Part 2

Co-authored by Karen Jackson - www.cchangework.com

In Part 1 of this article, we discussed the four reasons that salespeople lose deals. Those four reasons are outlined here:

• Lack of relationships at the executive level
• Client is unconvinced of the service provider's level of commitment and/or credentials
• No clear strategies exist to effectively address the executive's risk sensitivity 
• Inability to effectively articulate a compelling value proposition that accelerates the client's goals, objectives or aspirations

Now let's review each of those four reasons and how to overcome them.

The Number One Reason that salespeople lose deals couldn't be more clear - lack of relationships at the executive level. How many times in your own career have you had the best solution, the best price, the best terms and conditions and the best delivery and still lost the deal? The key question becomes: Did the most powerful (or influential) executive in the client organization want you to win the deal? If you can't answer that question positively, chances are that the executive was aligned with one of your competitors. If they really wanted you to win, they would have done something about it.

How to overcome it

Top sales professionals know that executive-level relationships take time to cultivate and nurture. You can't walk into an executive's office for the first time and immediately expect to be treated as a trusted advisor. You have to demonstrate a consistent level of integrity and capability in each and every interaction to achieve that level of relationship. That capability can be demonstrated in one of two ways; namely, by creating value directly within the client organization or by using a business reference that can describe how you have created value in their organization.

When your relationship is elevated to the trusted advisor level, it often becomes collaborative to the point where the executive starts to think about what s/he can do for you to continue to further develop the relationship. This is the level of business relationship where the finest professional salespeople continually operate. These are the salespeople that focus on the client's success and view that success as critical to their own success. They continually demonstrate that they can create and deliver business value to the client - and personal value to the client executive.

The Second Reason that salespeople lose deals is that the client is not convinced of the service provider's level of commitment and/or credentials. To some degree, this is linked to the number one reason salespeople lose. The lack of executive-level relationships in the client organization helps create a degree of uncertainty with respect to the salesperson's level of commitment. However, by continually focusing on enhancing and developing executive-level relationships, you are in a much better position to also mitigate this objection.

How to overcome it

Phenomenal salespeople make certain that they continually communicate the value they create and deliver to the client organization. While this can be viewed as "blowing one's own horn", more importantly it provides the executive with an understanding of the value they are contributing to their client's organization - and perhaps to the client, personally. This is critical! Never assume that an executive understands the extent to which you are creating and delivering value. Often those details get lost after contract signing! Only by communicating the specific business value that you bring to the table, will you start to differentiate how you and your company are different and better than your competitors.

The Third Reason that salespeople lose deals is by not having clear strategies to address risk sensitivity. Executives operate as managers of risk. Effective executives will take calculated risks to achieve significant results. However, they must be convinced that the risk of change will deliver a significant level of value or potential achievement.

How to overcome it

Exceptional salespeople are masters of mitigating the risk(s) executives assign to making change. You must be able to demonstrate to the relevant executive that you alone have the ability to mitigate those risks and deliver more value than any of your competitors. When you are effective in doing this, the executive's focus on risk shifts dramatically from what could go wrong if they don't make the change, to how do they make sure they don't increase their risk by not changing.

The Fourth Reason that salespeople lose deals is that they fail to articulate a compelling value proposition that is focused on achieving the client's goals, objectives or aspirations. In surveying a number of CXO-level client executives, we found that more than 90% of the executives surveyed said they looked for salespeople to deliver compelling value propositions to them.

How to overcome it

Top salespeople know that it's not enough to communicate features, functions, speeds and feeds, they have to be able to communicate the difference their product/service will make to an executive's goals and objectives.

If you, too, are interested in developing winning value propositions that address the client's key issues, you must make sure they have the following characteristics:

• Enables the client to perceive that your solution offers competitive advantage
• Clearly differentiates your solution from that of your competitors
• Quantifies the specific business value of your solution, using the client's metrics
• Creates a sense of urgency for the client to take immediate action
• Is provocative and compelling

This will prove next to impossible if you don't have a thorough understanding of what drives the client's business, their key metrics and what's most important to them.

