The latest Point of Vieu episode explores leveraging warm introductions to accelerate B2B sales success. Industry leaders Bethany Ibarra, Joe McNeill, Prakhar Jain, and Ayush Sharma share invaluable strategies. They reveal how to tap into professional networks to drive sales pipelines and shorten sales cycles.
Our guests discuss their personal experiences with referrals, customer networks, and investor connections. They highlight these as the most effective channels to break into new accounts. You'll learn how to approach mutual connections on LinkedIn effectively. They also cover using your company's network and event presence strategically.
In the previous five episodes, we discussed the following:
Watch the full episode here:
Bethany Ibarra
Bethany spent the first half of her career working across the business cycle at Motorola. She uncovered an opportunity that led her to build her first P&L, and launch her first product. Since then, she has worked in commercial leadership in companies such as Lenovo, Google, and Motorola. Recently, she was the Chief Revenue Officer at an engineering firm that designed and developed machine learning systems.
“Yeah, in bold, underlined exclamation point - warm intros, especially in enterprise, business-to-business selling. Networking is so critical for any professional, and it is something that if I were to go back and talk to my younger self would be advice that I would impress upon myself.
Not just networking because that will organically grow as you continue to work, as you continue to expand your leadership scope, work with more companies, especially if you're in an externally facing role dealing with lots of companies. But even in that framework, it starts to get homogeneous.
If you grow in an industry, even a big multinational global industry, it does start to become a lot of the same usual suspects, which is great for warm intros because you have that rapport. Former colleagues are now at competitors’ companies. Former competitors are now customers, and that starts to naturally force multiply. But the work that I've learned to put in, and I encourage everyone who works with me or my mentees, is also network outside your industry.
The world and creativity are starting to amplify. We can work together to satisfy market needs in ways that are complementary, not competitive, and that is often through partnerships. So, continuing to network outside of your industry will take a little more attention. But that I found is helpful for not that same warm intro that all your competition would be able to get as well because a lot of us know each other at a certain point when you've worked long enough in an industry.
I'm authentic and right up front when I do warm intros. No one likes to feel like they're being tricked. I'll say, ‘I'm excited to hear what's going on with you. I saw so and so has an opportunity. You used to work with so and so. I want to also pick your brain about how you think it'd be appropriate for me to position this opportunity to them.’
So, I'm right up front with it is another thing that I would emphasize when I do make my warm intros.”
Prakhar Jain, VP of Sales, Whatfix
Prakhar was employee #1 at Whatfix and has been working with them for the last 10 years. Whatfix is a digital adoption platform that works with companies to simplify their end user experience. It strives to make technology user savvy. His role is to take care of new business for North America and EMEA.
“This is tied to one of your earlier questions as well on how we are shortening our long sales cycles. So, referral is a channel for us that has the shortest sales cycle.
I'm talking about customer referral. I'll go to some of the others as well. So, customer referral means somebody who has purchased a product. Now either they have left their job, moved to another organization, and they've taken our product along, or they have referred us to somebody in their network who has decided to try our product, and then the sales cycles have shortened because it's a firsthand experience that has gone already.
So, a large part of the sale has been made by someone else who trusts the product, has used it, has firsthand experience and a lot of good words have been given already. So, it cuts out the competition. It cuts through the noise. There are a lot of steps of the sales cycle that are completely taken care of by something like this.
Now at the same time, do we use some of the other channels as well?
Internal employee network, not so much. I think at best we would look at the sales leadership or hierarchy or whoever is joining you. We at least suggest to people that, ‘hey, please be connected on LinkedIn so that you find your mutual connection with somebody from your account that you are targeting as a named account.’
You're at least able to get an intro. But it's very ad hoc. I don't think there's a set process in place. We utilize the network of our investors in some capacity. Again, we have a dedicated person. So, I have a strategy person on the team who basically helps me with certain products.
And one of them is that, okay. How can we use our investor network to tap into their portfolio companies? It's a manual exercise. We build a list of their portfolio companies. We see what personas can fit into, and then we reach out to those.
Point of contacts at our investors to see can they make a connection. So that's the process we follow.
Is it very streamlined today? The answer is no. But we do it in some capacity.”
Ayush Sharma, Director of Sales, Rippling
Ayush currently leads the sales team at Rippling, Bangalore. His teams serve the US, EMEA, and Indian markets. He has seven years of experience in the B2B Saas space. He worked for companies like Whatfix for four years and worked at another Silicon Valley company called Carta.
“Yeah. We must develop this as a sales muscle for our reps. One thing that I always train our reps on is how to research an account even before you get on a call with a customer or a buyer.
As a part of your research, you're looking at who is involved in this account and who is joining the demos through their LinkedIn profiles, and then see where you find any mutual connections. Then, you try and find if they have any mutual connects with your manager, director, Vice President, and so on.
I think that's super important because we can directly give you access to a few people you may never get during the sales cycle. I think getting a warm intro in any deal can significantly improve your chances of winning and reducing the sales cycle. If not both, then it will at least give you some valuable information about that account that you can use as part of your sales cycle.
So, again, getting intros is also dependent on how strong your network of your leaders is. Some companies may not have a strong network with their founders. Some are first-time founders who may not know a lot of people, or some founders are building a product that is sold in a different geography where you don't have a lot of networks of your alumni or maybe all that stuff. So, that's where investors can come into the picture.
That's where I also recommend that if you have a marketing budget, go and have some presence at physical events. That event will not only lead you to have leads directly for your business, but you will also be tens of other people who might not be your buyers, but maybe they are active in the industry, and you can build relationships with them. You plant the seeds and 6-8 months down the line, they germinate and give you some momentum.”
Joe McNeill, Chief Revenue Officer, Influ2
Joe McNeill is the CRO at Influ2. They do contact focused advertising to help sales and marketing teams align and improve prospecting conversion rates. He’s a B2B Technology Sales Leader who combines an enthusiasm for client service delivery, employee empowerment, and robust revenue operations to position organizations to scale & grow.
“I would say one of the biggest challenge channels of our new logo Engine is referral and a referral is everything. It includes investors network, staff network, folks within customer accounts that leave and join a different company.
We look at our customers' networking groups and tap into those. I think really to do that and the key to success is to be more specific and intentional on who you target. Right now, I think the challenge is companies are struggling with pipelines and they're struggling on the outbound side.
Mostly because they aren't executing well, but also when they aren't doing it, they decide like, ‘hey, what we need to do then is to go deeper and wider.’ So, they this ICP or this prospect pool, or they're prospecting into this, this group that's a mile wide, but an inch deep. If you're going to really leverage your network in a meaningful way, you need to be very intentional and specific about who you want to target.
You should focus on a smaller group of accounts. But if you do that in the right way, you'll really be able to transition that smaller group into accounts into pipeline in a meaningful way.”
Conclusion
Leveraging warm introductions is a powerful strategy for enhancing B2B sales efforts. Tap into your network through professional connections, customer referrals, or investor relationships to break through barriers and accelerate the sales cycle. Bethany Ibarra, Prakhar Jain, Ayush Sharma, and Joe McNeill emphasize the importance of authenticity and strategic networking. They highlight how targeted outreach can open doors and build stronger, more meaningful relationships.
Book a demo with Vieu to leverage your network and get warm introductions.
