I wanted to share with you an article by Martha Heller that I found both informative as well as insightful.   Heller writes about the traditional CIO role and some of the issues they have traditionally faced, the problems of transitioning from one regime to another, when bad technology meets good people, etc.  What takes this from a run of the mill article on the woes of CIOs are the insights into CIO strategy which occurs in the second half of the article.

Enabling is Failing!

I was particularly impressed with a quote from Scott McKay CIO from Genworth Financial who discusses the differences between being an enabler of business processes to a driver.  At first glance enabling business processes does not seem like a bad goal for IT.  What Scott as well as most CXOs know is that enabling a process gets none of the glory for success and is first in line for the responsibility for failure.    The idea of being an “enabler” like in a 12 step program is not one that is going to get you a lot of rewards.  Enabling is Failing!

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For even more insights on the changing role of CIOs, take a look at this recording of one of the webinars from our Buyer’s Side Perspective series, Selling to Today’s CIOs.

Enabling processes in a company are a function of either supporting or coordinating another group’s goal or business process.  As a support role it is of course critical to getting the task done, after all we all need support in one way or another to accomplish our responsibilities.  The problem with being pigeon holed into this role is that it is seen more as a cost function than one of business value.  As a result the phrases “how much is this going to cost my budget” or “what’s the best way we can do this at the lowest price” becomes the guideline for the “enabler”.   Not only is the value stripped from the IT group but the ability to control their expenditures is moved to the original business group that is driving the process.

What You Should be Asking

The question you need to ask yourself personally is when you work with IT or the CIO which process do you lead with or support.  If you talk about TCO or your ability to deliver an SLA or even talk about being a one stop shop you are supporting the CIO to FAIL.  And if they don’t want to fail then where does that leave you and your ideas.

The question you need to ask is ‘What can I do to help the CIO/IT group to succeed?  What value add do you bring that they can bring to their business units?  How can you help them to lead and be one of the drivers of the business?  Once you have figured that out you now have a reason to engage in CIO executive conversation.

If you don’t know how just ask us.  After all we are a company made up of CXOs.  Your thoughts?

Interested in free resources?  Then check out Great Sales Give, a new site that colleague and best selling author Jill Konrath launched to share her expertise with those who need it, but may not have budget available. Each month, she’s giving away one of her audio programs, ebooks, etc. and conducting other drawings for free goodies too. 

There’s just a couple more days left in October where this month she’s giving away an excellent audio on Value Propositions where you’ll discover:

• Why the traditional ways of talking about your company’s offering don’t work anymore.
• The key components of strong value propositions.
• How to find the true value propositions of your company’s product or service.
• How to translate your offering into the language of a corporate decision maker.
• How to evaluate the effectiveness of your value proposition from a buyer’s perspective.
• Multiple ways to leverage your value proposition to get your foot-in-the-door of big companies.

 If you or your colleagues are looking for fresh, practical sales strategies and information to improve results, we recommend taking a look Jill’s work.

Money is tight and budgets are strapped, whether you’re talking about the euro, yen or dollar.  Anyone selling to government entities today knows it’s a problem. As a result, many officials are turning to the private sector for help.

Now’s the time to capitalize on this increasing trend toward public-private partnerships (PPPs). Structure your proposals around these three critical PPP success factors:

1. Allocation of risks
2. Identification, allocation and limitations on rewards
3. Need for public accountability

After you accept the realities of doing business with government entities, you can start exploring the opportunities. If past efforts in the public-private arena have been less than stellar, note that circumstances are shifting.

The time is ripe to deliver heightened value to public sector accounts.

Example of why that’s the case in the United States:

The government’s  Government Accountability Office (GAO) and other fiscal oversight entities such as the Congressional Budget Office have declared federal fiscal policy to be “unsustainable” long-term. The reasons cited? Fundamental structural imbalances shaped largely by demographics, health care costs and the rising federal deficit.

It’s a similar story with many other countries at regional and local levels, where officials face shrinking federal funding while trying to accommodate increasing public requirements.

Add aging infrastructures and declining revenue sources such as property taxes, and state and local officials – are looking seriously at alternatives – like their federal counterparts.

