I remember one of the very first experimental testing I did with IKO two years ago, while we were still in pre-pre-alpha and far from proposing it to the market.

I was discussing with Rodolphe (a *very* good sales rep) about attacking Bank of America to sell a specific credit card security service. He told me that finding the right decision maker in such a gigantic organization would require weeks of phone calls. I then opened my browser (without any hope honestly) and went to the IKO company page of Bank of America.

Among the thousands of BoA employees, the app highlighted one single name with an obscure title such as “VP Process Management”. This person was in direct connection with two of my best US competitors. He was obviously the one and we would have never thought about contacting him. What happened was that the sales force of my competitors had already done the job and isolate the powerful executive from the NINAs (even if he was in the middle of the organization chart).

This story shows that we use to rely on job titles to find our targets while titles do not mean anything these days (except if you are “CEO” or “Trainee”). If you look at the job titles of the 7’000 Facebook employees, you can find 150 vice presidents, 350 directors and 1’000+ managers.

Today’s sales hunters heavily use LinkedIn to target people who fit into their sweet spot. In lack of sales intelligence, they use job titles to chase away their prey. No time to look for an organization chart, a power map… and a lot of time lost at the end of the day in discussing with people who have titles but no authority nor budget.

In the old days before the rise of LinkedIn and the Internet in general, the top sales reps already analyzed the corporate relationships to find out who to target without only relying on job positions. Nothing new then.

Nicolas, head of… himself.