Stakeholder Mapping

Matt Myszkowski

Hey All,

Does anyone use any specifc tooling to map stakeholders within customers, explain relationship and manage governace?

Shari Srebnick

Hey Matt,

We have a dedicated section of our Account Plan for this.   My team is charged with knowing all stakeholders involved, titles, how much influence they had in buying and will have over renewal, persona type, what team they're part of and who they report up to.  Since Account Management sits under our larger Services team with us and not with Sales, the AM and CSM work together to manage governance ... and I will also be part of intros early on.  

Additionally, in this same area of the plan, we have a section dedicated to other potential stakeholders on other teams it may make sense to involve later on.  This is designed to keep us from being single threaded, help expansion, and also alleviate some risk should one person leave.  

Happy to share more if needed.

Jeff Breunsbach

Matt, we've seen a few companies who have leveraged Salesforce Apps to help get this done. OrgChartPlus is one of them (I think). 

@Ziv Peled might have a take here given his focus on relationships. 

Toby Lucich

Having worked on large system rollouts and adoptions for the last several year,s we've used a variety of tools for stakeholder mapping (many org chart-based tools, as well as xls and funky add-ins and one-offs). The rub is often that (a) once captured no one uses the data, and (b) I don't really care as much about where they sit and report to as I do about the role they play in my agenda or account and what I want them to do when I engage them.

When helping drive org changes and transformations, we bucket contacts into one of four quadrants (and yes, xls is good enough). This is usually everyone with a login, plus their adjacent peers where possible (maybe insights from implementation). We note where they are, and where we want them to go in terms of sentiment and engagement.

On a 2x2 plotting influence and impact, we work to organize people into where they are and where we want them:

1. Awareness. The lowest level of stakeholder engagement, and fine if they are adjacent or unaffected by our work. (I want them to know we're involved, in case they have a use case we help address or solve for). If they don't know you yet, you need to get them on the matrix.
2. Understanding. These folks have more 'influence' in the organization but aren't really 'impacted'. I want them to have a basic understanding of the value we bring and why others are excited about our solution. We want them to have a base understanding of WHY we have been engaged.
3. Fluency. Think 'impacted' but not necessarily as influential'. Anybody that directly uses our solutions or services needs to be competent and capable in their use. "Fluency" in this case is proficiency to get their work done effectively and realize the value promised. Many users - particularly transnational users - never move past this until they have an 'ah ha' moment - discovering how to automate repetitive tasks, eliminate data re-entry nonsense, or improve data quality. These 'ah ha' moments often turn stakeholders from casual users into crazy evangelists (or advocates).
4. Advocacy. This where impacted and influential stakeholder should be (my executive sponsor/s, hard core users, center-of-excellence players need to be). There are always one or two folks that really feel the pain at the outset of the relationship, and they think this is where they are at. Often times though, they are noisy and driven, but not influential. 

I'm never going to get an executive (the 'Big Banana') to care and really advocate (which leads to expanded use and upsell, and also provides future client references and recommendations) until they really appreciate the impact we're making. Too many are only casually aware, which puts the engagement at risk from the start.

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Toby Lucich
Organizational Change & Adoption Doesn't Have to be Painful
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Original Message:
Sent: 08-06-2020 07:15
From: Jeff Breunsbach
Subject: Stakeholder Mapping

Matt, we've seen a few companies who have leveraged Salesforce Apps to help get this done. OrgChartPlus is one of them (I think). 

@Ziv Peled might have a take here given his focus on relationships. 



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Jeff Breunsbach
Director, Customer Experience | Higher Logic
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Original Message:
Sent: 08-04-2020 17:40
From: Matt Myszkowski
Subject: Stakeholder Mapping

Hey All,

Does anyone use any specific tooling to map stakeholders within customers, explain relationship and manage governance?



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Matt Myszkowski
VP, Customer Success Management, EMEA
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Warwick Brown

Hi Matt,

I've uploaded a simple Excel Template that is an easy way to track key stakeholders, relationship strength, key initiatives as well.

I also like Mindmeister - Mind mapping is a simple and visual way to create stakeholder maps and can also be used like a project plan as well so it's very effective for this sort of activity, especially for large matrix organisations.

I've created Mindmeister Relationship Mapping template you can copy which will give you somewhere to start.

Hope that helps!

Relationship Map Template by Warwick Brown

Matt Myszkowski

Hey @Warwick Brown 

This is awesome - thank you. And as massive Friends fan I love the company!

Elizabeth Bukys

Hey Shari!

What tools are you using to map this out/maintain those profiles?

Shari Srebnick

Hi Elizabeth!

Right now, it's all in an excel file which is part of the larger account plan.  We use that to track our key stakeholders, influence level, etc..  This doc is maintained by the CSM and kept in both SFDC and our CS software tool to provide access to the groups that need it.

Markus Siebeneick

I would suggest two different options to create the mappings.

1) Chartloop - a newer company which autogenerates the account maps.

2) LucidChart - using the LinkedIn and SFDC plugin's

LucidChart does provide for the ability to add the necessary notes that one would want to properly map an account.
The Auto-Mapping of Chartloop is very compelling if you have many accounts to map.