The contacts you have in an organization may not be the right people to make decisions, or the influencers of those decisions. But there are no bad contacts. Within any organization, it's important to understand their structure, and where your contacts sit within that framework. There are generally three major types of contacts you can make – every level of which is valuable:
1. Access – these are the people you meet who get you a ‘foot in the door'.
2. Specifiers – these are people with a vested interest, who facilitate selection of business partners.
3. Deciders – these are the people who hold the purse strings, and are generally reacting to the needs of their staff.
Access Contact – There are two flavours here: a casual contact and a working contact. A Casual Access Contact can be anybody from the receptionist, to a shop foreman. This is somebody you know, or have met who you hope will introduce you to somebody higher in the account. This may not be a professional relationship yet. A Working Access Contact is a low to mid level manager with a job responsibility that touches on your profession. This could include people responsible for marketing,
Specifier Contact – these are called this because they usually specify the needs of a potential partner or vendor. Typical contacts here could include marketing managers, national account managers, brand managers, etc. Specifiers will have limited ability to authorize projects on their own. It is quite possible to do a respectable amount of business with an account without ever having contacts higher than the specifiers.
Decider Contacts – typically senior managers who have a number of ‘specifiers' as subordinates. Titles can include Director of Sales & Marketing, VP Marketing. These contacts are expected to manage their staff, not projects, and so rarely have ownership for – or detailed knowledge of – the requirements. They rely on their staff to handle these issues, although they are likely the owner of the budget, and may have final decision on vendor or partner selection.
Dealing with Access Contacts is usually where you will start in any organization, it is the most important level of contact, and one which you may spend the most time nurturing. While it is possible to have a limited amount of business with Key Accounts purely driven by the people who get you in the door, it is the sure sign of a junior-ability sales rep when they have a stable of access contacts, and can't seem to get past them to Specifiers. This means that they have not established a relationship to the point where it is in the best interest of their contact to introduce them to specifiers.
