Ok, you got the meeting — congratulations. Now how do you stay in the room? You need to engage the decision maker properly & be relevant to his initiatives & bottom line.
Information Overload
The executive has granted you a meeting because they believe you will bring some insight or guidance about how they can improve their business, operations or personal stake at the company.
Regardless if you are selling for an Enterprise leader, SMB company, or well-funded Startups; your Target Account sponsors or stakeholders all struggle with making an effective business case on buying from you irrespective of what you sell. They complain it’s “getting harder to buy” as we lament it’s “getting “harder to sell”.
Part of the culprit is the massive amounts of diverse and complex Vendor claims and information, and the speed at which it comes. It has made business, financial and IT technology buyers, all part of our ever widening “buying committees” challenged to assess, evaluate, recommend and drive change with Vendor’s Products & Services. These “information receptacles” as we can call them also must digest fast moving technology breakthroughs, dynamic Market conditions, bursts of M&A activity accelerating company growth and dominance, global market pressure in a very unsteady ecosystem.
The New Clock
True we have great tools to help us sell better than any time in history. They include Social listening, LinkedIn, Blogs, the list goes on forever…. all providing an avalanche of unlimited content to teach and educate our buyers on virtually any topic. However, this all steals the precious from ANY executive…their TIME. And the less time they have, the more demanding it becomes to manage their businesses and fairly decide if your Products & Services are worthy of reviewing now, funding now, and buying now.
Engage the Decision Maker, But who’s making the decisions?
The Buying Committee
Based on the above, Vendors who help prospects buy, by improving and optimizing their internal struggles for collaborative committee buy-in, and supporting their specific needs to typically displace an existing system or process with your offering; are extremely important and results-bearing actions. They are Trusted Advisors who sell value, are well versed in the field of Consultative selling, and internally, support their companies Account Based Marketing (ABM) activities.
Engaging the Decision Maker
To do this effectively, Vendors need to help their Prospects with their issues and pains; but also uncover if these pains link to other and possibly larger problems. Your buyers may present a very specific set of buying requirements but not express other, divergent business condition could exacerbate or make these pains even larger. By helping them see the “bigger picture” you achieve the rare, coveted reward of being “neutral and trusted”. Isn’t’ this what the world’s dominant Consulting firms own with their customer C-Suite relationships?
Value is the Currency
Present your Products, Solutions, or Services financial value with validated, impartial and trustworthy data
Align your Products & Services directly & financially into your Prospects initiatives
Make concrete, evidence-based differentiators and prove neutrality
Once you have taken the time to think like your buying committee, you will be more confident and prepared to have a more productive meeting and sales cycle to closure. People buy from people they like but they buy more from people they trust. Then, you’ll be equipped to properly engage the decision maker.
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