That’s where you come in.

A new reality

Given disturbing fiscal forecasts, the question is: How will public entities afford what citizens expect in the 21st century?

Clearly, enhanced PPPs will be part of the solution – this excerpt from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration offers insight:

“Expanding the private sector role allows the public agencies to tap private sector technical, management and financial resources in new ways to achieve certain public agency objectives such as greater cost and schedule certainty, supplementing in-house staff, innovative technology applications, specialized expertise or access to private capital. The private sector can expand its business opportunities in return for assuming the new or expanded responsibilities and risks.”

Factors for success

As you contemplate a PPP, consider risk, accountability and the other PPP success factors noted above to determine what you can reasonably accept and how you can deliver the most value for your government customer.

Remember that your government customers have different needs than CEOs. The government isn’t interested in profit margins. Rather, it needs to provide the needed service or finish the project at an acceptable cost.

The ideal solution accomplishes that goal while providing you with an acceptable rate of return for any risk you assume.

Visualize the finish line

A unique challenge of public-private partnerships is the transparency required. These projects require accountability to the public, which ultimately pays the bill. The public needs to see that its money is spent wisely.

Because of this challenge, some government agencies may try to prescribe exactly how the work will be done. Instead, have them define “end states.” Allow them to specify the results they need and introduce efficiencies to achieve those results.

Due to those budget constraints noted above, you may need to help your government partners find funding for your project through PPPs. Since competition for capital is fierce, the sales professionals who are most successful help their government partners visualize the results, demonstrate the public benefit and find ways to earn a healthy return, often through “dual benefit” solutions that have both public and commercial application. That’s a win for everyone!

Prospecting isn’t fun, nor is rejection. Here, we debunk five common myths about executive prospecting and replace them with a prospecting action plan.

Don’t worry; when it comes to prospecting, you aren’t alone. Few people enjoy it. Many blame failure on these insurmountable barriers:

• I need the perfect grabber line.
• Marketing needs to deliver more qualified leads.
• I’m blocked by gatekeepers.
• I have no time.

Sound familiar? It’s time to try a new approach – one that may seem contrary to all you thought you new. Set aside your old beliefs and consider the action plan outlined below to make future prospecting successful. But first, let’s dismiss the 5 myths that keep us stuck.

Myth 1: Prospecting is a ‘hunting’ not a ‘farming’ activity. Incorporate prospecting into your routine so you continually have leads ripening and you’re never stuck with barren ground, which will force you to make cold calls.

Myth 2: Gatekeepers are enemies. Gatekeepers have key information that you need:- your target executive’s style, preferred means of communication, schedule and priorities. Befriend the gatekeeper and you’ll have a tour guide with direct access to and influence on your target.

Myth 3: Prospecting is selling. Prospecting and selling are distinctly different. Each requires its own strategy. Prospecting is trying to secure 20 to 30 minutes of quality time with a target executive. It’s about exploring problems, ideas and solutions worthy of the executive’s time. Selling is about closing the deal.

Myth 4: I need more leads. No you don’t! What you really want are more quality interactions with executives you’re targeting. Our below action plan will show you how to increase your executive interactions and deal volume at all stages of the sales cycle.

Myth 5: I need better tools, such as the perfect prospecting letter. What you really need is a well-orchestrated campaign. Most people don’t use the tools they have; needing more is an excuse. You need a systematic campaign you can conduct in a realistic amount of time..

So now that the 5 sales myths are debunked, it’s time for a fresh approach.

4 keys to your new prospecting action plan

1. Dedicate a time each week for prospecting; at least two hours
2. Identify key players
3. Aggregate touch points
4. Build familiarity and rapport

These all lead to your top-level goal: Securing a meaningful interaction with the target.

Also, utilize  these communication tools, as they are readily available to you:

• Administrative assistant
• Voice mail
• E-mail
• Social media tools such as LinkedIn
• Direct conversation
• Fax
• Mail/FedEx

Try to schedule two to four days between rounds with a specific prospect. (A round is a group of synchronized touches).

