You finally secured meeting the decision maker — you’re in the c suite selling game. What’s the #1 thing to do?
First, stop being a salesperson
That person has no place in the meeting. The executive has granted you a meeting because they believe you will bring some insight or guidance on how they can do a better job in dealing with their top issues or initiatives. This is how a Trusted Advisor operates and communicates in c level selling. Plain and simple! You must be a consultative, value based sales resource. You can take all your research that you have done on their company and themselves, their industry, competitors and industry associations, but can you assimilate this knew knowledge?
Then become the Target Executive
Be an advisor. Be neutral. Be trustworthy. Before you start writing down all the things you need to say, ask and answer these 7 things:
What metrics or KPI’s (Key Performance Indicator) are they responsible for? Is their compensation tied to them?
What happens to these KPI’s if they miss them?
What are their major obstacles to achieving these KPI’s (i.e. what is their #1 core financial problem)?
What have they done in the past to try and solve this problem?
What worked? What didn’t?
If they met their KPI’s, how did it impact their professional career within the company?
What’s at stake for them if they fail to solve it?
Once you have taken the time to answer these as if you were the prospect, you will be more confident and prepared to have a more productive meeting and generally be more effective at c level selling. It will empower you to be viewed more as a peer and less as a vendor.
People buy from people they like but they buy more from people they trust.
Trusted Advisers speak the language of the C-Suite
Having financial acumen and financial value prowess that are aligned with surrounding complex corporate initiatives and goals will position you more as a trusted resource and less like a Vendor, and get you 2X more C-Suite meetings when you present yourself in a financially sound way.
Revenue AcceleratorsTM is the ONLY provider empowering Vendor Sales & Marketing teams to easily and more rapidly acquire high-performing opportunities from accessing and engaging Decision Makers and C-Suite. By defining the Vendors solution’s financial value, aligning it into Target Account objectives and business initiatives and using 1:1 ABM value messaging in SPEEDSHEETS; we transform Product to Value selling overnight for faster and easier selling. www.revenueaccelerators.com