NINA is an easy target.

When you call, it works. When you organize a diner, NINA comes. When you feel lonely, NINA opens the door.

But… When you want to close the deal, NINA becomes evasive…

NINA stands for “no influence - no authority”. All the mid managers or ought-to-be decision makers we all met and lost time with.

Focus on the real decision makers

When your fixed compensation is comfortable and when your sales manager mostly measure your performance on the number of meetings you have, then comes the real danger. The danger to start spending (too much) time with all the NINAs who fill the organization charts.

The core objective of star sales reps is to focus exclusively on real decision makers and on huge influencers. Basically the ones who fill the 2 primary forms for BANT: budget - authority - need -time.

90% of LinkedIn members are NINAs

LinkedIn is full of NINAs who can bait you with impressive job titles. Same with Twitter where the count of followers is generally a u-turn when you try to feel the real influence and authority of an executive. And you can lose weeks of prospecting before understanding you are trapped.

Because most of powerless managers do not want to plead guilty : when they like your offering, they often think of the personal benefit they can withdraw by promoting your product up to the hierarchy.

Appearing as an early adopter or an influencer is a big driver, and this is why they keep pretending to be real decision makers.

Influential and authoritative executives are rare and precious. They are harder to meet and to raise their interest.

Sales intelligence is here to boost sales efficiency

At the end of the day, I believe sales intelligence solutions (which really want to raise the productivity of sales reps) have to focus on this:

• How to isolate the real decision makers from the NINAs ?
• How to be effective in reaching these busy busy executives ?
• How to build the trust and raise their interest ?
• How to strengthen the relationship in time and follow them as their keep climbing the scale of power ?

Selling to big organizations is an “Alice in Wonderland” journey where most creatures you meet are not the ones they pretend to be. This is easy to be lost in corporate labyrinths with no positive exit.

IKO System has been built around this simple idea: if you analyze the quality and strength of the relationships of executives, you can bring invaluable intelligence on the table.