The way we do business and by default, how we sell, has changed significantly in this century, but the working day of a CEO remains largely the same. It is long, intense, and highly productive – even if more of it is conducted online than ever before (even CEOs have been working from home). They still need to optimise every minute of it – “optimise”, in our context, being a euphemism for deciding whether or not to grant any of their precious time to Salespeople.

For that reason the Executive Assistant (“EA”) is not yet a species in danger of extinction and we should still expect to encounter them when we enter the CEO’s inner circle. And as they are a key part of the CEO’s inner circle, they will definitely influence the decision-making process.

EA = CEO

In fact, the EA is an extension of the CEO in every respect. Every conversation, gesture – and indiscretion! – that occurs with the EA will get back to the CEO because their relationship can verge on the telepathic. Equally, the EA will be able to guide you around the CEO’s mindset and align you with the company bureaucracy and culture, so treat them as one and the same and you will increase your chances of doing business with them (both).

There are 3 clear areas where the EA will happily use their influence in your favour if you earn the right to the CEOs attention by collaborating professionally and sincerely with them:

AREA OF INFLUENCE 1 – COMMUNICATION

WHO GETS TO SPEAK TO THE CEO AND WHO DOESN’T?

OK, in this sense the EA is a gatekeeper, but they are not specifically keeping salespeople out. They are deciding who gets in. Their job is to organise the CEOs diary so that not a minute is wasted. You are not only competing with other salespeople, but everyone else in the CEO’s world –  members of their leadership team, top customers, investors, civic leaders, unions and possibly even the CEO’s own family members! If the EA decides that what you have to talk about is more important to the CEO than spending time with these groups, then you’ll get a slot.

How to sway this influence in your favor

The EA is busy, has heard it all before, and can spot bad, unprepared salespeople from 3 light years away, blindfolded, so be clear and concise about what you want and be sure you address a business problem you know for certain the CEO has, and that they will recognise they have. Anything else won’t work.

AREA OF INFLUENCE 2 – PERSONALITIES 

WHO THE CEO LIKES AND WHO THEY DON’T 

A top EA may be a permanent professional career companion of the CEO – hence the telepathy mentioned above. In fact many take their EAs with them when they change company. As such the EA will have a clear idea of the type of person the CEO likes to deal with and the type of company too. 

How to sway this influence in your favor

Listen intently when the EA is talking. At some point they will refer to the characteristics of  people and companies, often via innocuous anecdotes, sometimes deliberately, to steer you in the right direction e.g. “I think the VP of HR will be too busy for this, do you know our new Head of Special Projects?” If your relationship with the EA progresses this is how you find out who’s in and who’s out – and that includes both internal relationships (the CEO’s VPs and the anonymous internal budget rivals) and external relationships (your regular competition)

AREA OF INFLUENCE 3 – VALUES

WHAT THE CEO’S CURRENT HOT BUTTONS ARE 

Having worked so long together it’s inevitable that some EAs can become the CEO’s confidante in just about everything and are aware of the evolution of their personal values, beliefs and aspirations. Even CEOs buy on emotion and you can find out where these emotions are currently strongest by carefully asking the EA.

How to sway this influence in your favor

Do a ton of research to back up ask discovery questions about the chief’s way of thinking: “How does the boss feel about X…?” or “I saw one of the CEO’s presentations from a trade show – it doesn’t seem to reflect where your company is going these days – can I ask what’s changed?”

You should not think of the EA simply as a gatekeeper, who you have to “get past” in order to make your sales pitch to the boss. Their role goes far beyond that and if you recognise it in the way you interact with them you will get a great deal more airtime from CEOs, which means bigger deals, and quicker.

PS #1: it goes without saying that the CEO could easily be female. Ginni Rometty, Carly Fiorina (both IBM), Meg Whitman (eBay and HP) and Marissa Meyer (Yahoo!) have all led mega-companies

PS #2: he/she need not have the title “EA”. They may be disguised in another role.

IMMEDIATE FOLLOW-UP ACTIONS:

Select 5 CEO/EA pairs and do the following in the context of the instructions above:

• Prepare and practice a shorter, individualised, business-focused pitch. 
• Review your notes of conversations with the EA – you didn’t take any….? Start now.
• Study your customer in the news, social media  and on their web-site. What changes in strategy do you see?  Prepare a handful of questions about it for the EA, just in case you can’t get through to the CEO first time.

