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| | The Marketing, Channels/Partnership & Sales Execs Network is not currently active and cannot accept new posts | | re: re: It's WHO not WHAT ... re: Matt: Retention and cold calling | Views: 448 | | Sep 02, 2004 4:03 pm | | re: re: It's WHO not WHAT ... re: Matt: Retention and cold calling | # |
Steve Hardman | | This really isn't all that tricky, you just have to understand where the top exec is coming from and go there. Successful sales means that you have to know your customer and know what their hot buttons are. Then, once you get their attention on the big picture, that top exec will move you down to talk about the details.
For instance, when talking to the CEO, you don't start talking tech, unit performance, and lay on a bunch of what he would think of as gibberish. Instead, you isolate what a CEO thinks of from a big picture perspective: corporate growth, improved efficiencies, increased morale, developing relationships, increasing communication, etc.
The CFO cares about bottom line performance. Will it increase his revenue/reduce his expenses or liabilities, what his ROI graph looks like, minimizing risk.
A COO has different hot buttons. How does the product/service increase his performance, reliability, etc, ease of implementation, etc. He wants to know how to not have problems. Corporate growth and ROI are not his biggest concerns.
Some of these are crossovers and some just require looking at the same issue from a different perspective. It isn't that some people don't have any concern about the other person's hot buttons. It is that they are not their own priority.
So if you are in IT, you can get the attention of the CEO by talking about growth flexibility, ability to expand into new areas and take on new customers, how it will affect how his employees interact with clients and each other.
If you are talking to the CFO, talk about the ability to track sales and costs, performance measurement and increases, and how those give him his ROI.
If talking to the COO, talk about reducing the need for crisis management, reducing his downtime, minimal need for time to switch over, increased output, employee satisfaction and retention.
If you are going from the top down and address these issues correctly as applied to whom you are talking, you have addressed their high-level needs, and they will pass you down with orders to the lower level person. THEN you can talk about product specifics. When you walk in through the front door, you will mostly likely be treated as every other salesperson is treated. If you walk in the back door with the figurative arm of the boss on your shoulder, it's just a matter of working out the details.
> awade aawade wrote:
>But the question arises when one is doing things singale handed. Like a an individual self employed professional who does cold calling for himself/herself, there is no hirarchy with him/her when s/he calls upon the original contact, so that someone else calls upon the bosses of original contact. So in a scenario where single person is supposed to handle, the situation is tricky. How should a single person handle this? One approach is suggested is that they directly tap the top person is customer's hirarchy, and come down from there. But this may not be possible for all products and solutions, as top executives would really be afraid to deal with trivial matters, specially in which they don't have much knowledge, and would not entertain at all.
>
>Any insights here?
>
>Awade
Private Reply to Steve Hardman | | Sep 03, 2004 2:50 pm | | Steve: It's WHO not WHAT ... | # | 
Denise Michaels | | Hi Steve:
This is a GREAT post about keying in to your customers hot buttons. When I do my teleclasses one of the marketing strategies I share is public relations.
I started doing PR at the tender age of 17. Amazing but true. I had an unpaid internship after school and during the summer - working with the director of PR for what was then the biggest shopping mall in the Detroit area where I grew up. My second press release - now called a media release - was about an ice cream eating contest at the mall during 4-th of July weekend hit the front page of the Detroit Free Press. Very exciting stuff for a shy teenager way back then.
But I digress...
When a person is pitching a radio producer - for example - it's a totally different "come from" then when talking to the customers for your book (or other product). You say something like, "I've got a great show idea about ___________ that's going to really make your phone boards light up!" The producers hot button is ratings - because that impacts Arbitron and what they can charge for advertising and his/her salary. They see it daily based on how many callers they get for different shows. When they have a hot show - lots of people call in and the phone boards light up. Different person, different concerns and a very different approach.
Great stuff, Steve!
All the best,
Denise Michaels
TFM Network Moderator
ATTN: Calling women biz owners! Don't miss out on my TFM teleclass - be an amazing marketer and still be YOU. Learn the secrets! Go to http://www.denisemichaels.com/TFMteleclasses.htm
> Steve Hardman wrote:
> This really isn't all that tricky, you just have to understand where the top exec is coming from and go there. Successful sales means that you have to know your customer and know what their hot buttons are. Then, once you get their attention on the big picture, that top exec will move you down to talk about the details.
>
>For instance, when talking to the CEO, you don't start talking tech, unit performance, and lay on a bunch of what he would think of as gibberish. Instead, you isolate what a CEO thinks of from a big picture perspective: corporate growth, improved efficiencies, increased morale, developing relationships, increasing communication, etc.
>
>The CFO cares about bottom line performance. Will it increase his revenue/reduce his expenses or liabilities, what his ROI graph looks like, minimizing risk.
>
>A COO has different hot buttons. How does the product/service increase his performance, reliability, etc, ease of implementation, etc. He wants to know how to not have problems. Corporate growth and ROI are not his biggest concerns.
>
>Some of these are crossovers and some just require looking at the same issue from a different perspective. It isn't that some people don't have any concern about the other person's hot buttons. It is that they are not their own priority.
>
>So if you are in IT, you can get the attention of the CEO by talking about growth flexibility, ability to expand into new areas and take on new customers, how it will affect how his employees interact with clients and each other.
>
>If you are talking to the CFO, talk about the ability to track sales and costs, performance measurement and increases, and how those give him his ROI.
>
>If talking to the COO, talk about reducing the need for crisis management, reducing his downtime, minimal need for time to switch over, increased output, employee satisfaction and retention.
>
>If you are going from the top down and address these issues correctly as applied to whom you are talking, you have addressed their high-level needs, and they will pass you down with orders to the lower level person. THEN you can talk about product specifics. When you walk in through the front door, you will mostly likely be treated as every other salesperson is treated. If you walk in the back door with the figurative arm of the boss on your shoulder, it's just a matter of working out the details.
Private Reply to Denise Michaels | | |
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