The 2×2 rule

Last week I coached about a dozen inside sales reps and provided a live demo for the group on navigating techniques. I like to call it the ”Josiane unplugged” session because they get to see me in action and it’s a great way to model the skill.

Navigating is the 3rd skill in the TeleSmart 10 training methodology. It falls in the early part of the sale cycle as it follows the Time Management and Introducing skill. This skill is all about building org charts and leveraging contacts by calling deeper and wider and aiming for 2×2. In org chart terms, that means calling two people deep, two people wide, two people up the chain and two people down the chain. This totals 8 potential contacts you can have for an account instead of one.

Now that you have names of 8 contacts, you must try to reach them live. You do not leave voice mail messages but instead press the O and # key to get yourself back out and reconnected. You keep going down the list of contacts you have until you reach a live one. When you finally get someone live, you immediately leverage the names you have in your opening to capture credibility and earn more time. Here’s how it works:

In building the org chart, you learn the following with 5 contacts:

Bob Smith, Director of IT

Tom Jones, IT Manager

Eric Day, Systems Engineer

Donna Stuart, Project Manager

Mark Toll, Network Administrator

Let’s say you get Eric on the line, you want to say, “Hi Eric, I’m with ABC Company and I understand you work closely with Bob, Tom, Donna and Mark and the reason for my call is to introduce our product.”

Easy to do and yet very powerful.