sold into other lines of business and was trying to turn that into a multi-business line deal. [CLICK] Decision makers were talking about that deal across the company as his competitor built deeper relationships. [CLICK] His champion became plugged in peripherally to that discussion through her boss. [CLICK] And as she started to learn more herself, she stopped responding to Tripp, so he was cut off from the conversation. [CLICK]
Ultimately she did reach back out to him to let him he had lost their business to his competitor. And Tripp was left regretting the fact that hadn’t built enough relationships across the company to have seen this coming and have time to respond.
So how do we teach reps at LinkedIn to multi-thread?
Well, it starts with the obvious – finding out who will be involved in the decision. This is something we teach our reps do in the very first meeting. They also do their homework on LinkedIn itself to determine others at the company who seem likely to be involved and might even validate some of these names with their buyer.
Next, they ask for introductions from their buyer. Getting an intro is ideal as it comes from the main buyer and thus adds credibility and weight. But this doesn’t always happen, and we teach our reps to not be bashful. Using Inmail or email, they might send a note to other buyers on the panel introducing themselves, letting them know about the deal that they’re working on and building rapport. I think this particular tactic can sometimes give some reps pause because they feel like they’re going around their main champion. But we encourage our reps to let their champion know they will be doing this and to position their outreach in a thoughtful, personalized way.
Finally, they engage throughout with tailored messages. What you say should be relevant to that stakeholder, not generic statements made to the entire panel. If you’re speaking to the IT decision maker, for example, think about what’s top of mind for them and try to engage with that in mind. Share insights and ideas with that context.
So multi-threading is the first strategy to prevent dark deals.
The second strategy to reduce the risk of deals going dark is warm introductions.
I won’t spend too long talking about what a warm introduction is, because it probably seems obvious, so in short, it’s looking for mutual connections between the seller and buyer and using those connections to get in front of the buyer. Here on the example on the left, we see that the seller and the mutual connection went to college at Cal together, and that connection knows the buyer through their prior work together at Pepsi.
And why does having a warm intro help specifically with dark deals? Well, because it builds initial rapport and creates a non-deal-related commonality or a social bond that can be referenced throughout the sales cycle. It makes the deal not just about the product or service, or the terms of the agreement, but about the people and the friends and colleagues involved. That positive social pressure if you will, can sometimes pay dividends.
I’ll share a quick story of how this helps.
Meet Spencer. He’s a mid-market sales rep here at LinkedIn. And about a year ago, he was looking at his account book and saw that he might be able to use a warm introduction from his coworker Jason to break into one of his accounts. So he went over to talk to Jason and learned that Jason and his buyer were friends who were part of a group that did outdoorsy things together – biking, camping and so on. [CLICK] So Spencer asked Jason for a warm introduction to his client and off they all went.
With that trusted connection as the source of their relationship, Spencer quickly got to know his client on a personal level and build trust. Now, the deal itself began with a lot of momentum but then started to get really drawn out. But every time it started to go dark, Spencer would do a few things – 1) When he’d run into Jason in the hallway, he’d ask him if he’d seen his buyer recently and if anything related to the deal had ever come up and 2) He would reference Jason and that info he’d just obtained in his emails to his buyer, when it was appropriate (Something like “Hey, I heard you and Michael had a great camping trip a few weekends back.”). Why? Because Spencer wanted to reinforce that social connection and the personal relationship that they had built, knowing the deal would ultimately come. And every time he would get a response from his buyer giving him an update on where things stood.
So how do you get a warm introduction and how do you make the most of it to avoid dark deals? Well, here’s what we teach our reps:
1) Leverage your team’s network. At LinkedIn we have a feature called TeamLink that does just this for you automatically. But it can be as simple as having every rep on your team bring their top deals to a meeting where you go around the table and see if anyone has any intros they can provide. It can also mean ensuring everyone on the team is connected on Free LinkedIn or other social networks that do this kind of mapping for you.
