So, how do you get past the low-level gatekeepers and get access to the higher levels? Here are a few proven techniques you can leverage to ‘make the little sale’ of why you deserve to meet your customer’s boss, their boss’s boss, and the senior executives of the company. Most of these techniques leverage concepts that have already been introduced in this book. Here are a few practical examples of how to use them in your effort to elevate your customer’s buying process.
1. Leverage the Business Value Hierarchy Model
A gatekeeper might block you from gaining access to those higher up in the corporate structure for a number of reasons. One is that they may not trust you, or they simply may not like you, but more likely it’s that they assume you are going to ask the same exact questions, and talk about the same products and services with their boss, that you have talked about with them. If you are selling in broadcast mode, and wowing them with advantages and benefits, instead of asking questions about possible business disparities, cause and effect, and cross-organizational impact, they would look silly bringing you to their boss. They were told to gather all that detail and sift through it on the boss’s behalf. We have to start asking questions about, and sharing ideas about, how we might be able to help reach their boss’s goals, or to solve their boss’s problems.
Whatever the subject matter of the conversation, whether it be the problems they are experiencing or the goals they are trying to attain, we should be asking questions like . . .
‘Why is this objective so important right now?’
or
‘What are the effects that this problem creates?’
. . . in order to understand the cause-and-effect relationships that link the issue at hand to the higher-level goals and objectives of the company. As we build our business acumen, we will understand more about what causes what in business, so that when we converse with our customers-and they talk to us about the business issues they are faced with-we will be prepared to ask the right questions. We’ll be asking questions not just about the issues they face at their level, and the impact those issues have on their world, but the effect that these issues cause for their boss, and how they impact their boss’s world. We need to be able to link everything that our products and services do, all the way up to increasing revenue, reducing costs, and better utilizing assets, in order to maximize our client’s profitability.
In our workshops we help participants make the transition ‘from sales rep to profit advisor,’ by helping them to understand the linkages between the functional capabilities of their products and services and the business issues facing the various executives within their customer’s business. We want to be able to translate the value of what we sell to increased profit to our customers, and ultimately trace the value of every feature and function of our product or service to the specific line item on our client’s Balance Sheet or Income Statement. Sounds like a tall order, doesn’t it? Well, that’s the power of the Business Value Hierarchy (BVH) concept, and why it is such a powerful tool in the hands of sales professionals who learn to use it.
In The Cause and Effect of Business Value, I offered a number of practical applications for the BVH model, both during discovery and presentation, several of which were specific to earning access to executives. Even during somewhat casual conversation, when our client happens to mention that they are concerned about poor customer satisfaction, for example, we can explore a possible link to executive-level business issues by asking questions like:
- ‘Is that causing a problem with customer retention? How is your chief marketing officer (CMO) affected by this?’
- ‘Is this having a negative effect on revenue? What does your vice president of sales have to say about that?’
- ‘Has this caused any increase in accounts receivable or any problem with collections? What has your CFO done to try to deal with that?’
- ‘Is all this impacting overall profitability? What is your CEO planning to do to correct this before it winds up causing your company to miss your quarterly earnings estimate?’
You may want to look back in The Cause and Effect of Business Value to see the visual representation of these questions.
When we ask questions about real business problems, and the people that are affected by them, we demonstrate our business savvy and our value as a potential partner. Then if we can start to weave in a few stories about how we have helped other companies within our customer’s industry deal with similar problems, as well as some of the results we were able to help them achieve, the psychology begins to change. The customer starts to think, ‘Wow. These guys have done this before. Maybe if I got this guy in front of my boss, or the CMO or CFO, they would be impressed and I could look like a hero for finding him.’
I am in the business of making heroes out of gatekeepers. I want to make them look as good as I possibly can. When you go to the meeting with their boss, make sure and say, ‘Here are some of the ideas John and I came up with last time we met.’ Give them all the credit you can.
2. Focus on Point ‘C’
One way to prove that you deserve to be speaking to those who will make the Action Decision is by staying focused on learning all you can about point ‘C,’ their desired outcomes and results. I honestly believe that until we hear the description of what point ‘C’ is, and what value they hope to derive there, from the mouth of the person or persons who will make the final Action Decision, I still don’t know how to properly position myself to win.
