Linkedin Account-Based Marketing: Identifying decision-making units at target accounts

“LinkedIn Account-Based Marketing” is a Win At LinkedIn series for B2B marketers, entrepreneurs and freelancers that want to use Linkedin to sell high-value products or services to large enterprises. You can read previous entries in the series here.

I teach individuals how to use Linkedin to generate leads, nurture prospects and close deals – if you want to be coached and build on the learnings below, book a 1-2-1 coaching session over Skype with me HERE.

In this post, you will learn:

• What a decision-making unit is
• Who is in a decision-making unit
• How to use Linkedin to reveal a decision-making unit at a target account

What is a decision-making unit?

A decision-making unit is the group of buyers at a target account that are involved in approving the purchase of your product or service.

The key to selling six or seven figure product or service to a large enterprise (target account) is understanding that you are never selling to one person – rather you are selling to a group.

According to Harvard Business Review, the number of people involved in B2B solutions purchases has climbed from an average of 5.4 two years ago to 6.8 today, and these stakeholders come from a lengthening roster of roles, functions, and even geographies.

It’s these 6.8 people that make up a “decision making unit”.

Who is in a decision-making unit at a target account?

Typically, in any B2B sale there are the following personas in a decision-making unit:

• Gatekeeper: These are the people who open or close the door to the organisation when the salesperson comes knocking. He or she is typically the initial point of contact between a salesperson and an organisation.

• Advocate/Sponsor: An advocate or sponsor is someone who wants your organisation or offering to win. They are a key to navigating the other members of the decision-making unit effectively.

• Influencer: Most decision-making units have at least one member who has a respected opinion, but isn’t the ultimate decider. Even though this individual will not personally make the final decision, he or she will likely have a sizeable influence.

• Buyer/Decision Maker: As the name suggests, the decision maker is the ultimate decider and carries the most weight on the purchasing committee. This is the usually the most senior titled-person in the DMU, or the Financial Officer.

• User: The end-user of a product or service is part of the purchasing decision. When dealing with this person, the key is to demonstrate the benefits of the product from the user’s perspective.

Across the typical 6.8 people involved in a deal, you’ll find the above personas present.

How to use Linkedin to reveal decision-making units:

When you are trying to navigate the decision-making unit inside a target account, you need to spend extra time researching, planning, and documenting the information about decision making units.

Creating a diagram you can reference is very helpful to understand the best way to sell your product or service to a target account. For example, if you sell HR services to a mid-size manufacturing company, your decision-making unit might look like this:

This is where Linkedin comes in.

Linkedin is home to over 500 million professionals. This means that once you have your target account list, you can delve into each company and use Linkedin to identify and map out the decision-making groups that you will be engaging with.

EXAMPLE SCENARIO: Imagine that you a SaaS company selling six/seven figure software to asset management companies in the UK. One of your target accounts is JP Morgan.

Most likely, the BUYER will be the “Head Of Digital”, but how can you identify the other personas involved in the deal? Who is in this Head of Digital’s decision-making unit?

Well, fortunately, Linkedin has a little section called “People Also Viewed” (bottom right) which is on every Linkedin person’s profile: this box shows TEN other profiles that viewers of a LinkedIn profile have also looked at. There is a high likelihood that these individual’s under “People Also Viewed” are going to be part of the decision-making unit.

In the above example, you can see that the “People Also Viewed” box shows a VP and a Digital Marketing Operations Executive. If you were to map these roles to a DMU, Neil would be the BUYER, Marco could be the INFLUENCER, and Rizina may be the USER. And that’s not taking into account the other eight persons that aren’t show in the screenshot above.

Now that you have used Linkedin to do this, in a few seconds you:

• Have identified [some of] the people in the target account’s decision-making unit
• Are in a position create a relevant message to each person based on their persona
• Can use Linkedin to message them directly (you don’t even need to find their email)

Although you will never have 100% accuracy using this method, using Linkedin to infer who is in a decision-making unit is the easiest way when initially researching a target account that you’ve never contacted before. Once you get a foot in the door and have your first meeting with your target account, then you can refine your knowledge of the DMU by asking people questions. Until then, Linkedin is the best way to do initial research.

In Part 4 of the Linkedin Account-Based Marketing series, I will look at how to use Linkedin to research individuals at a target account so that you can build rapport and increase the likelihood of getting a sales meeting with them.

Want private coaching to achieve Account-Based Marketing success?

My name is Jonny Rose and I’m the founder of Win At LinkedIn, a LinkedIn coaching service that trains professionals, entrepreneurs & freelancers to find leads, nurture prospects and close deals in a GDPR compliant way.

Let’s turn you into a Sales MACHINE, go here.