Follow these procedures every time:

• Start at the top (CEO, Managing Director)
• Separate prospecting from selling
• Ask for help (People like to help; be humble and request assistance)
• Leave a voice mail
• Gather touch points

Key point: No means no but no answer means “customer doesn’t know” or “you haven’t gotten the customer’s attention yet.”

Record every touch point, meaningful interaction and your results; it will help keep you on track. Experience shows that the probability of securing a meaningful interaction peaks at round three. Most give up after one round. Just remember, the contrarian approach to prospecting is to be persistent and to stay with it!

- Co-authored with Mike Scher
President, FRONTLINE Selling
an Executive Conversation partner

Sometimes in sales you run into a curious dilemma: the business solution you’re offering is perceived by your customer as “too good to be true.” It happens to the best of us!

The return on investment you’ve calculated seems improbably high, which in a customer’s mind calls your credibility into question. This is a tricky issue  because the ROI you present is based on the best information you have at that time. It’s also based on a number of assumptions; including financial figures provided by the customer you assume are accurate.

The Right and Wrong Answer

Don’t avoid presenting an ROI. You’ll gain a major advantage over competitors simply by trying to quantify your solution’s impact, because so few sales professionals do this consistently – yet it’s essential when selling at the executive level. The right answer: Assess the reasonableness of your ROI. If it seems too high, re-evaluate your assumptions and present it to executive decision-makers.

Determining What Is – Or Isn’t – a Reasonable ROI

The best way to assess if your percentage is out of whack is to evaluate how this return compares to what you had initially projected during the preliminary discussions.. If materially different, the first place to check is the assumption set you’re using.

You may find that you need to add additional assumptions. Moreover, in very few scenarios will you have 100% control over the solution once it becomes imbedded in the customer’s infrastructure.

When validating your ROI:

• Ensure you’ve recognized all costs, including their internal costs such as people, implementation, potential downtime and training.
• Evaluate whether the timeframe you’re using to forecast returns is longer than the period when your solution will truly be delivering incremental value. Shortening the return period will lower the ROI.
• Multiply the ROI by your customer’s 3-year average Return on Sales (ROS) to get more of a “bottom line” perspective of your solution’s value.
• Verify that the figures and assumptions you’re using are credible to your customer sponsor, then agree on an acceptable ROI range (best, worst and most likely scenarios).
• Bundle your solution with an additional service or solution that solves an enterprise need but doesn’t generate a significant ROI. In doing so, you’ll add strategic value, lower the ROI and leverage a sales opportunity.

If you’ve taken all of the above steps and your ROI is still huge, pat yourself on the back! You’ve achieved strong alignment between your solution and improving your customer’s business performance.

However, you’ll have to prepare for potential push-back from executives who may be somewhat incredulous. You may also get a negative reaction from customer executives who believe your sponsor should have presented the solution much sooner given the excellent projected returns.

Delivering the Good News

Attend the meeting where your sponsor will be presenting your solution to his or her executive management. Let your sponsor’s superiors know that the sizable ROI isn’t out of line with the results your other customers have seen.

Perhaps point to the  sizable investment your company has made developing your solution to produce these substantial returns for customers.

In this way, you can deflect potential objections and make your sponsor look good while reinforcing the outstanding ROI your solution will deliver.

Have you ever presented an ROI that seemed too good in your customer’s mind? Comment below with your experience!

You finally got a meeting with a key customer executive that you’ve been pursuing for months. Congratulations! Now it’s time to prepare. Here’s what you need to do before you show up to the executive suite.

Do your homework and have a strategy in place before you walk through that door. Never improvise in a sales call with a top executive.

Your goal is to establish a growing relationship with this executive that leads to their sponsorship of your solution. Don’t focus on getting them to sign on the dotted line just yet. You want to get them interested enough in your proposal to take the next steps.

And that’s what you’re after. When you’ve got the backing of the executive suite, budget isn’t an issue. It appears. When you’ve got executive endorsement, competition isn’t an issue either. It quickly disappears.

Prepare for Success

To move your project into high gear, you’ll want the executive to engage by allocating some internal resources to evaluate your solution.

After you’ve done your due diligence and are convinced you’ve got a compelling value proposition,  you’ve then got to convince them.  Again, preparation breeds confidence.

