Earning the right to meet with key executives

Understand that Executives want to talk to Vendors

Executives at the highest levels are always tasked with some form of change: increase revenues; reduce costs, merge with this organization; introduce that product; etc. They understand that vendors are agents of change. What we as vendors often forget is that executives are smart enough to know that vendors can help them achieve their goals.

The trick is to be one of the vendors the executive chooses to listen to. The following are some thoughts that are common to any vendor wishing to get the attention of a senior executive.

Respect their time when proactively approaching executives:

Is interrupting their day with cold calling techniques like the “Hour of Champions” really effective? Even if the executive takes the call, is your caller really prepared for a conversation at that level? Can your caller effectively communicate your value proposition? Is your caller doing damage to your brand?

Establish a passive, non-threatening tone. Approach them on their terms; let them control the process of your introduction. Do this by working through the Executive Assistant
Differentiators.Our role
Suggest a discussion between business peers, not as a vendor to a prospect. Offer to have one of your executives make the call
Turn your process upside down
Have your caller present themselves as the EA to your executive
Request a short slot in the executive’s calendar – We ask for fifteen minutes
Differentiators: Our Call to action
Suggest a phone call, not a face-to-face meeting

Focus on Impact in your messaging
Get right to the quantifiable business benefit. Approach them as a business peer offering valid, proven business solutions.

Tell them stories about how other companies have benefited from your solutions. Present quantifiable proof of impact. Avoid phrasing your message around what you can do for them. Instead, emphasize what you have done for others. Get right to the quantifiable business benefit.

Let them connect the dots
Don’t try to learn about their business. They know their business better than you ever will. They will connect the dots and match your solutions with their problems.

They don’t have time to lie
They will tell you what impact you can have on their organization and their short, medium and long term priorities.

Respect your contact data

Segment your contact data based on the contact’s decision making power. Develop budgets for initiating and maintaining dialogs with the various segments.

For your top segment, your key decision makers and influencers, put effort into micro-targeting to get the right people. There are economic benefits for sales leads organizations using the Ready-Aim-Fire model, instead of the Ready-Fire-Aim model. This effort can take as much as 60-70% of your project effort, but your returns are significant.

Don’t trust third party data: We see horrendous error rates in contact data – up to 80% major errors. Third party databases are big culprits, but so are internal databases. What can your ROI be when only 20% of your data is good?

Develop different data maintenance plans for your contact data segments: Establish processes for maintaining your different segments. For key senior targets, invest in making the calls to double check your contact data prior to executing your project. Recipients are looking for reasons to discard your unsolicited request. With literally hundreds of requests coming into executives a week, a name spelled incorrectly could be all it takes.

Consider the following to develop and maintain contact data for your highest level segment:

Always capture EA information: Plan your future EA-centric campaigns now. Enhance your CRM system to manage EA information.

Use modern tools: Tools like Google toolbar, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and Jigsaw are great sources of quality seed data.

Understand their switchboard systems & protocols: All switchboards have different degrees of discipline and rules regarding outsiders asking questions. Know what you can extract from different switchboards and develop strategies to work with their unique rules. Use first names, even at switchboards.

Rethink traditional strategies

If your solution falls into an existing category, how do you differentiate your message from the crowd? If your solution is a category buster, how do your prospects know how to look for your solution? How can they find you if they aren’t looking?

Do “Traditional” e-marketing strategies work? Think about the quality of your touches and the quality of the leads you are passing on to Sales. Are the “Traditional” e-marketing tools delivering the quality of leads that convert to real pipeline opportunities? Do page views and click-throughs work? Do webinars, whitepaper syndication or Google Ads do the trick?

Download Knoa Software Case Study

Turn your process upside down: Think about turning your process upside down. Offer your executives instead of a whitepaper or a qualifying call, or a webinar or a landing page. Involve them in the process. What if your CEO asked her peers, the 200 CEOs of your top prospects, to have a 15 minute exploratory phone conversation? How would your conversion rate change? And what would the quality of the results be?

Avoid Gimmicks: At the highest levels, gimmicks dilute the quality of your brand and don’t help find quality leads.

Focus on the EA: Respect them. Deliver letters directly to the EAs - by courier to show you are serious.

Find out more by clicking the following link: Turn Gatekeepers into Guides

Deliver your message via a letter

Recipients treat your communications with the same respect you do. If you pay fractions of a penny to send an email, the recipient will disregard it with the same ease with which it took you to send it. Emails or snail mails, as fast as you can send them, they can delete them or throw them out.

If you treat your piece with great respect, your recipient will reciprocate and treat it with the same amount of respect.

Throw out your copy writing rulebook

Know your readers – Senior Executives. Copy that gets their attention is numbers focused, net and crisp, with lots of whitespace. Write your copy so they can connect the dots in their own way.

The following are selected editorial hints:
Use proof not promises. Develop & manage your Testimonial Portfolio
Do use numbers in your benefits
Do not use adjectives or adverbs
Do use industry acronyms and short forms
Do not name your solution
Do trade off grammar for crispness
Do not editorialize. State the facts

Turn Gatekeepers into Guides

Have your callers approach Gatekeepers as their peer. Your callers represent themselves as the EA to your executive. Find out more about turning Gatekeepers into Guides.

Preparing & executing your meetings

GE Finance’s CTO, Joe Eisenstat, has just agreed to 15 minutes with you. How do you prepare? How do you maximize your sales effectiveness with Paul Turino, EVP of Emerging Technology at Citibank or Ibrahim Gedeon, CTO for Telus?

Frank Cicio, EVP of Enterprise Solutions for digital virtualization vendor SIMtone knows. Through his work with partner Corner Office Leads, he has executed over one hundred 15 minute introductory phone conversations with the most senior executives in his prospects. “I didn’t realize that I can have a valuable two directional conversation with a CIO in 15 minutes on the phone,” says Frank. “Many of these executives challenged me and forced me to think about how my solutions were perceived by the outside world”. This forced a serious re-think of his approach to these meetings.

We interviewed Frank and asked him for his thoughts on preparing for these high quality meetings. Read more in our SIMtone Case Study The following agenda makes for an effective fifteen minute conversation:

Present your value proposition (five minutes) with facts supporting the business impact you have had at other companies.
Explore together (five minutes) areas where you might be able help them and connect need with solution.
Agree jointly on an action plan (five minutes)

Put the executive at ease as quickly as possible by putting a fence around the discussion. Help them understand the broad context of the conversation you are about to have. Are you there to sell airplanes or paperclips? Get right to the point.