Today’s guest post is by Nicholas Read, co-author of Selling To The C-Suite, a new book published by McGraw-Hill:

A small proportion of salespeople always seem to drive the lion’s share of a company’s revenue. And even in today’s market, they’re thriving. What do these super reps do different to everyone else – and can you bottle it?

A new book climbing the Amazon charts holds the answers. Selling to the C-Suite (McGraw Hill, 2010) is based on the world’s largest study into executive buying behavior. Industry guru Neil Rackham hails it as “worth its weight in commission checks” because it holds empirical data collected from interviews with executives, and not anecdotal stories.

What it reveals is that executives want salespeople to call on them. They need fresh ideas from outside their company. But to gain that coveted audience, the right approach is critical.

Here’s How Top Level Exec’s Control The Buying Process

Executives reveal they get involved in their buying process when a problem or opportunity is first identified. They form a vision of what they want. If it can be satisfied internally, they leverage these resources.

But if a solution can’t be found internally, executives hit the Internet to do their own research on other options. This means that before salespeople even call, they already know what you do, what your customers say about you, and how you compare to competitors.

Based on the ideas they find online (and after talking with their personal network of advisors) executives form ideas about what they need and which companies have answers. Then they assign someone else to filter a shortlist of suppliers.

The implication for marketers is that if your websites don’t talk about the problems you solve and are merely crammed with product information, executives probably won’t find you when they type their challenges into a search engine.

The implication for sellers is that if you’re waiting to be invited to bid, the executives have already stepped away from the buying process and your window to shape their thinking has often passed.

Is this ideal? Far from it. It causes sellers get caught in a commodity comparison with mid-level managers and procurement agents whose job is to whittle down the price.

Here’s How To Do It The Wrong Way

What do many salespeople do escape this discount trap? They place a call up to the executive – and get a polite rejection (if they hear anything back at all).

It seems like a hopeless situation for many. But the executives actually have a different take on this.

Certainly they complain about being called by salespeople who fish their name off a list and call out of desperation. They don’t have time for these intrusions and so establish gatekeepers to protect their calendar. In fact, unsolicited cold calls succeed only 4 percent of the time according to the latest study.

Here’s How To Do It The Right Way

But if salespeople first network to other players in the executive’s team who have their ear, and establish a business case with them for mounting a discussion outside the normal procurement process, these influencers will recommend the seller up to the c-suite. On those occasions the executives grant a meeting with a salesperson 84 percent of the time. That’s a huge improvement on cold calling!

Executives expect salespeople to understand their business goals and be accountable for making things happen, as their ambassador into the supplier organization. Salespeople who say they must check with their manager before committing to action blow their chance of being seen as credible.

Executives expect you to listen before you prescribe a solution, and to do so in the context of their company and industry. This mandates a need for salespeople to understand their customer’s industry jargon, their business ecosystem and all the current affairs in their universe. Salespeople who only talk about their company and their product – no matter how enthusiastically – rarely visit the C-Suite twice.

The saying “people buy from people they like” remains true as ever, but executives report they prefer to deal with people they trust. When a supplier demonstrates expertise and the integrity to challenge an executive’s current thinking, they provide fresh ideas that executives love to hear.

One CEO reveals: “I don’t have any time to listen to a sales pitch. But I have all day to talk to a peer I can bounce ideas off and get real insight from. If more salespeople made the type of call where I’d be willing to write a check for their time, they’d have a better chance of winning contracts. The product they’re selling is less important than knowing you’re in expert hands.”

This doesn’t mean you need to be an expert about your products, no matter what your company’s training department will tell you. Instead, executives want you to be an expert on their business affairs. That means doing your own research on them, their company, their competitors, their customers, their industry, and attending their conferences.

Value at the c-suite is created when your questioning strategy extracts the depth and immediacy of an executive’s business issues, and uncovers all the stakeholders who need a voice in the final solution. The more pain you uncover from multiple stakeholders, the more insight you gain on what the real solution should look like.

Executives revealed that suppliers position as thought leaders when they spend time diagnosing before they prescribe. They even revealed that suppliers who engage early enough in the buying process have the opportunity to shape projects before they are handed down to subordinates who manage suppliers through a tender process, which is where a supplier’s dialog is limited to features, functions and price.

One of the most telling insights executives reveal is they typically don’t know what value their suppliers are adding. Despite all the up-front selling to establish a value proposition, few sellers ever return to the scene of the crime to audit the quantitative value delivered months or years later. Those that do so, establish credibility for the next round of sales, and enjoy longer-term relationships as a result. Those that don’t, find themselves in another round of competitive bidding for each deal.

Executives who shared these insights in Selling to the C-Suite cautioned that too many sellers think they need to sell to the top as if doing so were a rite of passage. There are legitimate reasons why decisions are delegated to subordinates, not the least being a lack of time in the executive calendar.

If a sale can be managed at a lower level, sellers should complete a political analysis of the opportunity to discern who has formal authority and informal influence. Many times a sale can be won without executive involvement at all if you connect to the right players.