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Before starting on your journey it is essential to know exactly what it is you are trying to achieve and why you are trying to achieve it.  Selling through the Channel is a key strategic initiative which requires a permanent cultural change in an organization.  Putting a Channel Program together has a permanent impact, not just on how your company does business externally, but also how it operates internally.  Everything has to change so significantly that it is virtually impossible to change it back. You will either have a channel culture, or you won’t.

In this context I am reminded of the wise words of my secondary school woodwork teacher, Richard “Dickie” Jones – who used to tell us ham-fisted youngsters to “think twice, cut once”.  He was not a management consultant, but his advice could be used by many CEOs and Channel VPs today.  

When creating a Channel Program you might want to consider using a delicate, fine chisel to make frequent, precise adjustments rather than going crazy with a high-powered chainsaw, slashing at everything that moves.  We all know how that movie ended.

Dickie taught me that if you cut a piece of wood too small, you won’t get the chance to go back and start again, and even if you are lucky enough to cut it slightly too big, you will at least have to change tools or even the specifications to get it to fit snugly.  

The same applies as you’re creating your Channel Program.  If you go at it with a chainsaw, you may not have any wood left to work with, and the end result will be a genuine horror film. Getting it right first time is difficult, and a false step can have implications throughout the whole organization, so think hard about it, take each decision deliberately, and put the chainsaw back in the garage.

I typically help early-stage software vendors prepare and execute their international channel programs. If that sounds like you CLICK HERE to book an exploratory call to find out if we could work together. 

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The best salespeople know that everything is negotiable, but that still doesn’t mean that they always negotiate effectively. The reason? Top negotiators (particularly the buyers) often get a helping hand from their companies so that negotiations start before Salespeople even realise, before the first word is even exchanged! 

Excuse me? BEFORE you speak? How is that even possible?

It’s true. They use “corporate posturing” to set up the negotiation well in advance so that you, the salesperson, are immediately at a psychological disadvantage. 

Here are 4 everyday examples of how big (and not so big) companies use corporate posturing to put their buyers in the driving seat before anything has been discussed.

Posture 1. Playing hard to get (to)

Those slightly out of town corporate campuses must be fun places to work, but they can be hell to visit. Slightly too far away to make a return taxi ride economically justifiable, frequently just out of reach of efficient public transport, and with a huge car park of 1000 spaces, only 6 of which are reserved for visiting salespeople, so they are frequently full. Oh yeah, and they are skilfully hidden in the corner furthest from the entrance, so you can easily lose 10 minutes parking the car and walking the 200 metres back to reception. As a result you arrive still thinking about the journey and not about your sales pitch. Just what the buyer wants in the first meeting.

MY TAKE:

Don’t worry about it, if you’re smart it will only happen once and not at all if you schedule to arrive 15 minutes early (see post).

Posture 2. You can have VIP membership

Let’s move back into the middle of town. You walk into a downtown Reception area with an imposing 40 foot ceiling, beautiful designer furniture, a permanent modern art exhibition in one corner, and attractive young staff fresh from a Dolce & Gabbana catwalk whose job is to announce you to your contact. This company obviously has money and prestige! Your friends and colleagues will be so envious if you can do business here! And that is exactly what the buyer is counting on, so that you will make unrealistic concessions in return for your VIP membership of their glamorous club.

MY TAKE:

Your priority as a salesperson should be to go to the bank, not boast about which companies you visit. Millions of reps have got rich by selling unglamorous products to unglamorous companies, giving them the money to pay for any VIP membership they like.

Posture 3. Your heroics will be worth the effort

Protecting intellectual property and staff is a serious issue but some mega-companies use this as an excuse to intimidate suppliers. Reception staff with batons and handcuffs? You have to give up your ID card/passport while you visit? You pass through an airport-style security check, with a conveyor belt for your back-pack and everything? An international telco even insisted on putting THEIR ugly, big-ass sticker on MY laptop “to ensure there are no mix-ups when you leave” (excuse me??). The whole “experience” is designed to humiliate the salesperson and destroy their self-esteem. Simply getting through to the buyer’s cubicle really makes you feel like a heroic warrior. The buyer, of course, knows this, and promises that “it will be worth it in the end”, “there will be plenty of business”, “if you prove yourself”. You feel grateful for the recognition, and once you’re in that mindset, the buyer can get a concession more easily.

MY TAKE:

Don’t be taken in by promises of riches and be rigorous with meeting times. You can’t control how long it takes to get through the doors of Bully Inc. but you can control the time you leave. Never be late for the day’s next sales visit because one’s customer’s security processes eat up the time you scheduled with their people. If there really is a deal for you they will make more time to talk with you next time.

