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Sales Process: I started a Saas service for colleges in India. In Marketing to whom do I follow-up in college, whether The principal or The correspondent ?
DF
DF
Daniel Freedman, High-tech entrepreneur, VC, Mentor, Executive answered:

In any business to business sales situation, you need to evaluate who is involved in the decision chain that leads to a purchase. Typically, there are at least three parties involved. These are:

Your Champion, who noticed your product, and decided it would be a great fit for his organization. This is your cheerleader, and your best friend within the organization.

Your Champion's management, who decide whether things that your champion recommends should be acted upon, given the context that the business is operating in. This includes someone who ultimately will request "budget" to pay for your product or service.

The company's financial management team, perhaps the CFO. This is the person who needs to understand the financial impact that your product will have on his organization. Will it cost capital up front but quickly save money in operational costs over time? What is the payback period, and so on.

There may be others involved too, especially if the company is highly regulated (i.e.: regulatory approvals may be needed).

Bottom line: Through your champion, you map out the network of your customer's organization, and work on each person in the chain that is involved in making a decision.

Don't be put off if, as often happens, you find that your champion is highly enthusiastic, but the rest of the organization isn't. You can beat your head against this kind of brick wall for a long time. But please don't. Instead, move on to the next prospect. The job of your marketing efforts should be to ensure that there are enough leads that you can spend most of your time working on people who will ultimately become customers. Note that you can happily disqualify 99% of your leads if you can end up spending most of your time on the other 1%. Qualify quickly, then spend time with qualified prospects, even if they are in the minority.

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