Clearly c-suite expectations of sellers has changed. They don’t want you to call if the matter can be dealt with lower down the food chain. They are willing to meet if you network through their lieutenants, create new value, and demonstrate an ability to make things happen for them.

Their invitation is to be a peer at their table, and not a peddler of products. The gauntlet has been thrown down. Are you up to the challenge?

And if you’d like to learn even more from Nicholas Read, you can find him at working diligently over at SalesLabs.

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Today we’ve got a guest post provided by Bob Burg, my new friend and a sought after speaker. Bob is known world wide as a man who walks the walk he talks, so I’m honored to share an article from Bob and John David Mann.

Shifting one’s focus from getting to giving – constantly and consistently adding value to people’s lives – is not only a nice way to live one’s life, but a very profitable way, as well.

The degree to which you add value to the lives of others is the degree to which you yourself will prosper.

Why?

Because all things being equal, people will do business with, and refer business to, those people they know, like and trust. And being a sincere and genuine giver of value (whether through the value of your product or service, advice, resources, referrals or anything else) is the most
effective way of eliciting those feelings toward you in others.

“Fine and well,” one might think, “in a vibrant economy where everything comes easily and plentifully. But what about when conditions are not all rosy? In tough economic times, doesn’t that idealistic equation tend to break down? Don’t we need to take more drastic steps to keep our heads above water?”

Not so fast. In tough economic times, it’s easy to slip into panic mode. But just because the economy seems to be hitting turbulent times around us doesn’t mean we are the mercy of uncontrollable forces. As Pindar, the mentor character in our book, The Go-Giver, says to his struggling student Joe, “You’d be amazed at just how much you have to do with what happens to you.”

Ever since the advent of market economies, economic conditions rise and fall, but that doesn’t mean your own personal economic condition has to rise and fall with them. In fact, in times when the general economy is going through a downturn, those with the right attitude and right plan can not only hold their own economically but actually get much farther ahead.

At the moment, key economic indicators are down big-time across the board (housing, consumer spending, business-to-business spending, corporate profits, to name just a few). That’s bad enough. What compounds the situation is the fact that many have bought into the media’s declaration of economic doom. This is the stuff of which self-fulfilling prophecies are made.

So, since “what is, is” (sometimes even if it isn’t!), let’s take a look at what can we do to get past it and live in bounty and abundance, even if others choose not to. Who knows – with enough of us doing so, perhaps we can reverse the momentum of public opinion, at least within the sphere of those we each have the opportunity to influence.

Here is “The Go-Giver’s 3-Step Plan for Giving Your Way out of a Tough Economic Climate.”

1. Decide That It’s an Excellent Economic Climate.

We’re not suggesting you be self-delusional. On the contrary, we are suggesting that you be realistic. The flux of human economies is to an extraordinary extent a state of mind. The condition of your personal market is largely up to you. This means that while you rationally know that other people are struggling through tough economic times, you can simply choose
not to participate.

Even during “down times,” personal fortunes are made. Why? Because while everyone around them is acting like Chicken Little and slowing their activity down, thus putting a moratorium on providing value to the marketplace, go-givers continue steadfastly to operate according to their
normal precepts. They keep their eyes on the prize, so to speak, knowing they will be rewarded.

What distinguishes a Go-Giver, though, is the nature of that “prize” – because it is measured not by what you get, but by what you give. And that, unlike get-oriented goals, is something you can always determine, regardless of economic climate.

2. Continue Adding Value to Everyone You Can.

If you want to thrive in a “down” market, you simply focus on doing exactly what a go-giver does in an “up” market or any market: on adding value to peoples’ lives. This is the central distinction of the go-giver approach; in our book, it is the first of Pindar’s “five laws of stratospheric success,” the Law of Value:

Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment.

The pragmatic beauty of this law is that it puts the principal determinant of your success in your own hands, rather than leaving it in the hands of your circumstances. Who decides how much value you contribute to the lives of those around you? You do. Adopting this law as a daily strategic compass allows you to take the reins of your own economic climate.

The go-giver focuses on adding value to others’ lives in any economic climate. The biggest difference in economic “down” times is that you’ll need to do so even more emphatically. In other words, while everyone else is acting skittish and increasingly concerned about get-oriented goals, you do the opposite. (To borrow from Rudyard Kipling, You want to “keep your head when all about you are losing theirs.”)

In such times, prospects can be more hesitant about making decisions where money is involved. A typical reaction is to lower prices – but here you want to exercise care. Rather than lower prices, you may more effectively look for ways to further increase value, thus making it easier than ever for potential clients to go with a “yes” decision. Add so much value that their
choice is obvious. The more you can remove your prospect’s fear of making a decision, the better the chances are that decision will be made.

The number of ways you might add value are limitless; for example:

- Refer business to them (what better way to add value to another’s life/business?).

- Send them information of interest.