Summary - Keys to Keep Winning

If you want to take your sales to the next level, here are a few things you can do today to make sure you win more deals tomorrow.

• First, begin to expand those executive-level relationships in the client organization. Start by identifying the relevant executive for the sales opportunity and identify the other key players of power and influence. Consider focusing only on your top opportunities to see how this approach might be of value to you. This represents a good first step to implementing a consistent, repeatable process for all major sales opportunities.
  
  
• Second, look to learn as much as you can about each client's business, their customers, their competition and their industry so that you can begin to deliver value to each one. Take the steps necessary to elevate your level of knowledge, as well as your business relationship, with several key clients so that you can see the benefits of those efforts. Then apply those same techniques to all of your top sales opportunities.
  
  
• Third, examine the specific ways you can begin to mitigate the risks associated with the solutions you propose to your clients. Look at how you can demonstrate to the client executive that you alone have the ability to mitigate any risks associated with the implementation of a value-driven solution.
  
  
• Fourth, begin to develop compelling, provocative value propositions that demonstrate the return on investment your solutions can provide to your clients. Start with a focus on some key deals where you can clearly articulate and differentiate your solution from that of your competitors. Share your value propositions with your sales team and challenge them to provide you with suggestions to improve them.
  
  

Many of the techniques described in this last section are related to developing, enhancing and then leveraging your relationship with key executives in the client organization. In so doing you significantly increase your chances of closing those key deals!

Co-authored by Karen Jackson - www.cchangework.com

One thing that great business-to-business salespeople do on a consistent basis is focus on the right deals. They seem to have a built-in GPS system that enables them to accurately and effectively assess their current sales opportunities. They don't waste their time chasing every deal that's placed in front of them. It's like they have a sixth sense about working on just the right deals...the deals they have the best chances of winning. They can quickly examine ten deals and determine which ones should receive their immediate attention and which ones can easily be placed on the back burner. They are masters of qualification.

Three Compelling Qualification Questions in Any Sales Campaign

There are three compelling questions that should be used throughout each sales campaign to help you qualify your opportunity. Things change, people change, and as a result, you should not just qualify early-but often!

The three compelling questions are:

• Should We Pursue This Opportunity? Is this project or application (associated with this sales opportunity) connected to a key business initiative and has funding been approved and allocated? Do you understand the client's business drivers, business initiatives and the driving reasons for the client to change or make a decision to implement this project or application...or is the client simply gathering information?
  
  Developing an in-depth understanding of the client's business, their key customers and competitors is an important aspect of this question.
  
  Since time and resources are limited, it's important to determine that the opportunity being assessed is real and represents a worthwhile investment in time and resources.

• Can We Effectively Compete for this Opportunity? Solution fit is but one component of whether you can be competitive in a sales campaign. Are there enough internal or external resources available to compete successfully for the business? Are there existing business relationships established with the client? Does your solution offer specific business value that enables you to differentiate yourself from your competitor(s)?
  
  Knowing how your company, as well as your solution, relates to the specific sales opportunity can be a key ingredient to winning the deal. Being able to realistically contrast that information with that of your competitor(s) is an important factor when assessing this compelling question.

• Can We Reasonably Expect to Win this Opportunity? This question is the one that is most often overlooked in sales campaigns; however, it is clearly the most important one. Many opportunities are lost even if the salesperson has the best solution, the best delivery and even the best terms and conditions. This question deals with how well the salesperson understands the client's organizational structure that ultimately allows them to identify the inside support necessary to win the deal.
  
  The answer to this compelling question also reveals which key executives wield the most power and influence within the client organization, as it relates to this sales opportunity. Most importantly, the salesperson must determine the relevant executive associated with the opportunity - as outlined above - the executive who stands to gain the most or lose the most as a result of the application or project associated with the sales opportunity.
  
