From the category archives:

Best Practices

3 Ways to Make Executive Sales Calls Less Intimidating

March 9, 2011

A sales leader at one of our clients recently expressed disappointment at all the excuses she hears on why her team doesn’t call higher in their accounts: “takes too much time,” “executives don’t want to talk to us,” “we just get referred down,” etc.
She then shared her suspicion of the real barrier: they’re intimidated.
Here’s [...]

How to Ask an Executive to Sponsor a Deal

February 28, 2011

You finally succeeded securing a meeting with a key customer executive. Now what? If you’re going to invest your time, and you’re asking the customer to do the same, then both of you better get a result.
Recognize that every executive engagement must have a clear objective. It does no good to have a meeting [...]

Challenge Your Prospects’ Perspectives

November 15, 2010

When was the last time you made your busy prospects really stop and think?
In this special guest post by friend and colleague Jill Konrath, author of SNAP Selling and Selling to Big Companies, she tackles a situational selling issues we’ve all encountered:  the importance of using provocation when a prospect’s perspective is limited to their [...]

Role Play to Prepare For Executive Engagements

March 31, 2010

Any meeting with a customer executive demands aligning with the executive’s business priorities, having meaningful ROI numbers at hand, and more.  However, you also need to be able to nimbly navigate the twists and turns that can unexpectedly arise during your face-to-face conversation. To be ready for conversational pitfalls that take you off message, add [...]

Facilitating Channel Community

February 17, 2010

By Scott Karren, CEO Channel Ventures and Executive Conversation Consulting Executive
Social networks are all the rage right now. If you are not talking about ‘friends’ and ‘community’ you are SO 2009. With all of the smoke, it is hard to even get a glimpse at the mirrors.
I was recently engaged to facilitate a small [...]

Using Hindsight to Improve Sales Performance

December 2, 2009

Have you ever walked out of an executive’s office after a critical sales call – and immediately started kicking yourself about what you should have said, what you should have known?
Of course you have. And you’re not alone.
The trick is to use that hindsight to your advantage. After every executive engagement – successful or not [...]

Do Executives See You As Your Own Worst Enemy?

September 23, 2009

As a sales professional, it’s natural that closing the deal is foremost in your mind. However, our experience shows that focusing on winning during an executive engagement actually undercuts your prospects for success.
Winning a strategic sale requires many interactions. Concentrating on success in advance distracts you from what you want — performance in the [...]

What to Do When One of Your Executives Wants to Join You on a Call

September 4, 2009

You’ve done it: You finally managed to get an hour of time with a customer executive you pursued for months. Now, a top executive from your company wants to join you on the call.
Bringing a top executive along could be a good thing, as it might show your potential customer how important they are to [...]

One Tough Sales Question, Three Different Executive Perspectives

July 21, 2009

Of all the questions we receive from the sales teams we work with, one of most common involves when and how to use references. Sometimes, one question incites a number of different perspectives.
In this post, our Consulting Executives share three different viewpoints on how to use references when responding to RFP’s and RFI’s.
The Situation
You [...]

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