- Connect your prospects with one another and suggest ways they can benefit
one another.

- Gift them a book or booklet that will help them in their business.

For your customers, or anyone with whom you already have business relationships, look for ways to further add value to the experience of doing business with you. For example, if you provide a service, how can you make that receiving service an unforgettably great customer service experience?

3. Remove Yourself from the Outcome.

While it’s good to care about making the sale, it’s even better to care . . . but not that much. In other words, while you prefer a certain outcome, you’re not emotionally attached to it. People typically resist doing business with those who need their business too much-and in a “down” market, this tends to become the norm. Separate yourself from the “desperatos” and communicate the fact that business is fine. In other words, adopt within yourself a sense of economic boom times, and let that sense show.

We call this your business posture.  By posture, we don’t mean being false or phony in any way, or that you should act in some way you do not actually feel. We’re talking about posture here just as in your literal posture: just like your mother used to say, “Stand up straight!” It means recognizing and communicating the fact that regardless of the market conditions around you, no one person or market force can make or break your business.

Imbue your posture with the convictions that go with the value you provide, and you’ll find your perspective will become contagious. There are a lot of prospects out there who will be only too happy to do business with you. They might even “catch” your posture.

And you can get even more great value from Bob Burg and John David Mann the coauthors of The Go-Giver, which sold 150,000 in its first two years.

Their newest book is “Go-Givers Sell More” and you can download the Introduction and Chapter One by visiting GoGiversSellMore.com.

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Today’s guest post is from a new friend of mine, Dov Gordon. Dov helps small-business and small company CEO’s build such loyal employees and life-long customers, that even their competitors enviously spread their renown.

The lead horse wins by a nose, and you can build a selling system that charms, seduces and puts more gold in your pouch with only a bit of extra thought and discipline.

1. Build your own “Ultimate Sales Machine Map.”

A winning sales machine incorporates several stages, each with its own goals and corresponding tools, skills and disciplines.

For example, your 1st stage is to generate leads.  The 2nd stage would be to qualify those leads and make sure you are talking to the decision maker. Your 3rd stage would be to develop a trusting relationship with the decision maker.  The 4th stage would be to understand his needs and wants.  In stage 5, you’d recommend a product or service. Sixth, you close a deal. Finally, you ask for referrals and repeat.

2.  Each stage has distinct, and clear goals.

Look at each stage and ask yourself, “What is the ideal outcome here?”  “What will we see when this stage is achieved?”

For example, consider Stage 4, gaining a deep understanding of your prospect, which can be tricky. The goal is not that you feel you understand him but that he feels you do. When a prospect feels you really ‘get’ them, they start to say certain things, do things, ask a new kind of question. Your goal in Stage 4 is to spark this change in behavior. Describe it clearly.

3.  Craft the best tools and disciplines.

The heel of your shoe does a shoddy job of knocking in a nail. You want a hammer of the size and balance appropriate for the nail. Similarly, each stage in your sales system also requires goal appropriate tools – and disciplines.

For example, this article is a tool in my Stage 1 of attracting qualified leads. By placing a practical and immediately useful article on a blog with quality readers, it’s likely that some of you will want more.  And so I’ll offer you a free tool, you’re very own “Sales Machine Map” template. It’s a simple visual depiction of the ideas in this article that you can fill in and start using in minutes to grow your sales.

The discipline for me in Stage 1 is to write regularly, and so I spend the first hours of most days writing.  Some days, the result is a jumble of ideas in no useful form. But in the long run, the daily discipline ensures that eventually, the slapdash brush strokes coalesce into art.

USING THE “ULTIMATE SALES MACHINE” MAP:

The first step in using the Sales Machine Map, like any map, is to identify where you are now. As simple as this sounds, it’s easy to mess up.

When you’re on the phone with a prospect, you may are sitting in the same office chair, but your geographic location on the Map will vary.  The science is to build your map.  The art is to know where you are on the map with every prospect at every moment. You’ll get this clear every time, with a little practice. This alone is a tremendous competitive advantage.

So if you’re talking to a lead and you discover that he’s not the decision maker, but his company does qualify, you’re NOT in Stage 2 or 3.  You’re back in stage 1.  Your goals just changed to the stage 1 goals and you need to go back to the stage 1 tools. This may include a question such as “Who in your company will ultimately make the decision about buying widgets?”

YOUR NEXT STEPS:

- Get your Fill-In-the-Blank Sales Machine Map
- Break your sales process down into stages appropriate for you.
- Write out the objectives for each stage.
- List the tools you can use to achieve each outcome.
- List the disciplines you must live to achieve each outcome.

I tell my clients all the time, “Clear thinking is the most valuable work.”  With the clarity you’ve gained from doing this, go ye now forth and earn ye more money.

You’ll also enjoy Dov’s free, practical and immediately relevant seminar recording on “The Critical 10% of Management Skills that Make You Look Brilliant 90% of the Time.”

Get it at http://www.DovGordon.biz/the-10-percent.htm

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