By: Peter Oliver, President
Our client just told us a story about how they obtained a meeting with one of their strategic prospects…their steps:
Step 1. Research the company and find commonality you can use in your contact attempts.
Step 2. Leverage commonality when you make your touch attempts with the Ultimate Decision Maker. Make sure your correspondence content is more about them and less about you.
Step 3. Always start with the Ultimate Decision Maker. Other Decision Makers in the organization will always take a referral meeting suggested by the Ultimate Decision Maker. They will almost never take a referral meeting suggested by low-level influencer.
Step 4. Be persistent. Don’t stop after 1 or 2 attempts. To aid in your persistency, don’t show all your cards on the first couple touch attempts.
Step 5. Make sure the ultimate goal of your contact attempts is to get a live discussion. Buying decisions involve change. Decisions to change are made emotionally. If you want to be part of that change process your prospects are going through, email conversations won’t cut it.
Step 6. Uncover their challenges and initiatives when you get the live meeting. (This will make or break the whole process. Present too early and you are done.)
Step 7. Know all the players. You’ll likely need to meet with all of them during your sales process. When navigating through those meetings. Ensure you know when the next meeting is and with who before you leave the meeting you are in. “FOLLOW UP” kills sales people and “TIME” kills deals.
Lesson… It’s much easier to start a relationship with a new prospect if you begin with the ultimate decision maker because all referrals are not created equal.
