Sales & Business Development Blog

In today’s tough marketplace, most high value sales start with a powerful consultative sales meeting with a C-Level executive in the client organisation. For many sales people this can either be quite daunting and for others it will be something that they approach without enough structure to make the meeting really worthwhile.

So how can sales people effectively (and systematically) engage at the C-Level to rapidly develop new, high value sales opportunities? Well, you have to know how the C-Level’s mind works.

The exec will typically (either consciously or sub-consciously) compartmentalise their world into the following 5 areas:

1. External pressures that he or she cannot change (or avoid), e.g. the economic uncertainty, competitive pressure, consumer trends
2. Internal pain-points that these external pressures cause, e.g. uncertain profits, revenue erosion, rising costs
3. Strategic desires to counter these pain-points, e.g. increased revenue per customer, improved customer retention, increased customer loyalty
4. How he or she can achieve these strategic desires (or objectives)
5. The specific inputs (including partnerships, products, services and tasks) required to make the strategic desires a reality

Life really is this simple or complex for C-level execs, depending on how detailed you want to go into this. It’s simple because it’s a sequence of 5 stages of analysis, planning and execution. However, it’s also complex because there are many variables or possibilities at each stage.

The great news is that a sales person can engage in high value conversations with an exec without knowing all the details at each stage. The crucial point is that the best sales conversations actually follow this sequence of stages from 1-5 and stay at stages 1-3 for at least 50% of the conversation time. This approach is what C-Level execs expect from peer-level partners. The approach transforms the conversation because it clearly positions the conversation around the exec’s world as opposed to the seller’s world. Only when you have probed stages 1-3 properly and have clearly understood the exec’s thinking, should you even attempt to offer suggestions or discuss stages 4 & 5, i.e. how the exec might achieve his or her strategic objectives, or specific inputs that might help.

This is very similar to performance coaching. Coaches have to truly understand their subject’s world: the pressures they face; the problems these cause and what improvements the subject wants to achieve.

An effective solution sales person must probe and understand the client’s world before suggesting solutions. Even if you have pre-analysed stages 1-3, you can ask leading questions relating to stage 1, but you must let the exec tell you stages 2 and 3. If you suggest pain-points or objectives, you risk implying that you are telling the exec how to do his or her job. Be calm and be prepared to listen and you will reap rewards in today’s selling world.

Written by: Steve Eungblut, Managing Director of Sterling Chase