How can I possibly craft a solution that is ‘dead on’ and hits the bull’s-eye for the final decision maker if they won’t describe it to me in their own words? Did you ever, as a kid in school, play that game where the teacher whispers something in the ear of one student, and then she whispers it to the next student, and so on, and so on, until it comes out at the other end as something completely different than what was said to start with? That’s what happens when visions of ‘C’ trickle down through an organization in a top-down initiative. It’s even worse when it starts from the bottom-up and we have no clue whatsoever as to what’s important to the executives.
I have learned through common sense, trial and error, and direct experience how to ask key questions that help me earn access to senior decision makers so I can learn what I need to know to start positioning myself to win. You can too! The questions vary based on what you sell, the market you sell to, and how a typical customer in your market makes buying decisions. Therefore, as my sales role and the types of buyers I sell to have changed over the years, so have the questions I use to gain access.
At Sales Excellence, Inc., we use a combination of inbound and out- bound approaches to identify new business opportunities. One of the most common situations we encounter is when a sales manager plans a quarterly or annual sales meeting for his or her team and then decides to dedicate one or two days to sales skills training.
The chore of locating several potential vendors is inevitably handed off to an assistant or someone in the marketing or human resources department. That’s who goes out to a search engine, types in ’sales training,’ and finds our website. That person then calls us with a standard list of questions:
- ‘What kind of programs do you offer?’
- ‘What is the duration?’
- ‘What will our people learn?’
- ‘How much does the program cost?’
The worst possible thing that we could do would be to answer any of these questions. If we were to simply answer those questions, our name would go into a hat and stand very little chance of ever getting pulled back out. When I take the call, I handle every one of these inquiries in the same exact way.
First, I hear them out. I listen to anything and everything they are willing to tell me about their company, the details of the meeting, how many people will attend, what other kinds of training may have been provided recently, and so on. When I can tell they are getting tired of talking, I say, ‘I’ll bet you called to ask us:
- What kind of programs do you offer?
- What is the duration?
- What will our people learn?
- How much does the program cost?
Is that right?’
They frequently think I am a mind reader. Then I tell them, ‘I would love to answer all those questions for you, but unfortunately I can’t.’
‘Why not?’ they usually ask. ‘Because before I can propose the right solution, I have to under- stand a few things first, such as:
- What is the highest-level goal or objective we are trying to address here? What would we be trying to accomplish with this workshop?
- Is this goal or objective measurable? And if so, how is it measured? How can we gauge our success? What metrics can we use to measure the effects of this training three months or six months after the event is over?
- What changes in attitudes and behavior must take place in order to see marked improvements in these measures or metrics? Put more simply, what do we want participants to be able or willing to think or do the day after this training session that they couldn’t or wouldn’t think or do the day before?’
Not one person who has ever called our office has known the answers to these questions. Ninety-five percent of the time, the person from marketing or HR says, ‘Well, we will have to get the vice president of sales on the phone to answer that.’ Even the occasional VP of sales who picks up the phone to call us themselves has to go back and think a little bit before they can answer these questions adequately. The questions are designed specifically to have that effect.
These kinds of questions, which are focused entirely on our customer’s ‘C’-and have nothing at all to do with our ‘B’-force executive-level conversation and brainstorming. They also encourage our involvement in the discussion and the creation of the ideal training workshop or program. At Sales Excellence, we find that when we earn that kind of access to sales executives and we work together to craft a solution, we can close 80 percent of those opportunities. When their sales executives won’t engage in a discussion about what ‘C’ means to them, or when we have three phone conversations with the marketing or HR person without being granted access to those who will make the Action Decision, we move on to the next opportunity. Period. Even if they did want to hire us, the chances of getting them to ‘C’ are nil. How can you possibly hit a bull’s-eye you don’t have?
You will need to craft your own questions that force interaction with the strategic decision makers in your particular selling environment. To make them effective, make sure they are focused squarely on under- standing the ‘C’ your customer wants to achieve, and not on finding out what kind of ‘B’ they want to buy.
