The 3 Keys That Unlock Your Engagement with Executive Buyers
You operate in high-value, complex Sales.
Your target buyers are senior executives.
You’re finding it difficult to reach them and even harder to engage them.
You need an edge.
Read this article.
Why is selling a challenge at the executive level?
Executives are extremely time-poor. Their job is tough. Add to that the energy drain that comes from being bombarded with countless pitches by hopeful sales reps every hour of every day. They’re exhausted.
Senior executives perceive sales pitches as unwelcome disruptions in their day. These emails, calls, and other forms of outreach divert their attention, steal their time, and derail their train of thought on a regular basis. They are more than distractions. They are threats to their core business responsibilities.
Feeling under siege from sellers, senior executives put up protective barriers. They have their assistants run interference and limit access to their calendars, they block unknown callers, and they install anti-spam software.
The message is:
Go away.
Whatever you’re selling, I’m not interested.
It’s a tough gig, trying to sell into that sort of hostile environment.
It doesn’t have to be this way
Did you know three are only three ways to engage
effectively with a senior executive prospect?
But first, you need to flip the tables around and view sales from the buyer’s perspective. I go into more detail on that here.
Believe it or not, in spite of their defensive posture, EVERY senior executive buyer would LOVE for someone to contact them with the PERFECT solution to their problems.
It’s just that too many sellers guess – or even worse – hope that their product or service just happens to be that perfect solution. With a hope-and-pray approach, it’s no wonder sellers face rejection after rejection from their target buyers.
The sales approach senior executives want
You don’t pitch them.
You intrigue them.
Now here are the three was successful sellers engage with executive prospects:
1. Make them aware of a NEW BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY they didn’t know was possible
Every senior executive is under enormous pressure to perform. Thus, they will always be very interested to hear of new ways to reach, and exceed, their KPIs and objectives.
Good salespeople use that inherent interest to their advantage. Great salespeople even present their solutions in ways that have the prospect believe that the idea was theirs to start with.
As for how difficult it is to pull this way of selling off credibly: It’s not easy.
Why?
Because sellers will need the stature, credibility and poise to first disrupt the senior executive's thinking, and then to present the new idea in ways that make it land gently on fertile grounds. A previous article of mine deals with the difficulties of Challenger-style selling.
This first method is hard to pull off, but it can be done.
2. Warn them of a RISK they didn’t realize they’re facing
Just as every senior executive is under pressure to perform, they are also under pressure to stay out of trouble.
This makes them very keen to learn about any sort of risk to their business. If you can help them identify some of these, you’ll find an audience willing to hear you out.
And there are many areas of trouble companies can face: Financial risk, reputation risk, career risk, security risk, privacy risk, opportunity risk... The list goes on.
Clever sellers use an executive's innate sensitivity to risk to their advantage. Just as with new opportunities, great salespeople help their senior executive prospects to seemingly discover these unaddressed risks themselves, so that they believe it was their idea. In that way, they will welcome the seller's solution all the more.
Playing the risk card is not easy, either.
Sellers need to pull it off, without coming across as lecturing or just mongering trouble.
3. Help them DISCOVER for themselves that they need what you are selling
The great advantage of this third way is that it is easier for sellers to utilize, and far more scalable.
Why? Because it requires less prospect-specific research, time and effort.
Sellers still need to lead their prospect engagement with a new perspective, intriguing insight, point of view, or research that disrupts the senior executive's thinking. They need to develop a unique angle that sets them apart and gets through a senior executive’s defenses.
What’s Next?
My clients learn what that unique and differentiating angle is that get you serious traction withyour ideal prospects, And not just that. They learn what it is specifically for their business, for their product, service, or solution, and for their ideal target market.
They learn:
What words to use to intrigue their ideal prospects
How to make them lean forward and want to know more
How to gain the prospects' permission to sell to them
How to come across as hugely knowledgeable and valuable to your prospect
How to successfully sell to senior executives, and even into the C-suite
Here’s to your selling success.
Peter Strohkorb
About
Peter Strohkorb is the Founder and Principal of Peter Strohkorb Advisory, the international Sales Acceleration Advisory firm with a growing list of clients in the B2B services and tech space in the US, Australia, and in the UK.
Our motto is: “More Sales, Faster”
and that is exactly what we deliver to you, our clients.
Contact
Phone AUS: +61 (0)411 865 301 | pstrohkorb@peterstrohkorb.com
Phone US: +1 (628) 246-1242 | peterstrohkorb.com