Posture 4. If you want to play here, these are our rules 

What started as a trend amongst HUGE multinationals to streamline and automate their purchasing processes for commodities has been converted into a corporate posturing best practice. Companies big and small now use their web-site to start negotiations early with salespeople by publishing their “non-negotiable” purchasing conditions and an occasional RFP.  This could mean, for example: “if you’re not prepared to give us 60% discount, free training and set-up, allow us to pay you at 365 days from invoice, and all that with an unconditional money-back guarantee, don’t even bother calling us”. 

MY TAKE:

One of my mentors once told me: “the prospect’s perspective of the price of a solution will always be conditioned by their perception of the cost of their problem”.  Whatever the apparent rules are, every company has problems it needs to fix, and budget to fix them, regardless of the rules they publish on their web-site. It’s your job as a salesperson to work out how severe the problem is, and how much it’s worth to them to get it fixed. 

If you apply this maxim to all four of the scenarios outlined in this post you will find that the corporate posturing of the buyer’s company has much less effect on your deal and you will end up negotiating more effectively.

Have you ever given a concession without the buyer pushing too hard? Do you think it was for one of these four reasons? Send me a Whatsapp message or email and tell me about it. 

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Not exactly. Are they important? YES. Are they a focus for the company’s Leadership? Of course they are. However, every Enterprise has bills and wages to pay each month, not to mention dividends to shareholders in many cases. Although management and economic theory changes and evolves, the basic over-riding business model of any business remains the same: Income must exceed Expenses. Always.

It is for that reason that you should include these two KPIs in your sales proposals, and if you do, you will boost your sales:

1. Show your Prospect how they can increase Income

2. Show your Prospect how they can reduce Expenses

Whichever way you look at it, it’s as simple as that. All other business drivers can be reduced to or linked to these two, and you will sell more if what you sell can be shown to have a (preferably, direct) impact on them.

Is that hard to grasp? If so, try this. First, ask your Prospect in what context they see your solution increasing Sales or reducing Expenses.  If the answer does not convince you, imagine the problems they will have convincing Leadership to release budget for their project. To avoid getting into that discussion you may want to adopt a solid qualification process and to position your offering in terms of its impact of use (both of these are key sales strategies expounded by The Sales Manual).

Do you disagree? If so, what are the KPIs that your Prospects refer to? Can they be linked to Income or Expenses?

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Always leave a Voicemail

Did you ever think that Voicemail is a golden opportunity to leave your Sales pitch? You have the Prospect’s exclusive attention; they can listen to you whenever they want, as often as they want; they can’t interrupt you, and you don’t even have to be there! As if that wasn’t enough, many systems let you record a message, listen to it, and then re-record it if you don’t like it! 

For that reason I’m astonished by the number of unsolicited calls I receive, which I am unable to answer, but the caller does not then leave a message? It’s like showing up for a sales interview and then….saying nothing? Why would you do that? You not only waste your precious time, but even worse, you waste the Prospect’s too.

Some corporate Voicemail systems give the caller up to 60 seconds to leave a message (but you can make your sales pitch in 20 seconds or less, right?) and also allow message forwarding to a colleague if the person called believes it relevant. What more do you want? I recommend you prepare a special pitch for voicemail starting with “Mr/Mrs/Ms X, thanks for listening to my message…” and ending with “You can reach me at XXX-phone….”

Read the OOO email reply

The OOO is just as useful, because you can pick up new information, but many Salespeople don’t even read them! Here’s an example of what they could be missing:

“Thanks for your message. I am OOO this week. If you need an urgent response please contact my boss/peer/trusted colleague @their-email.com or XXX-phone number”, or even better “….please contact me on my XXX-mobile”.

Does that look like your OOO email? Nearly all OOO emails are written like that – they have to be, that’s our “always connected” society. As a smart Salesperson you can take advantage of this. You can collect and document new information, and carry on your prospecting with different people, who may even be more relevant than your original contact! How great is that? Just one word of caution: carefully study the role of your contact’s substitute (e.g. look them up on LinkedIn), because they may need a different sales pitch.

Do you always leave a Voicemail message? What do you do when you see an OOO? Use the information you find to keep prospecting or call back when the prospect returns….?

