Here is an alphabetical list of selected resources for increased understanding of how our Executive-Led Curriculum can build your organization’s ability to sell solutions for their power to transform a customers’ business.
Keywords: Customer Insight
Use these shortcuts to help you quickly find the critical information you need within your customers’ annual reports.
Keywords: Account Planning
A focus on what sales professionals need to know before building an account plan in order to ensure success following its implementation.
Keywords: Best Practices, Account Management, Strategic Selling
Engagement strategies for not alienating existing, lower-level customer relationships when you’re targeting to meet directly with customer executives.
Keywords: Strategic Selling
Odds are some of your customers are seriously struggling to comply with the onslaught of new and expanding regulations. Build your pipeline by showing how you can help reduce your customer's overall total cost of compliance.
Keywords: Best Practices, Strategic Selling
Prospecting isn't fun. To get past that start by debunking five common myths about executive prospecting and then replace them with this disciplined prospecting action plan.
Keywords: Strategic Selling
When you've finally secured a meeting with a key customer executive you need to have a strategy in place before you walk in the door. Here’s how to establish a relationship with that executive so it leads to his or her sponsorship of your solution.
Keywords: Service Provider
BellSouth Business is a division of Atlanta-based communications services giant BellSouth Corporation which is now a part of AT&T.
Keywords: Financial Services
Mr. Fleurant is responsible for all aspects of financial reporting, budgeting, forecasting and financial management information systems. Here he shares his perspective on the essentials of a successful sales call.
Keywords: Healthcare
Mr. Durishan formerly served as CFO of Extendicare, Inc., one of the largest operators of long-term care facilities in North America and as Senior Vice President of Operations and Finance at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. Executive Conversation spoke with him about trends and opportunities in healthcare today.
Keywords: Financial Services
Mike Truran, COO of England-based Saga Insurance Company, has spent his career in the insurance and financial services field. Executive Conversation connected with Mike to explore trends and sales opportunities in the insurance industry today.
Keywords: Retail
Mr. Galanti joined Kirkland, WA-based Costco shortly after its founding in March 1984 as Vice President of Finance and later became Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Executive Conversation spoke with him about retail investment trends and the factors that influence capital investment decisions at Costco.
Keywords: Manufacturing
Flow International Corporation (Nasdaq: FLOW) is the world leader in the development and manufacture of ultrahigh-pressure (UHP) waterjet technology and a leading provider of robotics and assembly equipment.
Keywords: Strategic Selling
Executives are increasingly demanding relationships that do more than just supply goods and services - they want partners who help drive business performance as if it were their own. Here’s how executives distinguish between a partner and a vendor.
Keywords: Best Practices
It's natural to focus on closing the deal during an executive engagement, however this undercuts your prospects for success. Concentrating on success in advance distracts you from what you want - performance in the present.
Keywords: Energy
Create differentiation and gain credibility quantifying your solution’s value in this challenging sector using these business metrics.
Keywords: Financial Services, Service Provider
Create differentiation and gain credibility quantifying your solution’s value in this challenging sector using these business metrics.
Keywords: Customer Insight
Use this guide to streamline the process of gaining customer insight.
Keywords: Customer Insight
Effectively researching private companies can yield sales teams a sizable advantage against competitive vendors, because many simply assume the information isn't available. Here are three strategies you can leverage to gain insight on your privately held customers.
Keywords: Best Practices
Customers are fixated on metrics that evaluate technology investments internally - such as IT spend as a percent of revenue. Yet most struggle to translate greater technical capabilities into measurable business value. Here’s a few ways you make it easier for them.
Keywords: Strategic Selling, Best Practices
Sometimes you run into a curious dilemma: your solution is perceived by your customer as "too good to be true." Here’s how to assess the reasonableness of your ROI and if it seems too high, how to re-evaluate before presenting it to your customer.
Keywords: Customer Insight
Many companies are required to file proxy statements to give shareholders information to cast informed votes. Proxies are also an ideal source of information to identify the business metrics most meaningful to your customers by understanding how top executive’s compensation packages are determined.
Keywords: Customer Insight, Best Practices
Any unexpected market shift or change in your account’s business performance may signal a new selling opportunity. Here’s an easy best practice for keeping current on the latest challenges faced by your customer’s executives.
Keywords: Strategic Selling
Now that you're selling solutions - not just products - you may have also found this approach has extended your sales cycle. Rather than talking to one executive, you may need to talk to an entire team. Here are tips for keeping your sales efforts on track.
Keywords: Public Sector, Strategic Selling, Best Practices
Whether the currency is the euro, the yen or the dollar, anyone selling to government entities today knows money is tight and budgets are strapped. Capitalize on this increasing trend toward public-private partnerships (PPPs) by structuring your proposals around these three critical PPP success factors.
Keywords: Financial Acumen, Best Practices
You've had a positive meeting with a customer. They're interested. Now, what's the best next step to move the deal forward? Short answer: Payback, the logical way to secure sponsorship for your solution.
Keywords: Customer Insight
It's not always clear how your customer's internal executive committee views the Chief Information Officer. Here's a simple, six-question test to give an objective perspective on how much clout your customer's CIO actually has.
Keywords: Customer Insight
Recommended links to free and fee-based resources for obtaining information on your on your business accounts.
Keywords: Customer Insight
Recommended links to resources for gaining insight on public sector organization budgets, operational information and reports on service goals.
Keywords: Retail only, Service Provider
Create differentiation and gain credibility quantifying your solution’s value in this challenging sector using these business metrics.
Keywords: Customer Insight
While usually lengthy documents, Form 10-Ks offer highly useful information about your customers when you know how to quickly navigate to the four areas of information most relevant to your sales efforts.
Keywords: Best Practices, Strategic Selling
Engaging executive demands preparing to nimbly navigate the twists and turns that can unexpectedly arise. Remember, this is the executive's meeting, not yours. Adding role playing your preparation process will ready you to manage the conversational pitfalls that may take you off message.
Keywords: Best Practices, Strategic Selling
How do you effectively sell to Chief Information Officers? What are their drivers? A CIO responsible for multiple business units shares first hand experience on how best to engage your customer CIOs.
Keywords: Service Provider
Create differentiation and gain credibility quantifying your solution’s value in this challenging sector using these business metrics.
Keywords: Best Practices
Having your manager join you on an important call could a good thing; it demonstrates the customer is important. Or, if your boss dominates the meeting with a lecture on your market-leading products, it could derail your efforts. Here’s how to put your boss to work for you.
Keywords: Best Practices
After every executive engagement - successful or not - make it a practice to self-assess, self-coach and improve. Here’s an easy-to-use scorecard to develop your own self-coaching regimen.
Keywords: Financial Acumen
Obtaining and leveraging knowledge of your customer's Hurdle Rate can be a very effective strategy to win deals. Here are two techniques you may be able to apply to your own portfolio.
Keywords: Financial Acumen
While traditional high-level metrics such as ROE (Return on Equity) and ROA (Return on Assets) are always relevant, quantifying your solution’s impact using industry-specific metrics clearly demonstrates you understand the nuances of your customer's business.
Keywords: Customer Insight
You may not regularly leverage management presentations to gain customer insight, however the increasing transparency of today's corporate landscape has turned these presentations into highly useful sources of timely customer information.
Keywords: Account Planning
Gut instinct often drives a lot of account planning. Applying sound Executive Focused Selling principles will enable you to build a stronger and more effective strategic account plan.