2) Ask for warm introductions. The advice we give our reps is to make it easy and make sure you follow up – remember, it’s that mutual connection’s social capital on the line. To make it easy, have your reps write the introductory email for the connector so all they have to do is send it on. You can even go so far as to come up with a few templates for your team so they have something to follow. Then once your reps have that first meeting, make sure they follow up with the person who provided the intro. You don’t want to leave them hanging, especially if they’ll see your buyer again. It also helps reinforce the value of warm intros to them so they’re more likely to do it again the next time your team needs help. My last piece of advice here is to make sure you’re leading by example. Make sure your own network is available and exposed to your team and that you’re helping make these intros to your network – it will make them comfortable to then reach out to other leaders at your company who might also be able to help.
3) Check in periodically with your introducer. Remember how Spencer would find out if Jason had been in touch with his buyer from time to time to see if Jason had any inside info or points he could reference it in his outreach? Well that’s what we mean here. Please don’t badger your introducer by any means, but when appropriate or if necessary, you can reach back out.
4) Reference your mutual connection when needed. Again, I think balance is key here. I certainly wouldn’t advise you do this every time but if you have something authentic to say or you want to gently remind your buyer of the rapport and relationship you’ve built, you can include it.
So that’s Warm Introductions.
The last strategy to help combat dark deals is quality engagement, or the sharing of relevant content and insights throughout the deal cycle.
A lot of sales leaders that I’ve spoken to hear the word insight and find it somewhat intimidating, because there’s an expectation that it might require custom analyses, in depth research, and so on. And yes, I absolutely think there’s value when you can produce provocative insights that are customized to your prospect. But there are also more lightweight ways in which you can keep in touch in a thoughtful way throughout the deal cycle.
On the left are a few examples:
Sharing content: This could be an analyst report you find, an eBook your marketing team produces, even a post on your company blog.
Reacting to company or industry news: Maybe that’s an article you see that references your client’s company, or their competitor, or talks about growth or constriction in their industry. Show that you’re on top of your prospect’s business by sharing a point of view when news happens that’s relevant to them.
Follow their career: Did they get promoted? Change roles within the company? Always a great point in time to reach out and acknowledge the professional growth and change your client is experiencing.
Respond to their interests: Are they writing blog posts? Sharing content? Commenting on content? These are great signals that you can respond and engage with.
Why does this matter to preventing dark deals? Well I think it helps for two reasons:
First, it reinforces you as someone who’s in it with them – both as a seller who understands their pain points and needs and wants to help solve them, and as a someone who’s interested in them as a person.
Second, it provides a non-deal related reason to reach out. Something that’s authentic and helpful, and thus more likely to get a response.
So what’s the strategy to do this?
Well, first we coach reps to understand what matters to the decision makers early on. What do they care about? What are their pain points? What problems are they trying to solve?
Based on the answers to these questions, we encourage them to share relevant content. They use the content that our Marketing team produces; and they do their own research too.
Next, they set alerts to be notified of things like job changes, company and buyer news, and so on so that they can be proactive and use these signals as points of outreach. A great example - I heard a story the other week of a rep who saw that his buyer’s company had just acquired another company. He received the alert and sent his buyer a quick note simply congratulating him on the news. Nothing in depth, just a quick note acknowledging what had happened. His buyer wrote back that same day thanking him and asking to set up time the next week so they could discuss expanding the program to include this new business.
Finally, we try where possible to avoid the generic ‘checking in’ message. Especially as the momentum may be starting to slow in a deal or even if it’s already gone dark, my feeling is this kind of message is easy to ignore, versus one where you’re actually finding value in the content. So the response rate should go up.
So those are the top strategies we use at LinkedIn to keep the lights on our deals. Multi-threading, Warm Introductions and Quality Engagement.
And we’ve built an entire solution to help you (and our own reps) do just that and more on every single deal. It’s called Sales Navigator. I won’t be going through it during this webcast but if you’re interested in learning more, you can visit sales.linkedin.com or click on the Contact Us button in the resources panel in this webcast and we’ll be happy to reach out to you to talk more about it.
With that, I’ll open it up to questions.
