Top Tips To Locate Key Decision Makers

One of the biggest challenges many people face when trying to sell to businesses is locating the key decision maker and having the opportunity to build a connection. While it is true that for small or medium sized businesses, often the decision maker is the owner, it is always worth spending some time and effort to conduct your research and equip yourself with the skills needed to maximise your chance of success. With the mobile app industry continuing to grow month on month, it is vital that you have the ability to locate decision makers quickly and efficiently with targeted strategies that have tangible results.

Most people are often daunted or discouraged in their attempts to locate decision makers as they navigate their way through employees, departments and gatekeepers before locating the right person. When the opportunity does finally present itself, the majority of people dive straight into their sales pitch. It may be tempting to follow this course of action; however, it rarely pays dividends and will likely lead to you hearing the dreaded words, “I’m not interested” or as Duncan Bannatyne from Dragons Den often said, “I’m out”. With that being said, the focus of today’s blog is to highlight a number of top tips to locate any decision maker in any organisation.

An alternative to cold calling and often a better approach is to utilise referral emails. Having a clear idea of the department you ultimately want to reach is the starting point for any communication. A good tip to employ is to send the initial email to a receptionist or junior member of staff and ask them to refer you to the contact you are trying to reach.

One of the best ways to locate a decision maker using the phone is to be polite, friendly and courteous to the staff members you speak with. For example, by being friendly you can often get people to want to help you and point you in the right direction. An alternative tactic could be to use the ‘lost approach’ whereby you place the onus on the call receiver to help you find your designated contact within the business.

While this tip may seem obvious, it is surprising to see how many people view contacting new prospects as a task that should be repeated at the same time of the day instead of changing and varying the call times. Many key decision makers are busy during the day running the operational and strategic side of their business, therefore carving out the time to talk to you can seem problematic. However, varying your call times gives you the best opportunity to connect with decision makers later in the day when they have some time to talk with you.

An innovative idea that generates great results is contacting decision makers asking them for advice as an industry expert. By giving the recipient of the call the authority as an industry expert, it will result in you building instant rapport and allow you to leverage information from the call to discuss your product or service.

Many people during their initial discussion with a decision maker seldom ask for permission, instead focusing on trying to relay as much information about their product or service in the limited time they have available. In contrast, asking the decision maker if you can ‘have 55 seconds of their time to state why you called’ can be a great move because it serves as an ice breaker and also doesn’t commit them to an extended period of time on the telephone.

It is par for the course that you will encounter voicemails when trying to locate decision makers within an organisation. Avoid trying to give too much information and always make a point of keeping your message brief and intriguing. This will then pique the curiosity of the decision maker and increase the chances of a reply or engagement.

As we have seen throughout this blog there are many tactics that you can use to locate decision makers within businesses of all sizes. By following some of the tips mentioned above you will significantly increase your chances of locating decision makers and ensuring a favourable impression. To find how Eazi-Apps can help you enter the mobile industry and accelerate your mobile app sales with a variety of techniques please contact us today.