3. Develop a Process of Mutual Discovery
In Reverse-Engineering the Buying Process we talked about how to leverage a Process of Mutual Discovery plan to gain access to executives. I will reiterate here that following this approach, you will be forced to speak with executives to get a complete picture of all the things that need to happen before the customer can buy. Gatekeepers tend to understand this better when you request access in the context of completing your process map than if you just say, ‘I want to meet your boss.’ If they like your process, which is to fully understand and document their process, they will be much less guarded and often will help you get the access you need to create an accurate model of their internal decision process and policies.
Once the process is produced, even in the early drafts or revisions, your customer will much more easily understand why you need certain decision makers involved in certain meetings, and often will help to make sure the right people are invited and attend.
4. Share a Reference Story or a Case Study
I have made it a habit to collect success stories as told at the level of the person who will ultimately be responsible for the success of the initiative at hand. This is usually at the vice president-level or higher. Learning to tell the stories using terms and measures and lingo that VPs can relate to earns you access to other VPs.
When possible, we should collect stories as told by the CEO or another C-Level executive. Stories about how other CFOs have used your products and services to achieve goals and objectives that are top-of-mind issues for CFOs helps you earn access to other CFOs. Plus, once you get there, you can talk about how the functional capabilities of your products and services translate into value in the eyes of a CFO.
I encourage my clients to make their success stories both value specific as well as role specific. If you have a happy customer, who uses your solution across their business enterprise, work hard to collect success stories about how your solutions have delivered tangible business value to the CEO; the finance executive (CFO); operations executives (president, plant manager, or COO); sales and marketing executives; and (if appropriate) information technology (IT) executives. That way you can tell your story in the language of whichever executive you are meeting with.
Reducing inventories, for example, conjures up different ideas and feelings depending on the role of the person you’re talking to. A finance executive might see it as a way to save money on carrying costs and overhead. An operations executive might be interested in freeing up working space on the shop floor, while the vice president of sales and marketing might see it as a threat that could result in more back orders, lower order fill-rates, and problems with customer satisfaction and retention.
One more point here. In this situation, don’t use a preprinted reference story or case study. The second you show the lower-level person the printed sheet, they will take the sheet to their boss, instead of you. You are the storyteller. You go tell the story. Then you can ask a few questions and more important . . . listen!
5. Bring Your Boss to the Meeting
Most customers understand that when you bring your director or vice president to the meeting, they need to invite their director or vice president as well. But we can’t assume they will know to do this. We may need to bargain with them, or strike a deal of some kind. Perhaps you bring your boss to talk about their request for a customized proof-of- concept demo, and, in exchange, they bring their vice president of operations, who is the person who will have the final say on the success of that proof-of-concept.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be your boss. You might decide to bring an implementation specialist to meet the people who will be involved in their implementation. You could bring a business analyst to meet their executives and get very specific about how you can help them accomplish their objectives on time and under budget. Or, if it applies in your market, bring your leasing partner, or whoever can have a discussion about financing, to meet with their CFO or VP of finance to discuss their finance options. Leveraging the other players on your team can help to justify accessing and meeting with other people on their team.
6. Trade Something They Want for the Access You Want
We’ve already talked about the principle of trying never to do something for nothing. Sometimes the best thing we could ask for in return for what they want is access to their key personnel. If your client wants you to come over to conduct a site survey or needs analysis, you might respond by saying:
‘If we did take the time to come over and walk around your manufacturing plant, would you be willing to arrange a meeting right afterward with the one person who is going to be held financially accountable for the success or failure of this project? Before we could put together a solid value proposition, we would need to understand exactly how they will justify, plan for, allocate, and secure the funding; how they plan to account for the investment; as well as exactly how the payback and return will be measured. Because without knowing that, any proposal we would submit would be like shooting in the dark. Does that sound fair to you?’
Start thinking about these kinds of ‘trades’ early on, while you still have things they want. Once they’ve seen your demo, called your references, and have your quote or proposal, they may not want anything else. Think ahead, so you don’t run out of things to trade.
