🎙️Transcript: A Network of Influence

Salesman Podcast
"5 Ways to Build a Network of Influence Within a Key Account"
Will Barron, Norman Behar, Deb Calvert, Ralph Barsi, and Ray Makela
March 7, 2019

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Summary

This expert roundtable addresses a critical but often neglected aspect of B2B sales: what happens after the deal closes. The consensus among all five sales experts is that most salespeople make the mistake of becoming complacent once they secure a key contact and start doing regular business.

They fail to recognize that accounts are dynamic environments where customers constantly reorganize, priorities shift, and relationships can become vulnerable overnight.

The post-sale period isn't the end of the sales process—it's actually the beginning of account expansion, relationship deepening, and creating defensive positioning against competitors.

Without intentional effort to build a broader network of influence within the account, salespeople leave themselves exposed to organizational changes and miss significant opportunities for additional revenue.

The experts provide a multi-layered framework for building influence that begins with the foundational practice of account mapping.

Norman Behar emphasizes the need to navigate accounts both deeper and wider, understanding the overall landscape, business priorities, and key stakeholders beyond your primary contact. Deb Calvert offers tactical guidance on creating visual account maps that show connections between people, providing a pathway from known contacts to new ones while identifying who influences decisions.

Will Barron brings the medical device sales perspective, demonstrating how to systematically build advocates department by department—starting with the primary user (surgeons in his case) and expanding to procurement, finance, IT, and biomedical engineering.

His insight that "this can really only happen once the sale has completed" highlights the unique access and trust earned through successful delivery.

Ralph Barsi elevates the conversation beyond tactics to philosophy, reminding us that building networks of influence requires genuinely getting to know people both personally and professionally, uncovering what matters most to them, and serving their purposes.

Ray Makela closes with modern tactical applications, particularly leveraging LinkedIn to exponentially expand second-level connections and engaging in "acts of kindness"—providing content, articles, invitations, and value without expecting immediate returns.

The underlying theme across all responses is that influence building is intentional, systematic work that compounds over time, transforming satisfied customers into advocates who not only expand their own usage but also facilitate introductions throughout the organization and even defend you when competitors come calling.

BIG Takeaways

• Account Mapping Is Your Foundation for Going Deeper and Wider – Norman Behar identifies the core problem: when things are going well with a key contact, salespeople become dangerously complacent.

They're doing regular business but haven't navigated the account to expand their footprint. Account mapping addresses this by forcing you to understand the overall landscape, business priorities, and stakeholders beyond your comfort zone.

Deb Calvert provides the tactical framework: start with your primary contact in the middle, draw lines showing connections between people, and trace influence paths (like from your contact to the CFO to the billing department).

This visual map becomes your pathway, leading you from people you know who can make introductions to the next person and the next.

The map reveals both offensive opportunities (additional sales potential within the account) and defensive positioning (broader context of what's happening so you're not blindsided by reorganizations).

Whoever shows up on that account map represents your network-building targets—people you need to reach, provide value to, and demonstrate relevance with through social media connections and content sharing.

• Start with One Advocate Per Department—Build Systematically – Will Barron emphasizes that networks of influence are really networks of advocates or champions, and you must start small with just one person.

In his medical device sales experience, this began with surgeons who he'd spend extensive time with on demos, pricing, and benefits explanations.

Once built into advocates, they'd sing his praises and introduce him to other surgeons, creating the first growth node. But the systematic approach requires planting seeds in every department the buying process touches—procurement, finance, IT, biomedical engineering.

The goal is one advocate per department who trusts you and perceives you as easy to work with (even if it's just perception created by explicitly telling them "we're the easiest people to work with").

When these departmental advocates spread that message within their networks, it creates a mesh effect where your colleagues selling similar products can also succeed.

Critically, Will notes this depth of penetration "can really only happen once the sale has completed"—you only earn the right to call and check how things are going after your product is there, and that's when you double down on network building.

• Get to Know People Personally AND Professionally—Serve Their Purposes – Ralph Barsi shifts the conversation from tactics to fundamental philosophy: building networks of influence, whether in accounts or in life, requires genuinely knowing people on both personal and professional levels.

These dimensions should blend because for many people, their personal lives are their professional lives. Your core task isn't relationship building for its own sake—it's uncovering what matters most to the people you're doing business with.

Once you understand their priorities, you can serve their purposes, help them get where they need to go, and remove obstacles from their path so they can move from X to Y and move the needle in their organization.

