Are you young? Are you just starting out in sales? Then you likely have been, or will be exposed to a vast variety of sales philosophies, strategies, and tactics. As you’ll discover, there will be no shortage of experts or gurus, all of whom are either successful or not, but none the less claim to hold the secrets you’ll need to become a star sales performer.
Within this labyrinth of sales expertise lays the never ending world of sales training, and within this world there are a number of theories or doctrines that consistently reappear. It would be fair to say that many of these “best practices” enjoy an almost vaunted status; you could even say they are considered as gospel.
One of the holiest of “best practices” relates to the subject of prospecting, and in particular, prospecting within the business to business market.
Prospecting can have different meanings for different applications, but for the most part prospecting is about getting an audience with a prospect that you would like to meet, that you don’t already know, often in order to sell something.
You may have been coached, you may have been mentored, or you may just have been thrown into the mosh pit with a business card and a phone and been expected to succeed. It doesn’t matter which avenue the following “best practice” reaches you, because sooner or later, you’ll be told to go for the top, and get the meeting with the “C Suite”
While there’s nothing wrong with targeting the ultimate decision maker, one needs to apply a good dose of practicality to their prospecting activity such that it will have a decent chance for success.
If you take a moment and Google “How to reach the C suite”, you will discover hundreds and hundreds of vendors, each offering the “best solution” for getting that meeting with the CEO.
For example, there is “How working moms can reach the C-suite.”, “Gate crashing the C-Suite” and, ” How to Get a Meeting with the CEO of any Company”, and so it goes. Of course, we know all too well that it isn’t that easy and that many of these “solutions” don’t offer much value.
For those of you just starting out in sales, you also know how frustrating and daunting it can be just getting a C suite executive to answer the phone, let alone speak with you.
Any aspiring sales person dreams of landing a meeting with the big fish, and very often they are coached, or even pressured to do so. This advice usually comes in the context of “when I was a salesman” or, “Don’t waste time with people who don’t make the decision”, but in almost all instances the advice comes from those who haven’t the foggiest of what it’s like to be new to a skill (like sales for instance) and probably new to an industry as well as the company they work for.
If you’re young, and just starting out – perhaps your first job – then your fears and trepidation surrounding prospecting are exasperated to the Nth degree. Having little experience and an understandably shaky confidence only makes the challenge greater.
Getting a meeting for the sake of getting a meeting holds no value. It doesn’t matter if it’s the CEO, the CFO, or the Chief Bottle Washer, there needs to be the possibility of it being a good meeting, and that requires successful communication.
For the young sales person, there are lots of great opportunities for good meetings that have nothing to do with the C suite.
Communicating with someone requires the ability of those involved being able to relate to one another, and that typically has less to do with a product or service than you might think. Connecting with someone depends on sharing common interests, challenges, or life experiences. It can include a wide gamut of “stuff” from having children, to being well traveled, but almost with out exception, there is less chance that a “twenty something” sales person is going to have much in common with a “forty or fifty something” CEO, than a sales person of similar vintage with equivalent life experience, and therefore circumstance.
We’re talking generalities here, what you can expect to happen most often. While there are always exceptions to rules, is planning for exceptions and mapping a course of action based on exceptions the smart thing to do?
To be successful, you need to plan your activities and actions on what is going to work most of the time, as opposed to working occasionally.
If you are starting out in sales, and you’re young, don’t just target those who make the ultimate decisions, because if it’s a larger company, you can waste an inordinate amount of time spinning your wheels.
Instead, try this;
1) Take the time and thoroughly map out a list of people at a prospect company
that could have a role, an opinion, or influence in how their organization might utilize
your product or service.
2) Select target prospects that have a similar station in life to that of your own. In other
words, people you’ll have a good chance of being able to relate to. People that when
you meet them, the conversation will flow, the connection more likely to come.
3) Not sure where to find these names? Use LinkedIn, and go to “Advance search”.
Enter the name of the company you’re trying to map and presto, you’ll get a list of
Names and titles as well as possible referral opportunities from those you are
connected to on LinkedIn.
4) When you find appropriate prospects, spend some time on Google and see what you
can discover. Maybe they have a similar interest, perhaps the same alma mater.
4) Be prepared to attend meetings with people even if you know that person isn’t the
“perfect” person. Breaking into a new account, or company, usually takes time and
doesn’t happen overnight.
Any relationship in a new prospect account is worth way more than no relationship
with the “right” person, because you will always be closer to the right person if
you have an internal champion, and that is best accomplished by actually meeting
someone inside.
Finally, resist the pressure from those advocating for the meeting with the C suite until you’re ready.
In the end, it is the successful sales person that gets an audience with a new prospect company, any audience that will win. While the average sales person that languishes in the “I only want meetings with the C suite” model will do just that, languish.
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