7. Insist on Executive-Level Answers to Specific Qualifying Questions
I have a set of four high-level qualifying questions that have served me very well for many years, especially in my days of selling seven-figure technology solutions. I often share these in our workshops, because they work particularly well when we get a surprise call from a relatively low- level contact, and especially if they want us to invest our time and energy to complete an unannounced RFP. You can use these in one of two ways, depending on what you are comfortable with.
One way to use these questions is to ask them of the person who has contacted you. You might preface them something like this: ‘We are excited to be considered for this project, Mr. Thompson. I wonder if you would mind if I ask you a few specific questions before we agree to complete the RFP?’
- ‘What is the highest-level goal you are trying to achieve, or problem you are trying to solve?’ We are asking about the Action Decision with this question. What we want to flesh out is whether this is a top-down or a bottom-up initiative, and whether or not they have identified a particular business objective (point ‘C’) that is important enough to take action on now.
- ‘What other courses of action have you considered, or are you considering, to solve this problem?’ With this question I want to determine if this person is even aware that there are other initiatives and other courses of action competing for the same resources, or if they are just blindly doing what somebody else has told them to do.
- ‘How do you plan to justify and account for the investment?’ Here, I am clearly asking about resources. I want to see where they are with the Resource Decision, and if the individual I am dealing with is prepared to explain to their CFO why this project should be staffed and funded, instead of a dozen others.
- ‘What bad thing would happen if you just did nothing?’ This is a great all-around qualifying question that normally reveals information about the Action Drivers-and especially the consequences-fueling the initiative. Their answer can also reveal indications of where they are in their overall buying process.
What you’ll find is that the person who calls you normally doesn’t know the answer to any of these questions. After that becomes apparent, we can say, ‘Well, Mr. Thompson, before my boss will allow me to invest a bunch of time and money in this opportunity, I have to be able to explain to him why I think we should. I’m sure you can understand that.’ If we get a ‘Yes,’ we can continue on with, ‘Do you think you could help me get a hold of somebody who would know some of these things, so I can be a little more prepared when I go to my boss with this opportunity?’ This is a very effective approach for getting high- level access very quickly. I like to think of the answers to these questions as prerequisites to the investment of our sales resources.
The second way to use these questions, which also works exceptionally well, is what I call the ‘reality check.’ Again I want to remind you, if you don’t feel comfortable with this approach, just leave it on the shelf. Personally, I have spent too many man-years chasing my own tail, desperately trying to win the Source Decision of some ill-begotten, bottom-up initiative, which never did find its way to an executive’s desk. The reality check has been an exceptional qualification technique to avoid this.
This scenario works well when a RFP just shows up in the mail unannounced, or when it comes to you by way of a partner, such as a consulting firm that has been retained by the prospect to help them create and distribute the RFP. Once you’ve had a chance to look it over, make note of the clause that is almost always present, which says, ‘Do not call anyone at our company except the person whose name is given herein,’ which is usually a low-level contact or the chairman of some selection committee. Then, completely ignore that note and immediately place a call directly to the CFO of the company.
You might get the CFO live, but more likely you’ll get an assistant. Explain that you received the surprise RFP and before your boss will let you invest the time to respond to it, you have to ask the CFO four quick questions. The conversation could be as short as five or ten minutes, only more if the CFO has more she wants to say. Once you get her on the phone, very politely ask the four questions above.
I have never met a CFO who has ever had a problem with my phone call or with these four questions, and I have used this approach dozens of times. Some of the opportunities proved to be valid, and we responded and competed as best we could. But at least we knew it was a real deal! I can also tell you that I remember at least a half-dozen times that the CFO had no clue whatsoever about any RFP, or any project or initiative of this kind currently under consideration. Using this simple but effective technique, I have saved myself a lot of time and heartache by not chasing several bottom-up initiatives that were destined to ‘die on the vine.’
The key, here, is that I didn’t ask anyone’s permission to make the call. When you ask permission, they say ‘No,’ and then you do it anyway, somebody usually gets mad. When you don’t ask permission and you call, they normally only get frustrated. But this is very often worth the risk to make sure that the response or proposal you will invest hours or maybe even days worth of time in, is a responsible use of your company’s time and money.