This servant mindset—focused on their success rather than your sales objectives—paradoxically makes building networks of influence much easier over time.

The better you get at genuinely serving others' purposes, the more naturally influence compounds, as people recognize you as someone who helps them win rather than someone just trying to extract value from the relationship.

• Don't Hand Off and Forget—The Sale Is Your Opportunity to Expand – Ray Makela identifies a critical failure pattern in B2B sales: closing the deal and essentially being done, handing off to delivery or product support teams and only checking in occasionally.

This mindset treats the sale as an ending rather than a beginning. The correct approach is viewing each closed deal as an opportunity to grow the account, expand the relationship, and become "sticky"—deeply embedded in the customer's operations and relationships.

This stickiness protects against competitor displacement while creating expansion opportunities. The psychological shift required is from "I got the business, I'm done" to "I got the business, now the real work of network building begins."

This post-sale period offers unique access and credibility that didn't exist during the sales process—you've proven yourself through delivery, earned trust through performance, and now have legitimate reasons to engage broadly across the organization.

Squandering this window by moving on to the next deal means leaving money on the table and leaving your existing wins vulnerable.

• Leverage LinkedIn to Exponentially Expand Second-Level Connections – Ray Makela provides a modern, tactical approach to network expansion: systematically connecting on LinkedIn with everyone you interact with during and after the sale.

The pitch is simple and natural: "Wow, the fact that we're working together, I'd love to connect with you on LinkedIn." What makes this powerful is that each person you connect with is typically connected to hundreds of people within their organization, exponentially expanding your second-level network.

Map all people involved in the account so you've expanded your footprint—when you post content, publish articles, or share insights, they now have visibility into your thought leadership and expertise.

This isn't about spamming connections with sales pitches; it's about maintaining presence, demonstrating ongoing value, and staying top-of-mind.

The LinkedIn strategy works because it's passive influence building—you're not asking for anything, just staying connected and relevant, so when opportunities arise or when they're asked "who should we talk to about X?" you're naturally the answer.

• Practice Acts of Kindness Without Expecting Immediate Returns – Ray Makela introduces a counterintuitive but powerful principle: do things that increase your influence without expecting anything directly in return.

This might mean going out of your way to provide additional content, sending an article you think they'd appreciate, inviting them to a presentation or offering, or sharing insights that help them even if it doesn't benefit your immediate sales objectives.

These "little acts of kindness" or "paying it forward" behaviors elevate your status, expand your influence, and grow your network through genuine generosity rather than transactional relationship building.

The long-term payoff is that people eventually come back saying "we respect and trust and appreciate you guys, we want to do more business."

This approach requires patience and genuine care—you can't fake paying it forward with a hidden agenda—but it compounds powerfully because people recognize authentic value delivery versus someone just working an angle.

In a world of transactional salespeople, being genuinely helpful without immediate expectation makes you memorable and trusted.

• Understand That Change Is Inevitable—Build Defensively AND Offensively – Norman Behar highlights a reality that should drive urgency in network building: customers are reorganizing all the time, and priorities are constantly changing.

When you're comfortable with a single key contact and things are going well, you're dangerously exposed because "things are likely to change, we just don't know when."

Your champion might get promoted, transferred, fired, or simply deprioritize your solution. Without a broader network, you're starting from scratch when change happens.

Building influence across multiple departments and levels serves both offensive purposes (identifying additional sales potential within the account that your single contact might not see or prioritize) and defensive purposes (having broader context of what's happening overall so you can anticipate changes, maintain relationships through reorganizations, and ensure multiple people value your solution).

The temptation when doing well is contentment—"I've got my contact, I know Will, he's a great friend and buyer"—but this contentment is the enemy of account penetration. The question isn't whether change will happen, it's whether you'll be prepared when it does.

Transcript

Will Barron (00:00):
Sam asks, what can we do post-sale to build a network of influence within a key account?

Norman Behar (00:13):
I think it gets back to account mapping. We want to map that account. I think so often, particularly if things are going well, we have a key contact we're comfortable with. We're doing business on a regular basis, but customers are reorganizing all the time. Priorities are changing.

So when things are going well, we seem to be very, very content with the person we're working with, but we really haven't navigated the account to go deeper and wider. First of all, there may be additional sales potential within the account. Also, from a defensive standpoint, we want to have a lot more context and really a broader context of what's going on overall within our customer.

So I think that the temptation is we're doing well, we're getting the business, I've got my contact, I know Will, he's a great friend and buyer, but we aren't really kind of navigating what does the overall landscape look like? What are the business priorities? Who else should I be meeting? Particularly since things are likely to change, we just don't know when.

