What’s Your Excuse for not selling “UP” the Organization?

I know there are lots of reasons why you don’t aim for selling at the C-Level. And some of you have probably convinced yourselves that it’s not only not worth it, but that it’s even a mistake to try to sell at the C-Level.

“...top executives don’t bother themselves with these kinds of decisions....”

“...they just ‘rubber stamp’ whatever their staff tells them to do anyway....”

“It’ll take twice as long to get the sale because the CXO is so busy...”

“...they don’t understand my product and don’t even know what I can do for them...”

“...and if Purchasing finds out I’ve done an ‘end around,’ it’ll come back to bite me anyway....”

Stop kidding yourself.

You can bet that virtually every CEO, COO, Managing Director, Executive VP or any other “buck-stops-here” senior executive that has a sales background has a very different opinion. And you can also bet that for a significant number of them, their career crossroads came when they learned to sell at the C-Level. Want to get where he or she is? Do what he or she did. Cultivate your financial acumen, learn the “Language of Business” and sell UP to the C-Level.

In a previous post, I discussed some of the basic reasons to sell at the C-Level.

But in real numbers, what difference does it really make? Let’s look at an example.

Consider a basically three-year fulfillment contract that follows a standard “bell curve” in terms of volumes over time, and takes six months to close the deal. (I know these are almost certainly not the real parameters of a real deal you may be looking at, but for illustration purposes, it’s easier this way to see the general idea. Once you’ve got the concept, you’ll immediately see how it applies to what you’re doing right now...)

With a CFO already “primed” and ready to sign the first invoice, could you close the deal a quarter earlier? If so, add 13% to the total value of the deal from that alone:

Or with high-level support from the client’s “corner office,” might you be able to extend the contract by just one more quarter? Now the deal is worth 29% more than when you started:


Is it conceivable that if the CEO was pushing it from the top down (for reasons we have discussed before and will discuss again and again), that the overall volume might increase by 10%? If you can pull that off, you’re 42% ahead of where you would have been by not working the C-Level:

So, what is your commission on that extra 42%? And more importantly, how does that position you to get a crack at the next big deal as the “midas touch” rainmaker? Think that might impact your career opportunities as well?

Knowing how to sell to the top executives in an organization may very well be the most important skill you will ever learn.

Still think it’s “not worth it?”