Most deals with existing customers depend on one person. So the deal can only ever be as big as that person's budget.
This play is how to do it differently. Do your homework. Win over the team that already uses your product. Use their success to reach the person who has a much bigger problem to solve. Show them you understand the problem in their own words. Prove you can solve it, quickly. Multi-thread the account so you know someone in every team the deal touches, while one executive stays your main contact. Then ask for the deal.
One ZoomInfo account manager did all of this with an existing enterprise customer this year. When he took the account in February, it was worth $100K a year. It closed in June at $675K a year, with ZoomInfo data feeding the customer's central data platform. What he did sits under each step.
1. Do your homework first
Before you speak to anyone at the account, form your own view of it. A handover from the previous account manager is a start, but it is their story.
Homework
Listen to every recorded call with the account from the last six months
Read the sales records: what was sold, what was tried, what stalled
Find out who has access and who actually uses it
Compare how many people use your product today with how many could
Why do this yourself? A thirty-minute handover gives you one person's opinion. The calls and records show you what the customer actually said and did.
2. Win over the team that already uses your product
Your first champion is already a customer. Make the team that uses your product feel it is worth having. Their manager then becomes the person who will vouch for you inside the company.
How to win them over
Train them properly, then follow up with them one-to-one
Find the people who use the product most and ask what still gets in their way
Pick one measure the team already cares about, and show it improving
Why this comes first. Everything later in this play depends on someone inside the account saying "this works, my team uses it every day." You have to earn that.
What the AM did. At the December renewal, the customer had agreed to try a hundred licences in the hands of the sales reps, instead of thirty licences used by managers to pull lists for them.
They trained the reps, followed up with the most active ones one-to-one (more on that in step 6), and tracked the measure the team cared about: how often their calls reached the right person. It went up. The head of mid-market sales became his champion.
3. Map the account, then find who owns the bigger problem
Do not wait to be told who the real buyer is. First map the account, so you can see everyone involved and where you have no contact. Then look for the person whose job the users' problem rolls up to.
Map the account
The departments and reporting lines around the team that uses your product
Who makes decisions, who influences them, who supports you, who uses the product
The departments where you know nobody, so the gaps are visible
Former users and contacts who have moved to other jobs inside the company
Then look for
The person responsible for the wider problem: data, systems, operations or company change, not just the buying team
Anyone talking publicly about a company-wide project your product could support
Whoever is judged on the problem your users complain about
Why map before you search. An account map tells you whether that person is the decision maker, an influencer, or a dead end, and who else you will need once you reach them. It also shows where you only know one person, which is what step 8 fixes.
What the AM did. He went looking. He researched the account and searched ZoomInfo and LinkedIn for people with titles like CIO, digital transformation and AI operations, the kinds of buyers ZoomInfo is now targeting beyond sales and marketing. He identified the VP of Digital Transformation from public comments about how the company was thinking about AI.
4. Ask your champion to introduce you
An introduction from someone the buyer already trusts is worth more than any email sequence. Ask for it directly, and name the person.
How to ask
Name the person you want to meet
Say why in one sentence, in terms of what the champion's team is already getting from you
Make it easy: offer to write the note for them
Why an introduction, not cold outreach. The buyer may have no idea who you are. They have heard of your champion.
What the AE did. He asked the head of mid-market sales to introduce him to the VP of Digital Transformation. Their first conversation was at the beginning of April.
ASKING YOUR CHAMPION FOR AN INTRODUCTIONOne introductionHi [Name],
Your team's [measure] has improved since the reps got their own licences, and a few of them have told me what still slows them down. Most of it comes back to the data your company holds.
[Name and title] looks like the person thinking about that.
Would you introduce me? Happy to write the note.
5. Listen for the sign that this is a bigger deal
The buyer will tell you what kind of deal this is. Your job is to notice when they do.
Signs that a licence conversation is really a company-wide conversation
"We want to bring all our data together in one place"
"Every team is buying its own tools and its own data"
"We are building AI on top of our own data"
"The data we have underneath all of this is not good enough"
Why this matters. A team buying licences is solving its own problem. A company bringing its data together is building something every team will depend on. The second one buys data for the whole company, not licences for one team.
What the AE did. The VP explained that he was bringing all the company's sales and marketing data together in one central database, to feed the systems the teams used every day, and that the data they had was poor. The AE's rule of thumb: when a customer says they want to bring their data together in one place, something bigger is going on. The deal changed from selling a few more licences to selling ZoomInfo's data to the whole company.
