Executive Selling
What's so HARD about selling to a CEO?
15/12/08 14:05
Nothing—if you know what you’re doing and use a little common sense.
C-Level Executives are Smart. And Busy. C-Level execs looks at a potential purchasing decision the same way as anyone else-- WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?). And frankly, they couldn’t care less about what YOU have to sell. There are only a small handful of things that they really care about. If you have something to contribute on those issues, they're all ears. If not, they really couldn’t care less about whatever it is you're pitching.
So what does a CEO or CFO care about? I’m not talking about on a personal level, but as part of his or her job. And to get there, he or she must have been pretty good at it. Pretty focused. And 95 times out of 100 the CEO, COO and CFO are going to be most highly focused on the financial performance of the company relative to the goals and objectives serving the shareholders.
So that should be easy, right? More sales, more profits—what else is there?
If it was really that simple, do you think those execs would be pulling down the big bucks?
To gain the credibility necessary to a) get a C-Level exec’s attention and b) keep it for more than 30 seconds, you need to do better than that.
First of all, you have to truly have a desire to not only help them succeed personally and professionally. No, really. I’m serious. The superficial, “who loves you baby, let’s do lunch,” approach will not work at this level. They’ll see right through it.
Secondly, you have to be able to let them know how you’re going to help them succeed-- in the context of what they care about and in the language that they understand. And do it first in 30 seconds-- and if you’re lucky, you’ll get another 10-15 minutes to go into detail. Once you actually get that golden opportunity to meet the "top dog," you'd better know what to say, and even more importantly HOW TO SAY IT.
And that’s what Corner Office Conversations is all about.
C-Level Executives are Smart. And Busy. C-Level execs looks at a potential purchasing decision the same way as anyone else-- WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?). And frankly, they couldn’t care less about what YOU have to sell. There are only a small handful of things that they really care about. If you have something to contribute on those issues, they're all ears. If not, they really couldn’t care less about whatever it is you're pitching.
So what does a CEO or CFO care about? I’m not talking about on a personal level, but as part of his or her job. And to get there, he or she must have been pretty good at it. Pretty focused. And 95 times out of 100 the CEO, COO and CFO are going to be most highly focused on the financial performance of the company relative to the goals and objectives serving the shareholders.
So that should be easy, right? More sales, more profits—what else is there?
If it was really that simple, do you think those execs would be pulling down the big bucks?
To gain the credibility necessary to a) get a C-Level exec’s attention and b) keep it for more than 30 seconds, you need to do better than that.
First of all, you have to truly have a desire to not only help them succeed personally and professionally. No, really. I’m serious. The superficial, “who loves you baby, let’s do lunch,” approach will not work at this level. They’ll see right through it.
Secondly, you have to be able to let them know how you’re going to help them succeed-- in the context of what they care about and in the language that they understand. And do it first in 30 seconds-- and if you’re lucky, you’ll get another 10-15 minutes to go into detail. Once you actually get that golden opportunity to meet the "top dog," you'd better know what to say, and even more importantly HOW TO SAY IT.
And that’s what Corner Office Conversations is all about.
...and what this blog ISN'T
08/12/08 23:23
You’ve come to the WRONG place if you’re looking for:
- Sales Training. Corner Office Conversations is NOT another “sales training” blog. There are a lot of good ones out there, and from time to time I may even refer to a few of them. We won’t be covering “tie-downs,” “overcoming objections,” “takeaways,” and the myriad tricks and tactics of typical sales training. No “SPIN Selling,” “Little Red Books,” or even “Solution Selling.”
- Presentation Skills. Figure out how to dress for success and create PowerPoint slide animations on your own. It doesn’t matter how charismatic you are or how snazzy your presentation is if I (as a C-level executive) don’t understand what you’re talking about or even worse, couldn’t care less.
- Decisionmaker Matrices. Yes, in typical sales situations it is sometimes difficult to figure out who really makes the decisions, and ever harder to get to them. In our world, it’s not that difficult. Go about as high in the hierarchy as you can imagine, and that’s where you want to be. We may drop a few hints along the way as to how to get there, but for the most part I’m assuming you can figure that one out.
- Sales “Tools.” Don’t get me wrong-- I’m a huge believer in leveraging technology and other tools of the information age. And I will point you towards specific resources that support my particular perspective here. But you’re not going to get tips on maximizing the efficiency of your SFA system or implementing solutions for a distributed mobile workforce.
