An org chart is invaluable in a complex sale. When I was coaching sales teams, I refused to help a rep with a deal unless they had an up-to-date org chart. If a rep can't get someone in the account to give them an org chart, they should be able to build one with help from their contacts.
Org charts are so important that several sales training companies require them as a critical component of their opportunity and account management plans. More advanced opportunity and account plans (and supporting software) allow you to overlay a political map on top of the org chart so you see the relationships between influencers, decision makers, your supporters and your enemies. (By the way, if you're in a complex selling environment and your team isn't taking the political landscape within the customers' organizations into account when developing a strategy to win, you need help. Yesterday.)
In a comment to Brian Lambert's post on the Sales 2.0 Network blog, Walter McConnell reminded me about Forbes Corporate Org Chart Wiki. Try it. Think about what impact org charts and the skills to understand them would have on the outcome of your team's sales opportunities.
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