Stand in front of the mirror and rehearse what you’re going to say. The order goes like this:

1.  Make it clear you know what you’re doing there. Demonstrate you understand the customer’s business initiatives.

2. Get the executive’s permission to talk about a specific, customer-validated business driver that your solution could potentially impact.

3.  Define metrics that are meaningful to the customer for measuring future business changes that indicate the initiative’s success.

4. Create a sense of urgency. What’s the implication of not acting?

5.  Propose a plan for moving forward; specify the next steps.

Make sure one of those next steps is permission to meet again. You want to keep the executive involved. Tell them once you and their team work out the financial feasibility of your envisioned solution, you’ll schedule another meeting to go over the payback analysis.

Permission to meet again is absolutely critical. You’ve got to make it happen. Keep the executive focused on your project and their team will also be focused on your project.

That’s the beauty of executive sponsorship.

What works for you? What doesn’t? Comment below and let us know how you prepare for sales calls.

Fact: Regulatory agencies worldwide are increasing demands on organizations to secure and protect customer information.

Implication: Your customers struggle to comply with this onslaught of new and expanding regulations.

Opportunity: Align your solution with reducing your customer’s overall total cost of compliance.

Use these sales strategies to increase your pipeline!

Start the Conversation

Leverage the reality of your customer’s regulatory compliance challenges. To demonstrate that you understand their needs, adopt these example executive conversation starters:

• “Increasing reliance on technology has made safeguarding information a challenge as evidenced by recent losses of personal records by Bank of America, Citi and others.”
• “Highly publicized corporate scandals, such as Enron and Tyco, are driving legislators world wide to respond with new and expanded regulations.”

Next, state your understanding of the customer’s compliance-related initiatives in response to the above factors.

Your goal: To validate and prioritize your customer’s compliance initiatives and build the business case for investing in your solutions. Here’s what to say: 

• “From discussions with your staff, I understand you wish to greatly reduce the time spent on regulatory compliance. Is reducing the cost of compliance one of your top business priorities?”

Align Your Solution’s Value

What solutions do you have that can manage, maintain, and report on the status of regulatory compliance? Once you gain an executive’s attention, you can align their priorities with how your solution will improve their business performance.

Build account business alignment with these common compliance-related initiatives: 

• Securely enable a collaborative partner-supplier-employee network to reduce time-to-market for new offerings
• Minimize business disruption and planned/unplanned downtime
• Minimize failed audits, fines, penalties and negative reputation impact
• Safeguard data against accounting errors and/or fraud
• Improve data storage and backup/recovery systems, provide on-demand access

Measure Impact

Quantification, the final and arguably most important step, is your opportunity to really shine. Quantify your solution’s impact using ‘reduced people-days required for supporting compliance systems’ or pick one of these potentially relevant metrics: 

• Decreasing audit costs and/or the number of audits
• Driving profitability through streamlined operations, eliminating redundancy
• Minimizing CapEx related to storage through proactive policies
• Lowering fees associated with compliance
• Improving service levels

That’s enough to get any C-level executive’s attention.

Dave Stein of ES Research Group, Inc., the foremost independent source of intelligence on sales performance improvement, reached out to hear our buyer’s-side perspective about gaining and maintaining access to the executive suite.

The result of his interview with President Mike Rohan and Consulting Executive Bob James was this highly insightful podcast about what executives look for when deciding whether or not to meet with sales professionals.

Here are two short excerpts from this republication of the podcast:

• Bob James discusses salespeople and developing ROIs (1:11)
• Bob James discusses the preparation required for salespeople (1:28)

You can also listen to the complete 27-minute podcast free of charge.

Mike Rohan, President, Executive Conversation, has over twenty five years of experience in sales, senior sales leadership and general management with companies such as Harris Lanier and Honeywell International. Prior to joining Executive Conversation Mr. Rohan’s most recent position was Honeywell’s General Manager for the Northwest US. He has extensive experience in successfully developing and deploying solution based strategic selling process and organizations.

Bob James, one of our Consulting Executives with more than 25 years of experience working in challenging executive roles for two of the most respected companies in the technology industry, was treasurer at NCR and ran sales and marketing for AT&T $1 billion Global Information Solutions. Listen and you’ll see what I mean by a buyer’s perspective. He continues to serve as Director of two reseller companies.

