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.

Gut instinct drives a lot of account planning. Sales teams get busy. Suddenly, year-end arrives and management wants to see an account plan. Now.

So what are you going to do?

When you’re laying the groundwork for a major sales initiative with your most important account, yes, you can rely on your gut to tell you where to focus an account plan that will impact your selling success for the year.

And this may be sufficient.

But what if it’s not? What if you and your team outline a very strategic game plan but it’s based on a set of assumptions that turn out only half right? Or not correct at all?

Maybe your customer is looking for a serious business change, but your game plan has them settling for basic maintenance.

If you haven’t identified and validated your customer’s business initiatives, you risk working on issues important to you, but not your customer.

Research First, Plan Second

To avoid such mistakes, when you evaluate account planning, employ Executive Focused Selling skills at the front end.

Developing and maintaining an account plan is a bit like strategic planning for executives; you’ve got a lot of information sources to consider and analysis to conduct before you actually start allocating resources.

Just as a sound strategic plan is an essential foundation for solid shareholder relations, an account plan is a vital engagement roadmap that enables you to maintain value-based relationships with both the client and the account team – ultimately allowing you to leverage your good work to sell more.

So regardless of which planning method you use, the traditional account planning process begins with a sales team identifying a customer’s business priorities. But let’s be honest here; what you often get is a visceral response based on gut feel or opinion rather than qualitative research.

When that’s the case, here’s what can happen:

1. A golden opportunity is overlooked
2. A non-priority is mistakenly identified as a key focal point

In other words, you find yourself trying to sell an upgrade when you could have sold a major enterprise-wide solution – all because your account plan was created without sufficient analysis.

It’s focused on an invalid business initiative, and that means time spent supporting that invalid initiative is unimportant to your customer. One, you’re not going to realize success; and two you’re out a nice chunk of change. Keep in mind your personal ROI is in play here!

Fortunately, there is a better way. And it’s all about really understanding your account through due diligence. But keep this in mind: You’ve got to validate customer business initiatives before you roll up your sleeves and start account planning. That way you have a filter with multiple data sources to help guide the account planning process and ensure your game plan isn’t based on faulty assumptions.

You’re targeting a customer’s Chief Information Officer. How do you know how much clout they actually wield? When it comes to purchasing decisions, it’s not always clear how your customer’s internal executive committee views the CIO. And it’s important you know this so you don’t waste time explaining your solution’s value to a CIO who has no clout at all.

Take this simple, six-question quiz and gain an objective perspective.

For the following questions, score 1 point for each “yes” answer. If your CIO scores 5 or higher, you can expect that he or she wields significant influence.

1. Does the CIO report to the CEO?
If yes, this shows the company truly values the importance of IT. There’s a 92% chance that CIOs reporting to the CEO sit on the executive committee. Their companies devote the highest percentage of revenue to IT.

In contrast, among CIOs reporting to the CFO only 41% sit on the executive committee. And, they earn less. When a CIO is grouped with accounting and legal under “support functions” don’t assume they wield much clout.

2. Is your customer in the financial services, manufacturing or education sectors?
In these sectors, technological leadership is essential and CIOs are critical leaders. Compare that to retail, where CIOs play a supportive role. Instead of initiating new business, they streamline existing business, such as making the supply chain more efficient.

3. Is the CIO’s budget shifting to new initiatives from maintenance?
When IT spending favors innovation over maintenance, it indicates that the CIO is a competitive asset. This CIO’s main role is to create value for the company, not improve traditional tasks on the technology side.

4. Are the CIO’s subordinates focused on delivering business value?
Does the CIO’s staff seem confused about their role in supporting company-wide business strategies? This could point to a broader stumbling block: Many new CIOs have difficulty acting as partners with peers, as well as subordinates. This company culture isn’t easily changed. Research shows that this type of CIO thinks they’re more effective than do the execs to whom they report.

5. Does the CIO generate new ideas?
Influential CIOs continually improve performance by brainstorming new ideas. How do you know if your CIO is an “idea person”? When a CIO has a new idea, he or she will first run it by you, a trusted and valued partner. Be ready when a CIO asks if you’ve implemented something similar for another customer or if you feel the idea has business merit. Leverage the opportunity and strengthen the relationship.

6. Has the CIO held their current position for at least 5 years?
It takes time to earn respect. Average CIO tenure is less than 5 years and even shorter when reporting to the CFO. A CIO who has held a post for at least 5 years should have established authority as a decision maker.

How did your CIOs do? Comment below and let us know if your CIO passed the test. Here’s hoping they all scored a 6!!

You already know the more you can find out about the customer executives you’re targeting, the better. But how do you gain insight on privately held companies when they make so little information publicly available?

