Selling to the C-Suite: How to Get Executive Decision Makers to Act Now

The post Selling to the C-Suite: How to Get Executive Decision Makers to Act Now by Jim Druckrey appeared first on Corporate Visions.

[image error]

Confidence and competence. All too often, that’s what salespeople lack when selling to the C-suite and other financial decision makers.

In fact, Corporate Visions research found that the majority of companies aren’t satisfied with their ability to tell an executive-level story.

67 percent say they’re underperforming at
getting executive-level prospects to buy now rather than laterOnly 39 percent are confident in their
ability to build a meaningful business and financial case to justify a decision

These are big issues, considering that 80 percent of your
deals will require a VP or higher-level signoff. Without executive buy-in, your deals stall, you lose momentum,
and your close rates plummet.

But dig a little deeper, and you see that stalled proposals
and lost deals are the symptoms of a value communication problem. Sales
reps lack the competence and the confidence to elevate the conversation, create
enough urgency, and show enough business impact to persuade executive buyers to
make a decision now.

So, how can you overcome this “fear of heights” when you’re selling to the C-suite?

Elevating Your Sales Conversations for the C-Suite

When you’re sitting across from a CXO, you only get one shot
to pique their interest. If you don’t come to the table with enough knowledge
and insight, they’ll shut you down without a second thought, and you won’t get
another opportunity. 

Demonstrating competence does not mean competence in
your own business. It means being perceived as competent in your prospect’s
business. Enterprise sellers get delegated to who they sound like. So if you
want to win over C-suite buyers, you need to show competence in their business,
at their level.

To make it happen, you need to take the Buyer’s Perspective
and achieve what I like to call, “I know that you know that I know.”

In other words, the executive decision maker needs to understand that your head is inside their business—not the product or service you want to sell them.

Here’s how you do it.

A Proven Formula for Selling to the C-Suite



[image error]



1. Highlight External Factors

External Factors are out of the control of your C-level
decision maker. They might be regulatory changes, tariffs, interest rates,
geopolitics, oil prices, technology changes, and so on. It’s literally what
keeps executives awake at night (but please, don’t ever ask any executive that
question).

External Factors are critical because it’s where you can create the most value—it’s where both the problem and the solution are unknown. So, start each of your executive conversations with a few External Factors that are out of their control, to establish your credibility in the first couple minutes of the sales conversation.

2. Identify Business Initiatives

Your prospect’s business initiatives, or “strategic
initiatives”, are often shaped by External Factors. These are essentially the
major drivers of the company. Are they trying to increase share, grow revenue, cross-sell/upsell,
expand into new markets, grow through mergers and acquisitions? You need to
identify what their strategic initiatives might be.

Check out this 20-minute cheat sheet for making your executive conversations more insightful.

3. Introduce Unconsidered Needs

Executives are always looking for an edge. Telling an executive something they already know doesn’t create that edge or bring any value. By introducing Unconsidered Needs, you’re amplifying a missed opportunity or a problem they’ve underappreciated or didn’t even know about. That’s how you create urgency and differentiate yourself.

What is an Unconsidered Need? Think of it this way: You’re telling your C-level decision maker something they didn’t already know about an opportunity, problem, or risk they didn’t know they had.

Sometimes you can’t challenge the executive’s strategy, but you can challenge their certainty by introducing a risk. And risk is one of the few subjects that doesn’t get delegated down. When you bring in a risk, you light up the executive’s brain to think more carefully about what they don’t already know.

4. Provide a Solution Story

You’ve shown that you understand the External Factors that
shape and create your buyer’s strategic business initiatives. But what is the
future state? How can you help them resolve the Unconsidered Needs you
identified and get to that future state? The connection between their current
state and their future state is your Solution Story.

The Solution Story is what creates a Buying Vision—the
vision of where you want to lead your buyer. And you’ll likely need to use
financial metrics in the process. Executives need financial proof to underpin
that Buying Vision.

5. Quantify the Business Impact

Decisions, even at an executive level, are made
subconsciously in less than the blink of an eye. Then the rational, analytical
part of the brain takes over to justify the decision. That’s the part that
responds to logical information like ROI.

Quantitative results and ROI don’t drive executive decisions, but they are useful as a tool to for the decision maker to explain their decision to others, and to justify it to themselves in the process, priming them for action.

The ROI calculation you use should be specific for your
customer. It might be return on sales. It could be return on capital. You just
need to do a little research. Look at their annual report, read an earnings
call transcript, and understand how the C-suite is being measured.

Conclusion

When selling to the C-suite, you need to elevate your conversation and teach them something they don’t already know about their business.

Create a compelling Buying Vision, illustrate how your solution can resolve their previously Unconsidered Needs, and how you can ultimately help them realize their strategic goals.

Watch my recent webinar, Toe to to with the CXO, to discover even more sales strategies and CXO insights for improving how you sell to C-level executives.

Thank you for reading this post from Corporate Visions - Differentiate Your Marketing Messages and Sales Conversations.