Now that you’re selling solutions, not products you’re a partner, not a vendor. That’s great. You’ve earned the attention of customer executives who are critical to closing big deals.

You probably also noticed this approach changes your sales cycle in other ways too. Instead of talking to one executive, you may now need to engage with an entire team.

Here’s how to get your initiatives attention while keeping your sales efforts on track.

Team goals, individual needs

Think about how hard it is to reach consensus in your own organization. Different people have different goals and some team members don’t even get along with each other. It happens.

When you’re trying to make sales headway, skip company politics and work one-on-one with key decision makers. This approach makes it easier to:

• Build personal rapport
• Target your approach to each executive
• Discover and overcome potential barriers
• Schedule meetings

Pinpoint the leader

You will ultimately need the entire group’s support. But you may never get that far unless you start with one leader as your sponsor.

That’s because when you try to sell to a group, no individual feels ownership of the initiative. You may have a compelling case, but without clear sponsorship your efforts may stall or fail altogether.

Executive Selling Tip: Find an executive willing to take ownership of your proposal,  to help you push your efforts forward, and to help you win support of other decision makers.

Find common ground

While you should focus on each individual executive’s needs to garner sponsorship, you also need to find common ground to win approval of the group. Determine the similarities and differences between group members. And leverage both to win support.

If you have trouble winning the support of one executive, build a coalition of executives who support you. Use the common ground to get two or more executives on your side and grow support from there.

Ultimately, you need to provide a solution endorsed by the entire team. But you won’t reach that point without each decision maker’s support.

Here are two ways to get it:

• Target the differences you’ve identified and solve each executive’s individual needs.
• Ensure each executive can position the buying decision as a personal win.

Find out where the deal stands

When you are working with a group, anything can happen between meetings.

Don’t assume the executives have or have not talked to each other. Don’t assume they did what they agreed to do in your initial meeting. Don’t assume the deal is at the same stage it was in the last meeting. Don’t assume anything!

At the start of each executive gathering, reconfirm agreements you reached in the last meeting. Arrive early, both to build rapport with the individual executives and to learn of potential problems so you’re not surprised in the team meeting.

And always remember that the individual is your key to the team.

Q: How do you avoid alienating existing relationships at lower levels within an account when you’re targeting to meet with high-level executives?

As this is a situational question, we’ve provided several different solutions below.

If it’s an existing customer and you’re depending on your current contact for the introduction, you’ll need to present a compelling case that makes your contact want to advance the relationship. In other words, they need to know what’s in it for them.

First consider the strength of your contact’s influence, their business insight, and desire to gain visibility within the company.

Then try to get your contact’s support in taking the conversation to a higher level executive. If they’re not willing to support your initiatives, sidestep your contact diplomatically and move on the next step.

Potential Solutions

• Ask your contact a few business and financial questions. If they’re unable to answer, explain how these insights are critical to your mutual success with the project. Nicely ask for their assistance in scheduling a meeting with an executive who will answer your questions. Be sure to emphasize that your contact will benefit from this engagement too.

• Point out that the meeting may result in greater visibility of your contact to high-level executives. Support for your contact usually gives enough incentive to get him or her on board.

• Advise your contact that one of your managers wants to call on a peer. This can be justified through account sponsor programs, which are common at many companies. Or, for example, if your executive happened to read an article that quoted the customer executive or something along those lines, it provides a “reason” for an executive level meeting.

• Another approach is to have your executive contact his or her peer directly. Then, inform your lower level contact about your meeting, so neither you nor your targeted executive is put in the position of asking for “permission.”

• One additional option is to let your contact know that your management team has mandated you call on the account at the executive level. So, even if you’d prefer not to bypass your contact, you’re doing so under your management’s request. Whether or not your contact likes it, he or she will likely understand.

When you meet with the customer executive, invite your lower level contact to that meeting so he or she is viewed as adding value by supporting the broader enterprise. Or, if your contact is unable to attend, offer to meet at a later date to debrief them on the executive level meeting.

Feel free to comment below with your own suggestions!