How Costello’s Phill Keene Uses Predictable Revenue Methodologies to Map Complex Organizations

Here at Predictable Revenue, we know a thing or two about, well, Predictable Revenue. We know it so well, in fact, we built our company on its principles and tactics to help organizations and sales teams increase revenue and scale their outbound operations.

So it’s one of our great pleasures when a sales leader tells us about how he uses, and evolves, lessons from Predictable Revenue.

We recently caught up with Phill Keene, the newly minted Director of Sales at Costello, for a chat about how he uses mapping calls to learn about his prospects, their companies, and to get to a decision maker.

“My purpose for mapping calls is to call high, and get my foot into an organization. A lot of times when you start calling you’re not high enough in the organization, and you don’t know where to go,” says Keene, on a recent edition of The Predictable Revenue Podcast.

“And you need guidance on where to go, learn who reports to who, and who makes decisions. These days, there are a lot of players involved in deals, people from different teams and departments, so it’s critical to understand how the organization is structured.”

The benefit of calling high, to the CEO’s office, for instance, is they have the view of the organization and things can trickle down from there.

Committing to understanding how an organization is structured, however, requires reps to often go against their impulse to sell their product and push for a meeting every time they get on the phone. Delving straight into your sales pitch, says Keene, will turn off the person you’re speaking with.

Instead, try asking for permission to have a quick chat and let them know you’re just trying to do some research. Communicate in the way you like to be communicated with. If you can do that, people will be glad to help you – they just want to feel like they’re being respected.

“A mis-conception with gatekeepers is that we believe they are there to do just that: gate keep. But, they’re not. They are their to be a face to the organization and to be helpful. When I ask a questions, people want to answer and want to be helpful,” Says Keene.

“They want to help guide me, and, yes, protect someone’s calendar, but also to guide you to where you need to be in an organization.”

Respect and honesty will eventually get you to a critical stage in your mapping call program: the internal referral. As you research a company, you will, likely, speak with a number of different contacts. Of course, more than one of those people will not be the right contact or decision maker for your product or service.

But as you continue to ask, respectfully, who the right person to speak to is you’ll eventually get referred to the correct person.

“The internal referral is the most important – really important. I’ve had VPs tell me the only reason they took my call was because a colleague told them to. It didn’t matter what I wrote, or what I said. They trust their peers,” says Keene.

“And, if you end up in the wrong place, you can again ask for the right person. And, as you’re doing this, do some AWAF (Are We a Fit?) calls along the way. Collect more data.”

Another great avenue for data collection, adds Keene, is actually from a step he added to the mapping call program: calling low.

After calling the C-Suite, it can be useful to call an end user of your product or service to learn about their day-to-day routines, and whether or not what you’re selling can actually help them. If you find out you can’t, you know not to spend any more time on this company.

But, if you can help, that’s valuable information to take back to your next call with an executive or decision maker. It shows you understand the organization, and you understand how you and your product can be of service.

“Go to the end user – find out about their jobs. And, you can take info to a call with their boss,” says Keene.

“If you can do that, and call high as well, someone in the org is gonna hear about you. You will make impact. Just don’t be afraid of fact finding, not everything has to be an appointment.”

For more on Phill Keene’s thoughts on mapping calls, check out his edition of The Predictable Revenue Podcast.