According to Greek mythology, King Minos built a huge labyrinth beneath his palace at Crete which housed the half-man, half-bull known as the Minotaur. According to the stories, the only person to ever escape the labyrinth was Theseus: He  used a silken thread to help him get in and out of the labyrinth.

Fast forward to today: We're faced with a maze of cubicles and office hallways in our business world, and beyond that a bewildering labyrinth of corporate structures, subsidiaries and branches that many companies have now.

Fact is, the economy is dominated by big players with many offices, many doors, many gate keepers. And not all of these offices are fertile ground for your sales and marketing teams.

But how can you "see"? Where can you find the map you need? Where is the "silken thread" you need to navigate the mazes of modern business?

Navigating today's business environment

1. Understand your customer's context and corporate linkages: Start by understanding company structure and parent-subsidiary relationships, so that you can begin to zero in on where your teams are most likely to find success. For many companies, understanding what's happening across their corporate families allows you to reach out and cross-sell and up-sell where you don't have business.

2. Keep your data fresh and clean: Next, make sure you have clean, up-to-date contact data. With bad, out-of-date data costing industry over $600 billion a year, you can not underestimate the importance of this. Given the pace of change in today's business environment, if you lose track of your customers, you lose them.

3. Analyze your wins for strategic growth opportunities: Look at what companies you've closed deals in the past and target new companies with similar profiles.

4. Map your opportunity: Within your existing accounts, take time to map out potential new buyers; and new opportunities with existing buyers. Every account has overlooked opportunities, new contacts, and new divisions and you need a plan to systematically uncover these.

5. Target your message: Being able to match people accurately within the correct part of an organization, allows for strategic targeting without blanketing an audience with a generic message.

6. Use a trusted tool to keep you in the know on your accounts and target market: It helps if this tool is integrated where you work and is built to match your processes.  Oh, and did we mention cloud based is best?   (hint, check out Data.com)