Get meetings when selling to C-Suite Executives
Nicholas Read’s book, “Selling to the C-Suite: What Every Executive Wants to Know About Successfully Selling to the Top is a great read. He states 84% of executives polled and interviewed claimed they would give access to meet with a Salesperson if they were recommended internally.
Also, 50% would get meetings if they were recommended from an external source. Lastly, even Sales reps using a letter or email would get 20% access.
The burning question is what is the reasoning behind a Fortune 1000 or 500 Sr. executive meeting with a salesperson vs. industry expert or peer?
They believe Enterprise Sale reps can bring new or fresh insights to support their existing business issues; and even insights into issues that have yet to surface within their organizations. The fact is, salespeople are the eyes and ears of what many companies are struggling with and are an excellent source of comparative insights.
What steps Enterprise Reps do for coveted C-Suite access?
#1 – Bring a thorough understanding of the executives business and industry.
This is the most time consuming and laborious part of the exercise. Sure, you can try and read the annual report. Keep in mind, some of them can be 500-600 pages in length. You must read the Management Discussion & Analysis (MD&A), Shareholder letters, analysts reports and earnings transcripts. TIME? This can be from 5-7 hours to weeks (if you go on and off while doing all those other selling duties). Save 90% of your time.
#2 – Bring an understanding and strategic significance of the corporate initiatives.
You need to not only be able to find and understand these corporate initiatives (these are ones that are underway and funded!) but correlate them to the strategic, monetary importance at the account. Additionally, you need to align your solutions or services to them. After all, you are there to sell your solution to services and connecting them to initiatives is a sure-fire way to get the attention of a Sr. executives.
#3 – You need a decent financial background to understand the findings.
It will dramatically help and save considerable time if you have this skill. It will go a long way in building your messaging and ultimately conversing with a C-Suite. If you do not have the financial acumen, then a crash course or an accounting “primer” would be effective. Enlisting the help of a friend or team member who can help is a clever idea.
#4 – Offer up your use cases value as invaluable insights on addressing their issues.
Corporate or strategic issues are based on financial business outcomes. So, before you have your meeting, be sure to translate your solutions or services into actionable, financial outcomes. Show how you can deliver more revenue, sales, lower SG&A, lower operating costs, and less corporate risk. Be a problem solver! A good glossary of terms is a good place to start.
#5 – Proofs, proofs, and more proofs.
Be sure to have a personalize business case that is tailored to the financial needs of the target account, and their C-Suite. Use benchmarks, industry citations or research reports to help substantiate your value claims. Quickly deliver them C-Suite executives are notoriously impatient and extremely busy.
#6 – Don’t pitch your product…show the numbers!
Get to the point quickly. Trim the fat and illustrate your aligned value to their organization. Again, the best way to do this is to have a concise (one-page is all you need) business case to prove your value points and shoe your monetary impact.
What about that automation?
SPEEDSHEETS are the first tool to automate all the above and deliver account-specific, personalized, C-Suite Busines cases for the “front-end” of demand gen and the sales cycle. It is business outcomes value at scale. Every sales rep who works on any number of accounts can have a compelling, easy to use and differentiated C-Suite business case for the front-end of the sales cycle.
Revenue Accelerators and SPEEDSHEETS are the ONLY B2B account-based sales intelligence tool that quantifies vendor value and aligns it financially with each target account to enable sales reps to access and meet with coveted C-Suite. SPEEDSHEETS are personalized, financial business cases and points of view for the front-end of any sales cycle. We transform Product to Value selling overnight for faster and greater pipelines. www.revenueaccelerators.com