It's Tuesday before Friday's deal review. The AE is working a $400K opportunity at HealthCo. She's been working with the CIO for 8 weeks. The deal is hers, but it's single-threaded. The CIO is supportive, but he's not the EB. The CFO is. The VP Procurement is. The CTO is on the committee too. The CISO will weigh in on security. The Head of Operations holds budget veto.
The manager asks: "Who else are we engaged with?" The AE says: "Just the CIO." The manager raises an eyebrow.
The AE opens Sales Nav. She filters HealthCo by title. Six names appear on the committee. She knows none of them.
"OK who do I know at HealthCo? Sales Nav shows TeamLink, none of our reps are 1st-degree connected. I post in the #revenue Slack channel: 'Anyone know the CFO at HealthCo? CISO? CTO?' I get three 'no, sorry,' two non-responses, and one 'I think Mike from Series B board knew their CTO at his last gig, maybe?' I DM Mike. Mike's traveling. By Friday's deal review, I still only have the CIO."
The manager asks why we're still single-threaded. The AE says she's working on it. The manager asks how long this has been the plan. The AE says since week 2. It's now week 9.
The buying committee at HealthCo took 8 weeks to NOT engage with. Not because the relationships didn't exist somewhere in the company's extended network, they did. But because finding them required serial Slack pings, manual cross-referencing, and a board member who happens to be on a plane.