You may also like to read “Every sales interaction must have a clear objective” and “Be ready to sell 24/7, whenever and wherever”

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You are on the verge of closing a big deal and then the Prospect asks for a testimonial within 24 hours. You don’t have anything prepared and so you quickly call up a Customer you haven’t spoken to for 12 months and they say “Yes, no problem”. BINGO! But didn’t you wonder why they agreed? It was quite likely because you fell into the Testimonial Trap. I only ever recall a Customer agreeing to a testimonial for one of three reasons:

1) They do it because they like you

You got lucky. Sometimes people just get on like a house on fire and that’s all there is to it. In these cases the Customer will sing your praises just because they like you and maybe even stick to the script you prepared for them to repeat to your Prospect. This is all very well while they are your contact, but if the testimonial has no real business substance you could have a problem as soon as they leave or change department, because there’s no guarantee that their substitute will be prepared to do the same. You will lose the “free” testimonial – and from now on you will have to give something up for it. Read on….

2) They use it to negotiate concessions

Experienced Buyers realize pretty quickly that are helping you out of a hole, particularly if you’ve never called them since making the sale. Like a spider waiting for a fly they are lying in wait, ready with the Testimonial Trap. By helping you, they will have the opportunity to network with a peer, publicize their company, brag about how buying from you was their idea, get valuable market information from a Competitor, and even position themselves for a better job, but they won’t tell you that. What they will tell you is that in return for this “favor” they will need one or more concessions, and in the future may even hold a gun to your head whenever there is a problem. Business is business and there is no such thing as a free lunch. Welcome to the Testimonial Trap.

So how do you get a testimonial to close the sale without giving away the shop?

3) They are motivated to do it because you do a great job

You agree and document success criteria before reaching a commercial agreement; you and your company continue meeting (exceeding?) expectations; you stay in touch frequently to make sure everything continues as desired.  What more can the Customer ask?  Given that an ideal testimonial is based on hard facts, and that these facts have been documented and agreed by both sides in the early stages of the sales process, your contact can still leave their company without having a negative impact on the relationship. 

Neither will it occur to your customer to specifically use your testimonial request as leverage in further negotiations because everything will be so going well that they will be competing with their colleagues to see their name associated with such a successful project/vendor/initiative. This is sales nirvana. When you make a sale this is what you should aspire to.

Why do your Customers agree to give testimonials? Can you think of another reason apart from the 3 mentioned?  

IMMEDIATE ACTION STEPS

To avoid falling into The Testimonial Trap with existing Customers, create the situation described in #3 above:

– Select your top 10 customers and ask them: “Why did you buy from us?” If the answer does not include success metrics, go back into “discovery mode” to develop them.

– If the answer does include success metrics ask: “Are those metrics still valid?”  If they are not, go back into “discovery mode” to develop new ones.

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The Sales Process can just as easily last a few seconds as a few years depending on the complexity of the solution. The bigger and more complex the deal, the more buyer-side interactions there will be, which you must identify and try to influence/control.

Nevertheless, it exists in every single sale, whether it is visible or not, and you must do what you can to control it. Hopefully, controlling the Sales side of the Sales Process should be feasible, but you should also find out about the Prospect’s Procurement Process and exert an influence on that as well.

It doesn’t matter whether you sell a product or service, you should think about all the interactions that occur between your company and the Prospect: calls, meetings, presentations, product demonstrations, workshops, training sessions, support calls, reference visits, meetings with leadership, meals, negotiations, etc., etc. If YOU are responsible for the sale then YOU will be under the microscope if things don’t work out, so make sure you know what’s going on at all times, particularly if you are not directly involved (this will happen, you may have to delegate certain tasks). And, if you believe your internal ecosystem is falling short, don’t hesitate to shout out to your sales manager and company leadership for help.

IMMEDIATE ACTION

Analyse ALL the elements of your typical Sales Process RIGHT NOW and make sure you know how they work and who performs the task. It could save your next Sale.

How complex is your Sales Process? What makes it unique? How many people are involved?

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1) Plan Your Sales Calls

Make a list of all the calls you are going to make, ideally planning the next call with each prospect at the very moment the current call finishes. Your diary will always be full of activities and you will be hyper-motivated. Put them in your CRM if you have one.

2) Plan Your Meetings 

a) Getting there – the mode of transport, how long it will take, and if you’re driving, the route, where you will park, and a Plan B which takes into account bad weather, heavier than normal traffic and other surprises. You must NEVER, NEVER be late.

b) Being there – rehearse your opening phrase, memorize the key questions you will ask, decide the length of the meeting, who will go with you (if anyone) and find out who will be there from the customer’s side.

