Seven Steps to Sales Heaven
Steve Hall, Managing Director of Executive Sales Coaching Australia
Salespeople often make one particular type of sale too complicated — selling high-value items to senior executives in big companies. These are complex sales with multiple participants in the process — recommenders, influencers, decision makers — but there are some opening steps that are pretty basic.
The critical keys to a successful sale are opening at the right level, understanding the customer’s strategic requirements, and knowing the benefits of achieving them and the impact of failing to meet them. If there’s a sales heaven, it’s when you have the uninterrupted attention of the ideal executive in your ideal prospect for 20 or 30 minutes to explore how your solution can help them achieve their key priorities. Here are a few steps you must follow in order to obtain this:
1. Understand your ideal customer profile and identify the top 50 companies that fit.
Selling to senior executives takes time, strategy, and preparation. You have limited time so it’s better to do a good job in 50 companies or less (per sales person) than a mediocre job in more.
And you don’t sell to generic companies or personas — you sell to actual companies and human beings. So start by making a list of your top 20 to 50 targets — and prioritize them.
2. Identify the role(s) you should connect with.
Who should you initially approach? My preference is the CEO, but certainly no more than one level below. If you’re selling high-value items that the CEO must sign off on, then you want to understand that person’s perspective. Plus, the CEO takes a companywide view. The CEO can refer you to the person doing the actual evaluation while you can make sure you focus on the company’s strategic priorities.
3. Identify the specific individuals to connect with.
Make a list of the top three targets in each company — for instance CEO, CFO, CMO. You need to know what they care about — and, if you’re speaking to an EA and one of the targeted executives is unavailable, you know whom to ask for next.
4. Identify their top three priorities.
Your approach shouldn’t be about you, your value proposition, or your benefits. It should be about their priorities and how you can help them achieve them. So research and find out what they really, really care about right now.
To read the complete article, Seven Steps to Sales Heaven, visit Quotable.com.