6. Use their own words
Before every conversation with an executive, go back to two sources: the last call you had with them, and the people who use your product every day. Turn what both groups said into what you show the executive, in their words.
Before the next meeting
Re-listen to the last executive call
Talk to the everyday users one to one: what gets in their way, in their words
Pull out the three biggest problems, in their words, not yours
Present those first, then your recommendation
Put their own quotes on the slide, from the executives and from the users
Why the everyday users. Executives describe the strategy. Users describe the daily frustration. It is the fastest way to show you understand the problem from the top and the bottom.
How to pick the users. Run a usage report and take the most active people. Frame the call as helping them get more out of the product. You will help them, and you will come away with what the executive conversation needs.
What the AE did. Two things at once. He ran a usage report, called the most active users one-to-one in what felt like a customer-service call, asked what still slowed them down in choosing accounts, finding the right people and reaching them, and took the answers back to their leaders.
They took a ninety-minute conversation with the executives, had Copilot summarise it into the three biggest problems with their data, and presented those back with the customer's own quotes. One of them: getting better-quality information in front of the sales reps would be a big win for the business.
7. Run a short, tight trial
When the buyer asks how they can check your data is good, run a trial with a fixed scope, a fixed end date, and success measures agreed before it starts. Then stop.
A tight trial
A fixed set of accounts, with the right contacts at each, given to the team that will use them
A short window with an end date
Two success measures the customer already reports on, agreed up front
Results go straight into a proposal, not another trial
What the AE did. Two hundred mid-market accounts with all the right contacts at each, handed to the customer's sales team for three weeks. Two measures: how often calls reached the right person, and how many new sales opportunities were created. The results gave them what they needed to put a proposal in front of the VP.
8. Multi-thread the account, with one executive as your main contact
Keep one executive as the person you always come back to. At the same time, build a relationship with someone in every team the deal affects. Your champions speak up for you behind the scenes.
Teams to reach
The team that will own the data or the system
The team that measures the result
The team that uses your product today
Everyday users, one to one
Why one main contact and many threads. The executive is the person who can approve the budget. The other relationships help remove any internal barriers they may face.
What the AE did. They kept the VP of Digital Transformation as their main contact through every conversation. Alongside that, they built relationships with the team that would handle the data (their data engineering group, which they called AI operations), the business intelligence team on the marketing side, and the mid-market sales team. Their champions vouched for ZoomInfo behind the scenes. That is what made the VP comfortable buying far more than the licences the company already had.
FIRST EMAIL TO A NEW CONTACT, BASED ON THE LAST CALLWhat [Executive] said about [problem]Hi [Name],
When we spoke with [Executive] last week, three things came up: [problem 1], [problem 2] and [problem 3]. Your team will end up owning [the part that lands on them].
Before we go any further I would like to hear how you see it. Do you have 20 minutes this week?
9. Ask for the deal
When you have champions, a direct line to the person who holds the budget, and a trial that shows results, don’t be afraid to ask for the deal.
You are ready when
Someone inside the account is recommending you without being asked
You are talking directly to the person who holds the budget
The trial has improved a measure the customer cares about
Why ask early. Every extra round of checking is another chance for the deal to lose its backer, its budget or its place in the quarter. If the homework is done and the value is clear, ask.
What the AE did. In their words, "we probably could have dragged this out longer." Instead, with champions in place, the VP engaged and the trial showing results, they asked whether they could put a proposal in front of them straight away. First conversation with the VP: early April. Deal closed: June 30. Deals like this usually take ZoomInfo six to nine months.
The outcome
From $100K a year to $675K a year. ZoomInfo's company and contact data now feeds the customer's central data platform on a schedule, and everything the customer builds with AI for its sales and marketing teams sits on top of it.
Watch this play get utilized on GTM Studio
FAQs
Does this only work with existing customers?
This example was an existing customer, which is why the first champion was a user. With a new customer, the champion is still whoever feels the problem first. The difference is that you win them over with a trial rather than with a product they already use.
How many people do I need to know in the account?
In this case, someone in four teams plus everyday users: the team that owns the data, the team that measures the result, the team that uses the product, and the executive who stays your main contact. Fewer than that, and one person leaving can stall the whole deal.
Where does ZoomInfo do the work?
Homework (Chorus call recordings and the sales records). Mapping the account and finding the buyer (org chart, buying-committee views and title search). Finding users to talk to (usage report and contact data). The trial (the data itself). Every executive conversation (Chorus to re-listen, Copilot to summarise and to draft emails).