3) Plan Your Opportunities

Plan the complete sales process from start to finish. How many calls/visits you are going to make, the competition you expect to be up against, (and how you plan to address their weak/strong points), under what conditions you will send a proposal/offer, and, logically, when you expect to receive the PO. 

Finally, each of these tasks goes with a well-thought out objective and a plan of how you are going to achieve it.  Does it sound like a lot of work? Yes it does, because successful Salespeople plan everything, every day. Do you want to succeed or not?

How much time do you set aside for planning every day? When do you do it? What time of day suits you best?

You might also be interested in these posts:

Be more than punctual – get to customer meetings 15 minutes early

How to take your colleague(s) to a sales call 

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The big question is:  to what degree has this changed the way we should present ourselves to our Customers and Prospects?  What is acceptable and what is not?  Has a new business dress-code been born?  Covid has certainly blurred the lines.  The “business casual” dress-code has been around for some time now, and even IBM doesn’t ask its salesmen to wear a tie to the office anymore, but if we turn back the clock to December 2019 – would you have shown up to your Customer’s office looking like you’d just been cleaning the car or digging the garden?  Would that have given you a greater or lesser chance of doing business……?  I think you know the answer. 

In this respect the traditional rule still applies:  every sales call is essentially a job interview, so present yourself accordingly and show professional respect to the other person.  Is business casual OK? – absolutely.  Sports leisure wear such as track suits? Yes of course. In fact you can wear just about anything provided it is neat and clean.  The big difference now is that WFH has made it even more difficult to separate the personal from the professional, so instead of dressing as if we were going to a corporate office, we have to look at our business appearance from a different perspective. 

To do that, think of the other people on your call as guests in your home and yourself as a guest in theirs.  How would you dress? Would you wear a jacket and tie?  Probably not, but not a crumpled T-shirt either and you would be definitely be showered and well-groomed.  What would your home look like?  You would only show them the areas that were clean, tidy, and organised, right? (artificial back-drops are a wonderful invention if you have no other choice but to make the call from your bedroom).  There would be the minimum of distractions – the kids (and the dog) would be under strict instructions to contain themselves. And of course it’s unlikely that you would meet your guests directly from cleaning the car or digging the garden.  

An online call is still a professional meeting, and whether you are working from home or in a F2F meeting we’re still Salespeople, not YouTube personalities.  Customers and Prospects will still base part of their decision-making on how we look, whether we like it or not, so if you haven’t done so already, take care of your online appearance, because although a new dress-code has been born, the reasons for the old dress-code didn’t die (yet). 

Immediate follow up actions:

• Think about how the global pandemic has changed the way you present yourself in online meetings – have you lapsed into any bad habits?
• What could you do differently to project a more professional image?
• Read our previous post on (F2F) business appearance

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This particular post doesn’t address HOW to close (although some of the more sophisticated closing techniques do form part of The Sales Manual methodology and will be published in the future) but we will give you 12 good reasons WHY you should do it. Successful Salespeople ask the Prospect to buy, they ask them often, and they know how and when to ask without getting a door slammed in their face. 

You need to ask the Prospect to buy because:

1. Each opportunity exists because of a particular set of circumstances.   The stars may not be aligned forever, so move fast and ask for the business.
2. Asking for the business is a good habit. Most of the time you won’t get the PO if you don’t ask for it.  Any delay will result in a delay to your commission cheque and will mean less cash flow for your company.  But if that “delay” becomes a habit you could start to lose deals regularly, just for not asking.
3. The Prospect won’t ask you if they can sign the PO voluntarily – we should be so lucky!
4. The Prospect is expecting you to do it, so don’t be afraid.
5. If you don’t ask the competition will and…… game over!
6. If you don’t ask for the business, how can you uncover the Prospect’s objections? Sometimes this is the only way to make them open up. 
7. You make the sales process shorter by closing sooner, and that gives you more time to spend on the next deal
8. Some people really are indecisive, the first Salesperson to ask will get the business.
9. If what you do is in any way related to getting business for the company, even if your job title is not Salesperson, it’s your job to ask for the business, nobody else’s.
10. How else do you expect to get the deal?
11. The Sales Manual says you should
12. The Sales Manual says you should, again (you will often have to ask for the business more than once).

What’s your biggest problem with asking the Prospect to buy? 

Are you afraid of “NO”?

Do you feel embarrassed to ask for money?

Neither of these?

Let me know (privately) what your reason is.

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