Deb Calvert (01:07):
If you've never done this before, you'll find it's really a good activity, and that's to make an account map. You can look it up online. There's all kinds of stuff out there about it, but it seems to be a little old-fashioned. I still think it's fantastic.

An account map simply puts all your contacts in one place. You might start with your primary contact right in the middle, and then you're going to draw lines that show the connections between people. So your primary contact says, "I've got to talk to the CFO," now I've got a dotted line. I've got the CFO.

Well, who does the CFO work with and who else is influencing this decision? Maybe it's the folks over in the billing department. I better talk to somebody over there or at least know who it is that's going to influence the decision.

(02:00):
Whoever shows up on that account map, when you get those names, when you hear those people who are influencing, when you hear new opportunities in the company that you can pursue, your account map is your pathway. It leads you from one person who you know and can make an introduction to the next and the next.

And pretty soon you can be linking in on various social media, driving some content into those new contacts that will be of value to them and demonstrating your relevance and value to all of them.

Will Barron (02:22):
I see a network of influence as a network of advocates or champions. You've got to start small. You've got to have one.

So for me in medical devices, that would be typically the surgeon because I'd be spending so much time with them, going through demos, going through the pricing of things, explaining the benefits. All that good stuff would be with the surgeon essentially. So I'd build Mr. Surgeon or Mrs. Surgeon into an advocate. They'd be singing my praises within the account and they would be introducing me to other surgeons. So that little network starts to grow there, right?

(03:07):
Next, you've got to plant the seed in—for me, it'd be procurement and finance, depending on the size of the deal. You'd have to get someone in procurement involved. They'd have to know I can trust you. They have to have this, even if it's a perception in their mind, because clearly the competition can be good, great, shit, bad, fantastic—it's irrelevant.

But if they think that you are the easiest person to work with because they've got the perception of that because you've told them, for example, "We're the easiest people to work with," then they're going to start spreading that within their little network. And then your colleagues who are selling similar products are going to be able to sell in there, and it's just this network starts to mesh.

(03:50):
But it all starts with that one individual, particularly in each department. That's the first goal. Each department that the buying process goes through—that could be procurement. For me, medical devices, again, it would be the IT department. It could be biomedical, electrical engineering, whatever that acronym was, I can't remember now.

But we'd have to have an advocate in each one of these. Maybe just one person. That's all we need, and that's our little network of influence then. And this can really only happen once the sale has completed. We only get this deep once our product's there. Once we've got an excuse to be calling up and seeing how things are going, that's when we get to double down on all of this.

Ralph Barsi (03:58):
To build a network of influence, whether it's within accounts or in life, you have to get to know people personally and professionally. The two should blend as well, because many people's personal lives are their professional lives.

Your task is to uncover what matters most to the people that you're doing business with so that you can serve their purposes and help them get where they need to go, and remove obstacles out of their path so they can go from X to Y and move the needle in their organization.

The better you get at that, the much easier it's going to be to build a network of influence over and over again.

Ray Makela (04:38):
Oftentimes we close the deal, and especially for a salesperson, we close that deal and we're kind of done, right? Maybe we hand it off to the delivery team or the product support team, and we'll check in occasionally, but we kind of forget.

Versus I think we should now look at that as an opportunity to grow that account, to expand that relationship, to become very sticky. The first thing I do is make sure we're connecting with everybody that we interact with.

So LinkedIn is a great way now to reach out and say, "Wow, the fact that we're working together, I'd love to connect with you on LinkedIn." Now we're connecting to that person who probably is connected to hundreds of people within that organization. So we've just expanded our second-level connections exponentially.

(05:34):
We want to be mapping all of those people that are involved in the account so that we've expanded our footprint. So that if we post something, if we're publishing content, anything we're doing now, they have better visibility into that, and that just expands our footprint.

And then the second part that I would say is do things that are increasing our influence without expecting anything directly in return. So that may be just going out of our way to provide some additional content or, "Hey, I thought you might appreciate this article. We're going to do this presentation. I wanted to invite you to this offering."

So little acts of kindness, if you will, but things we can do—paying it forward without expecting anything immediate in return. But it is going to elevate, I think, our status, elevate our influence, grow our network. And then ultimately they'll be coming back to us saying, "Wow, we respect and trust and appreciate you guys. We want to do more business."

Will Barron (06:16):
Do you have a B2B sales question that you'd like our experts to answer? Just head over to salesman.org/ask.