Many B2B companies sell into the enterprise market, which often means deals are large, complex, and long-cycle. These deals have come to be known as “megadeals.” These types of deals involve a higher-than-average number of stakeholders and decision-makers. Many of whom have conflicting goals and needs.  

In a recent McKinsey article, Landing the Megadeal – Seven Keys to Closing Big Sales that Make Money, sales experts David Levitch, Aditya Pande, and Brian Selby described closing megadeals as, “the holy grail of many sales organizations,” because they create a revenue model in which 40 percent of projected revenue can come from just one percent of deals in the pipeline. In other words: losing these megadeals can mean missing revenue targets.  

To ensure your team can close a megadeal, it is critical to identify, connect, and access the key stakeholders and decision-makers who influence and control the strategic relationships, budget, and purchasing process. Customer relationship mapping is therefore essential.  

What is Customer Relationship Mapping?  

But what exactly is the customer relationship mapping definition? Customer Relationship Mapping is a powerful tool that provides sales reps with a visual representation of a customer’s account, surfacing key
decision-makers and influencers and charting the relationships between them. By using color-coded boxes and symbols, this tool helps businesses understand the network of key stakeholders within a customer’s
account and gain insights into their motivations and goals.

Sophisticated relationship maps can show who the sales rep knows, who the decision-maker or influencer knows, when the decision-maker or influencer was last contacted by the sales organization, where there may be opportunities due to company growth—and more. With this knowledge, companies can develop effective sales strategies that demonstrate how products and services achieve the objectives of each stakeholder in the purchasing process to win a favorable decision-by-committee.  

How Adding Relationship Mapping Adds Value to Your Sales Strategy  

In a megadeal, sales reps must fully understand the stakeholders and decision-makers involved on the buyer’s side. Yet research shows only half of sales reps can effectively navigate to the right people involved in the buying cycle.  

According to a recent CSO Insights Sales Optimization Survey, the average sales opportunity has 45 decision-makers – more for megadeal opportunities. It is critical that sales reps not only identify these decision-makers but, more importantly, earn their buy-in.  

Relationship maps are visual maps of a buyer’s key stakeholders that enable sales teams to quickly identify the ‘must have’ support to close a deal and anticipate where the risks are in an opportunity. McKinsey reinforced the value of relationship mapping software, claiming, “…companies that manage relationships well use deal-relationship mapping tools to understand who matters, as well as what matters to each party: price, quality, service.”  

Adding relationship mapping to your sales strategy can bring several benefits, including improving the effectiveness and efficiency of your sales process. Here are some ways in which relationship mapping can add value to your sales strategy:  

• Understand the decision-making process: Visual relationship mapping allows sales reps to identify the key decision-makers in the buyer organization and understand their roles and responsibilities. This insight can help tailor sales pitches and messaging to resonate with each stakeholder’s priorities and concerns.  
• Build trust and credibility: Knowing the key stakeholders in a buyer organization enables sales reps to build relationships with the right people over time and establish trust and credibility. This trust can be leveraged to overcome objections and close deals more effectively. 
• Increase the likelihood of success: By mapping the decision-making process and building relationships with key stakeholders, sales reps can increase the likelihood of success by ensuring they engage with the right people and understand their backgrounds, motivations, and biases to address their needs and concerns sufficiently.  
• Facilitate cross-selling and upselling: Business relationship mapping can also help sales teams identify opportunities for cross-selling and upselling. Understanding the broader organizational landscape allows organizations to identify other departments or business units that may benefit from their products or services.  

Once a relationship map is in place, sales reps will better understand their buyer and can fine-tune their strategy to ensure sales messages resonate with each of the critical stakeholders in the sales process.  

Leveraging Relationship Maps to Drive Strategic Selling  

Relationship mapping is crucial to strategic selling, and visual relationship maps like Revegy’s can help sales teams gain a comprehensive understanding of their target buyers. These maps allow sales teams to identify key stakeholders and understand their roles and relationships within the organization. This understanding, in turn, enables them to wield the most effective sales tactics to gain access to decision-makers and influencers and win their support.  

Revegy’s Relationship Maps provide sales teams with several key features and benefits. These maps enable teams to map contacts quickly and easily from the CRM system and visually connect the dots between various stakeholders, coaches, decision-makers, and procurement professionals who will play a role in the purchasing process. With drag-and-drop functionality, organizational or influence charts can be created with ease.

The maps also provide scorecards that help sales teams identify who their allies and adversaries are and the strength of these relationships. This information allows teams to prioritize their efforts, develop
relationships with the right people, and save time and resources on less valuable contacts.

In addition to identifying allies and adversaries, the maps help sales teams determine which relationships they need to grow and which political risks they need to neutralize. This approach allows sales teams to
develop targeted relationship plans that address specific challenges and opportunities. 

Another vital benefit of Revegy’s Relationship Maps is that they help sales teams avoid unexpected surprises when new players enter a sales cycle. By visualizing the relationships within the organization, sales teams can better prepare for changes in the decision-making process and adjust their tactics accordingly.  

Finally, Revegy’s Relationship Maps allow sales teams to align their sales tactics with the priorities, initiatives, and goals that matter most to each stakeholder in the purchasing process. By understanding each stakeholder’s unique needs and concerns, sales teams can tailor their messaging and approach to build stronger relationships and increase their chances of success.  

Discover the Revegy Difference  

In today’s competitive sales environment, it is more important than ever for companies to fully understand the decision-makers involved in the buying process. Relationship mapping is a powerful tool that can help sales teams navigate complex deals, build trust with key stakeholders, and ultimately close more sales.  

By using visual maps to identify critical stakeholders and understand their roles and relationships, sales teams can improve their effectiveness and efficiency, avoid surprises, and increase their chances of success. If you want to learn more about how relationship mapping can benefit your sales strategy, schedule a demo with Revegy today. Don’t miss this opportunity to improve your sales performance and increase revenue.  

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“Sales on the Move: Embracing Agility for a Changing Sales Journey.”

Watch our on-demand webinar, where we delve into the key elements of an agile sales approach from start to finish, featuring Luiz Martins, CMO of Revegy, along with esteemed guest speakers Donald C Kelly, Founder and The Sales Evangelist, and Doug Inda, SVP of Enterprise Client Development at Syndigo. Discover how to adapt to tighter budgets without compromising sales performance, leverage technology to streamline processes and close more deals, provide meaningful value to buyers amidst abundant data, succeed in a remote sales environment with effective communication and virtual presentations, and position yourself as a trusted advisor in today’s ever-changing sales landscape. This is your chance to increase your pipeline and propel your success forward. Watch on-demand here!