Selling to CEOs Sales Training Tip 25 - Relationship Plans
It's necessary because with out these individual relationship plans you may get someplace, but it may not be where you'd like to be. Therefore, plan where you'd like to be and you're more likely to get there than by leaving it to chance. Plan with the other person and your odds increase tremendously.
These plans will eventually lead to a series of actions and dates that will be your roadmap for managing this account. More accurately, it will be your roadmap of managing the individuals that are the account. However, this is not a one time event. People move, conditions change, problems occur. That's why regular interactions to review and update plans are critical – 3 months, 6 months, …, you and your executive should decide and commit.
Create your relationship plan – on paper – together. Outline where you've been and where you both hope to be. Discuss each others' expectations? You want more information, more referrals and more business. Who knows what your executive wants, unless you ask. Determine the actions and resources required for your expectations to happen and to make your two companies stick together. Decide who's going to do what and by what dates. Keep it simple yet formal. Again, this is not something you do by yourself or with your internal team. The clients' executives must put this together with you.
Make the interactions fun. Bring in new people and use different venues. This is the time for entertainment and dinners. Keep it alive, yet professional. Review progress on the actions. Revamp them if necessary. Create new actions. Conjure up programs and initiatives. Review programs that are not yielding returns and terminate them.
These plans may sound tedious, but these are actions you casually do already. Besides, it will give you a reason to get together and make those discussions meaningful to both of you. What's different than your casual get-togethers is the number of executives that need to be covered, and their active participation in building the expectations and actions. So that you are not overwhelmed, assign members of your company individual executives as their responsibility.
Here's why this is important. If you heard from your main contact that the company was switching to your competitor, what would you do? You'd probably do everything possible to get to higher level executives to see what actions you could take to prevent your loss of his or her business. Right? So instead of waiting for this catastrophe, be proactive and prevent it from happening. Remember, your competitors are constantly knocking and it's easier to come from behind than stay on top.
So start building you individual relationship plans. Keep it simple. Make it fun. Do it with lots of their executives, and update it regularly. Otherwise your relationships will weaken and eventually disintegrate.
Common Situation
Action Ideas without Documentation
Good ideas are discussed casually when you meet. No effort is made to build a written plan together to cement these ideas and expectations. Everyone gets busy, and before long, nothing is done. Sellers hasn't heard anything and assumes it's not a big deal.
Resulting Problem
Lost of Credibility and Lost of Potential Business
Unfortunately, the key executives' remember. Your assumptions of the relationship may be different than his/hers. As job conditions change, you're left out and your familiarity usually dwindles. You lose association with the new environment. You assume you'restill in sync, where in reality you're out of the loop.
Check Yourself
Score: 4=Always; 3=Most Times; 2=Usually; 1=Sometimes; 0=Never.
1. Do you build action plans to stay professionally connected with senior people in your accounts? ____
2. Do you follow-up your discussions and agreements with something in writing? ____
3. Do you ask your best customers what will make their professional lives better as it relates to your industry? ____
4. Do you state your expectation of more business from him/her? ____
Scoring: Add: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = ??
10 or more is good; Less than 10 suggests you build plans with your clients' executives
And now I invite you to learn more.
Questions and Answers
Article Tags:
account management
,relationship selling
,c level selling
,selling to ceos
,sales training
,sales management training
This article will help show selling to C-Level is not about title. It's about the ability to deliver results. Sales people are typically intimidated by C-level executive and feel they are not the appropriate person to be approaching them.
On this episode of sales management mastery we are going to get into a little bit about what we what to accomplish on this show. As well as, introduce one of our core foundational concepts that is absolutely essential to becoming a top sales manager.
The best way to increase sales in a downturn is for the CEO’s or profit center leader to get involved with sales. Here are five suggestions to help you get some immediate results.
http://www.sammanfer.com Professional relationships are like bank accounts. The more you put into them the more you can take out. Here are some ideas of how to stay close with top level executives, even when nothing is happening.
It is rare that the Best Practices outlined in this article are rigorously applied to implementation projects. As a result, they typically run into a series of problems. This article will enhance your insight into what constitutes the best ways to plan, manage, and complete implementation of small or major enterprise software system. This article also covers the steps your team needs to perform to assure the greatest chances of success.
The Data Warehousing Institutes provides education, training, certification, news, and research for executives and IT professionals across the world.
70 Percent of businessesfail in their first year of trading. Most fail as a result of poor or NO advertising strategy. Global Brands spend over $25Billion on advertising on the average, most of the budget spent on TV and outdoor advertising. This article will give you pointers on advertising on a tight budget
Many businesses advertise with flyers and getting them into the hands of the general public is of great importance. If the delivery people make a stuff-up in any way, it reflects badly on the company. The company will be blamed if those flyers are left to blow around the streets.
Research has showed that global enterprises are quickly taking center stage in order to effectively promote their products and services.
Advertising today is like the weather. Everyone talks about advertising, but few entrepreneurs do enough about it to change or improve it. When you ask what the "big deal" is with advertising, that's an excellent question, because no matter how you want to view it there is one proven fact which is true of business owners and entrepreneurs worldwide... In today's recessionary spiral, every good entrepreneur wants to do more with less.
A pinback button may look very small but has a lot of significance attached to it. You may be wondering what is there in a button but a close look tells us that each button has their own unique story behind it. Every button is unique and distinct. Think of it as a small portable billboard carrying your message!
If you manage your large account plans the way your financial department manages your budgets, you'll have great results. Learn how to build and manage large account plans in this article.
To win sale after sale from the same customer, you must do more than good work. You must let buyers know what it took to make it good. You must associate yourself with the winning solution and prove that you're special. Read and learn how.
Differentiating is a good talking point, but it doesn't close sales. Showing you're competent does. Use numbers, names and details to show your difference makes you competent in what matters to the C-Level buyer.
Learn a simple 4 step check to make all types of prospects immediately feel comfortable with you. To be successful in sales, one must be able to adapt his or her style to effectively interact with everyone.
Sales calls are the most important step for selling and relationship development. That's why you have to have a strategy to get people talking while you listen with an ear to understand. Learn the 9 steps strategy to win-over C-Level executive and other prospects in this article
Discuss this Article
