Know-How Exchange : Strategy

If you have the ability to get prior information it is best to frame the strategic kinds of questions (below) in a preliminary manner before arriving. Ask forthrightly how you can make best use of their time by them listing their priorities in advance.


If not... of course do your homework first - imperative. Yet, keep the conversation at the highest strategic level. You want to find out what keeps them awake at night. DO NOT lead with solutions nor drop down to the strategic -- what you think you can deliver. Sure, have your UVP in your back pocket if you are asked. But actively listen for their strategic priorities --highest level business needs as the focus. Moreover, don't just ask what their "objectives" are -- ask them what success or outcomes will look like -- as precisely as they can. In other words, not just what their questions are, but what the answers will look like and actually are expected to be.

It is always surprising how empathetic listening evokes rich description and has the effect of the speaker considering the listener to be very wise about one's interests.

Having said all of this -- be prepared that they simply lob it into you court and ask how you will get them where they want to go. You'll need to finesse back to the proper focus (above).

Trustmark.

My experience has been more research. I'm not talking just about reading the Chairman's letter of the annual report. That's a minimum.

Read their competitor's reports. www.hoovers.com is a good place to find competitors if you didn't know.

I'm not agreeing with you, though. It should be about his problem...not him.

The test question is "Should I work with your EA to schedule our next meeting?"

Michael

you make it a conversation.

To get your first meeting you sell the appointment and the appointment only. You do your upfront research to understand the business. Mine the press releases to see how the biz they do, aligns with yours.

Then you have a conversation. Until you are face to face, you cannot validate your research. Your company may identify their appeared issues. Your company may have helped similar companies in similar issues.

But it is wrong in a consultative sale cycle to take the one size fits all approach.

Beyond that-- a sales call cannot move up the sales cycle unless you have a plan for the next step. Every call must have a reason.

You may not know at call 1, what call 2 will look like. That is a good thing. You may know at call 1 -- you are not a match for each other. Each other-- it works both ways. You can identify, if you are in front of a good prospect-- your niche is a client with xyz problem. Because you solve xyz very very well-- that is your differentiator. You have a sales cycle. You aren't the problem solver for the world, everyone isn't your client. But you know where you shine, and you know a good mutual deal where you can add value.

fortunately for the sales profession, superior technology does not always win out. For example, my understanding is that BETA format was/is much better than VHS format. Yet VHS captured the lion's share of the market.

I do not know anything about you, or about your product, or about your market... but I have worked with many technical people who believe they have exceptional products. Pardon me if I am way off base, but maybe there is another underlying question here.

Maybe a question to be asked might be, "is it possible for a trained engineer with a highly technical and breakthrough product to learn enough about sales by posting a few questions on MarketingProfs?"

My answer to that question is, "No”.

Again, I may be way off base. My sincere apologies if I am reading your situation incorrectly, and I encourage you to provide us with much more information (about you, your company, your product, your location, your target market, the nature of your relationship with your prospect, and so on.) Naturally, I would not encourage you to share information which is proprietary or strategic, but clearly we would all welcome to link to your website...

If you are a small technical start up with a great product and limited experience in sales, I would encourage you to enlist the help of a seasoned sales professional as you approach your CEO prospects. Good luck.now so

Consider focusing on the clients who have purchased your services. What sold them? Why? Can you get a referral/introduction from them for other businesses that would be interested? The problem may be you're barking up the wrong trees or that you're selling the wrong thing to the wrong person (a C-level is unlikely to care about cloud computing - or other new technology - unless you can show: other c-levels that have made the switch, their ROI, resources, and problems). If you don't yet have 'em, create a series of white papers, focused on different business niches. After your first meeting, send the appropriate case studies and follow up with a meeting.

A few suggestions based on years of experience selling IT and cloud solutions.

First, ditch the obsession with C-level execs unless they are the final decision makers for your solution. If they are, then you must be targeting small businesses only. If this is the case, then keep the focus but forget all the "expert-rules" of how to engage with them and instead focus on delivering value with each meeting and proceed based on the unique and individual needs of that prospect. Few can get to the C-level without being able to see through a lot of BS - have respect for that and be genuine in employing selling strategies tailored to what they need most.

People in IT (whom make the decision for your solution and utilimately implement it) do business with people they trust and who help their organization, not those who can deliver the slickest pitch. As you know, the cloud space is very different and in great flux. You mention you "get stuck" in the final stages. I will take this as meaning you are not losing to competitors, but instead losing to alternative IT projects. Moving to the cloud is all about delivering scalable resources (compute, storage, apps) with instant-on and instant-off, and all at a lower cost than doing things in-house. With so much pressure on IT budgets, you need to demonstrate significant ROI, the ability to seamlessly integrate, and that you won't put the enterprise at risk (downtime, security, etc).

Finally, there is truly a much better panel to pose your question to than this group of experts - that is the prospects that did not go forward with you. A few will not help, but most will be open about the process and their decision making calculus (if they all tell you to get lost, then you failed at establishing rapport with them and that would be part of your challenge). They will tell you the "whys" including where you lost and what you were missing; trust, expertise, a poor POC, lack of support resources, price, size, security, etc., etc.

Good luck, I'll you out there. :)
John bit.ly/75KkSG

I suspect the biggest problem you have is in establishing the value of your solution and an ROI. The IT sector (all those I have ever dealt with) often knows what it costs to buy boxes and licences but not what it costs to operate them. They often have no concept of an ROI. They retreat from a project that negates a previous project even if the earlier decision was a bad one from a business perspective.

I think part of your sales process has to be a discovery of the prospect's cost of operating existing solutions and finding a way to teach them how they can determine a ROI and business case for your solution.

If necessary, write the business case for them as part of you service. Do that enough times and you'll be able to develop a series of models that allow it to be done right there in front of the prospect. Take along a digital projector and fill in the spreadsheet with them providing input figures as you go!