8. Sell Wider
One of the most effective ways to sell higher is to sell wider. There are several reasons for this. First, I have found many gatekeepers who work in operations, for example, are much less afraid of the idea of me calling their CFO, than calling their COO, who is their boss’s boss’s boss. They often have much less fear of being reprimanded for not ‘blocking me.’ The second reason is once you get two different units, two departments, or two different ‘brand teams’ involved in an initiative, the person who will make the final Action Decision usually becomes someone who has oversight and responsibility for both groups.
If I am engaged in a sales campaign with my customer’s operations department, for example, and I am able to get some people in sales and marketing or finance excited about what our solution can do to help them, too, then the decision is usually pushed up to the president or CEO level. When we can proactively drive the Action Decision up a layer, it provides one of the best reasons I know to ask for access to that Action Decision maker. If it starts out as an operations-only initiative, and the COO is identified as the ‘final decision maker,’ the gatekeepers tend to guard him with their lives. But when you and I can cause a change in their buying process, such as a change in who will make that final Action Decision, then our request to meet with the new decision maker is almost always met with far less resistance.
Another benefit of learning to sell wider is the potential to tap into other budgets and resources. Your client’s operations department might have spent all the money they budgeted for the year, but maybe Finance has some that they could free up, if we could make a good business case for why it would be a good investment to do so. Maybe Finance could combine their resources with those of Operations to afford an investment that neither could afford to make on their own.
By far the best-kept secret for appropriating the funds needed to invest in enterprise-wide solutions is the sales and marketing department. If you can use the Business Value Hierarchy model, and the cause-and-effect-of-business concept, to demonstrate how your solutions can not only save money (reduce costs) for operations, but can actually drive new sales (increase revenue) for the sales and marketing department, it is amazing how often Sales and Marketing can get the funding they need. Companies perceive investments to cut costs and investments to drive revenue completely differently. You try it. Start looking for creative ways to help your customers sell more, as opposed to just spend less, and see how quickly they find the money they need to take you up on it.
The most important thing about selling wider, however, is the political and relational clout we earn by meeting with and building relationships with more people who can derive value from our business solutions. In the final analysis, it is the collective perceived value of what we offer that will be weighed as they make the Resource, Course, and Action Decisions.
As illustrated, the more business disparities we can convert into business results, the greater the collective perceived value of what we sell.
The more ‘A’s’ we can identify, and the more ‘C’s’ we can deliver, the more likely we are to win all the little decisions and the big decision as well, because . . .
The best way to influence a collective perceived value is to identify and deliver more desired results for more of the people involved.
Selling wider enables us to broaden our relationship base within our customer’s company. If we are selling to and building relationships with only one or two people within our client’s organization, we are exposing ourselves to a huge risk. What happens when our one ‘hero’ quits, gets promoted, or gets fired? What if our one internal ‘champion’ can’t make the internal sale? Do we just go down in flames with them?
The importance of developing many relationships between the personnel of our company and the personnel of our client’s company cannot be overstated. It is crucial, especially in the case of our best customers, to build strong working relationships with multiple people throughout our company and theirs in order to weather any unforeseen storms that can, and usually do, come up along the way.
These are just a few suggestions that I hope you can put to use in your endeavor to make the ‘little sale’ to earn access to higher levels. But remember, once you get to the boss, you’ve only got three meetings to try to get through to that person’s boss, or to someone else in the company, before you get stuck again. This is an ongoing process. We should continue to try to meet with more people, and build more relationships, both higher and wider within our customer’s organization for as long as we continue to do business with them. It might be tough to accept but this is true . . .
If every time we go see our customer, we meet with the same person who already likes us, and who already wants to buy from us, we are not really doing our job.
We need to meet with and earn the trust of the people who we haven’t met yet, or who don’t like us, or who are determined to buy from our competitor. These are the people we really need to be selling to. The more people you meet, learn to understand, and build relationships with in your customer’s organization, the more you will be able to influence how and why your customer buys.