Sales teams can gain sizable advantage against competitors by researching privately held accounts. Many sales professionals assume the information isn’t available and give up. Researching private corporations can unearth valuable information –if you know where to find it.

Get ready to put your sales sleuthing skills to the test! Use these three sales strategies and gain insight into private companies:

1. Go Public
2. Follow the Transparency Trend
3. Play Detective

1. Go public: Research publicly traded companies in your customer’s industry

Need insight into a privately held company? Research the competition! Public and private, all companies are subject to the same market and economic drivers when competing in the same space.

Researching your customer’s publicly held competitors can help you build business alignment, engage at the executive level and develop into a true business partner rather than joining the long list of vendors.

Examine your customer’s industry and its top two competitors. Use information you gather to demonstrate you understand your customer’s business. Additionally, recognize that:

• External factors will be the same for your customer and your customer’s competitors. For example, rising interest rates impact all banks, large or small, public or private.
• Business metrics will also likely overlap. For example, every retailer focuses on increasing inventory turns, sales per square foot and repeat customers.
• Business initiatives adopted by your customer’s competitors may provide valuable insight into your customer’s plans, since companies in the same space typically use similar business strategies.

Information about your customer’s industry and publicly held competitors will shed light on what your customer cares about and the market forces in play.

2. Follow the transparency trend: Public companies aren’t the only ones baring it all

In the past, “getting the dirt” on private companies meant gaining information through firsthand effort (not to mention surreptitious sleuthing). Good news: Driven by the surge of corporate scandals and regulatory issues, corporate financial transparency is a growing trend even in the private sector.

Based on their business, privately held companies are required to comply with regulatory authorities and many of these filings are publicly available. While usually only publicly traded companies are subject to compliance mandates such as Sarbanes-Oxley, it’s more common for private companies to make hitherto proprietary documents accessible to the public.

Privately held companies aren’t usually required to file documents with government bodies like the SEC, so you won’t find a 10-K or annual report per se, but you may find the following on your customer’s Web site:

• President’s or Chairman’s Message
Leaders of privately held companies often publish quarterly or annual communications, akin to a Letter to Shareholders, that identify business initiatives, key objectives and the company’s overall mission – information you can use to link your solution’s value to customer goals.
• Financial Information
Privately held companies produce financial statements on a regular basis. Many will make high-level financial data publicly available and some even disclose executive compensation and other details.
• Management Team
Who makes up the management team? Utilize those executive biographies of corporate officers and identify who’s likely to be responsible for the initiatives your solution can positively impact.
• Board of Directors
In addition to listing members, you may find a summary of meeting minutes and other information useful for building business alignment, such as governance principles or committee charters.
• Company Fact Sheet
If not available online, your customer’s marketing/PR department may maintain a company overview including annual revenue, number of employees, company history, locations, core values and goals.

3. Play sales detective: You’ll be surprised what a little digging will unearth

The way the Web has transformed communications and research means you can play detective from the comfort of your computer. Start digging for clues:

• Do an Internet search of your account’s executives to find public statements and quotes you can leverage into informed conversation. No matter which company officer you speak with, referencing an executive’s own words will boost your credibility.
• Attend conferences where industry experts speak. Listen to the executive from your customer’s company if he or she is on the panel, or note how other execs talk about the industry and your client’s firm.
• If possible, stop in and pick up a company newsletter or subscribe to it by e-mail. Often you’ll get the scoop on current business plans, company performance and product development, helping you validate that your business proposal is aligned with the customer’s needs.
• Review company and product literature. Many times you can simply request information over the phone. Or, if a friend works for one of your customer’s customers, ask him or her to request the collateral for you.
• Consider subscribing to fee-based online resources such as OneSource, D&B, Guidestar, Bureau van Dijk and Companies House. Each offers business data on privately held companies and the time you’ll save may easily justify the expense.
• Analyst reports may contain useful insights on your privately held customer. . Analyst reports about competitors or the industry in general are also an excellent source of information that will boost your confidence when speaking with CXOs, help you refine your proposal and identify other accounts worth investigating.
• Check dedicated surveys and reports, such as Forbes’ annual ranking of the largest private companies in the U.S., for high-level metrics to help you understand the competitive landscape.

What’s at Stake? Precious Selling Time and Money

Although it is decidedly more difficult to find information about private companies than publicly held, there are many avenues you can pursue to get the facts you need. It takes Internet research, analysis of the industry and competitive market, as well as some good old-fashioned sleuthing!

If this seems like a lot of work, it is. The fact that so few of your competitors want to make the effort means you’ll reap the rewards of a well-designed sales plan. In other words, if you make the time, you’ll almost surely make the money.