  Do the most powerful people in the client's organization want you to win? Do you have credibility with the client's key players? Most importantly, is there political alignment with the key players in the client organization who either affect or are affected by the buying decision? Finally, what facts support these assessments of your client relationships?
  
  Contrasting these factors with that of your competitor(s) can have a significant impact on your decision to continue to pursue a sales opportunity.

These three compelling questions, and the underlying criteria, should be asked multiple times during a sales campaign. They should certainly be asked near the beginning of a campaign to determine if a legitimate sales opportunity exists and should be pursued. They should be asked again if there's a significant change to the client's business profile or to the competitive landscape during a sales campaign. It might also be appropriate to pose the questions again if there is a major change to the profile of the sales organization (i.e., the introduction of new solutions).

Examining each of these three compelling questions at multiple times during a sales campaign can be compared to an airline pilot examining a pre-flight checklist. No matter how many times a pilot has flown a certain plane, s/he meticulously examines that checklist before each and every flight, probing each question, using an exact, non-negotiable approach. S/he clearly doesn't want to be surprised midflight and does not want to leave anything to chance because the stakes are too high.

You have to use the same approach in a sales campaign. You can't leave anything to chance. You have to not only know the information you have, but the information and intelligence you are missing! That can only be accomplished by applying a structured, repeatable methodology that you have internalized and apply consistently.

But, wait, there's more...those same winning salespeople consistently create, maintain and leverage relationships with the most influential executives inside and outside of the client organization. They are able to quickly identify the relevant executive for their sales opportunity and focus on developing lasting relationships with that executive. As previously outlined, the relevant executive can be described as the highest-ranking executive who stands to gain the most or lose the most as a result of the application or project associated with the sales opportunity.

Top performing salespeople clearly demonstrate the proven paradigm that executives don't buy because they understand, executives buy when they feel understood. What do they know that most salespeople don't?

Key Reasons for Losing Deals

Recent surveys have indicated that the four key reasons that salespeople lose deals are as follows:

• Lack of relationships at the executive level
• Client is unconvinced of the service provider's level of commitment and/or credentials
• No clear strategies exist to effectively address the executive's risk sensitivity 
• Inability to effectively articulate a compelling value proposition that accelerates the client's goals, objectives or aspirations

You're probably wondering why price didn't make the list. Price is not on the list because anyone can be a winner for a day. It's called a discount. Funny thing about offering rock bottom prices, once you hit bottom, there's nowhere else to go. But that won't stop your clients for asking for more. There are very few deals that cut to the bone to win a client that have been able to keep that same client long term. In order to consistently win, you've got to demonstrate value above and beyond the price point.

Part 2 of this article will focus on how to overcome each of the four reasons for losing outlined above, so as to position yourself to win the deal.

What do you see as the value of the Selling at the Executive Level (SellXL) workshop?

• After reading some of the course information materials on SellXL, I am reminded of spring training for baseball players. Each year I think it is helpful to get back to the basics and challenge yourself to keep pursuing the larger opportunities and get positioned higher in key organizations to leverage each account. The ultimate goal would be to become viewed as a "trusted advisor" to executives in the client organization.
• Sharing with my peers is always a good way to test new ideas, trends, and ways to improve. Just this morning on our weekly tele-conference call one of the salespeople shared an idea on how to improve the major account process. These ideas are very helpful in becoming a solutions provider to our accounts.
• I am very interested in hearing how my peers have leveraged executive contacts into new sales opportunities. I want to improve my skills in determining the executive's needs, priorities, and degree of influence to impact corporate decisions, both formal and informal. I also want to improve my effectiveness in convincing my primary contacts to arrange for me to meet with their executives. Executive contacts are sometimes brief and infrequent, and it is critical to establish value and credibility very quickly and succinctly.
• Because I would like to gain more knowledge of how to get to decision-makers above the Director level. I always want to develop new skills on how to effectively cold call and ultimately get the appointment. Fresh ideas on how to strategize about growing the existing account business to me is a great way to entrench yourself deeper in an account. I'd like to see some specific techniques on best practices to achieve those objectives. It will also help me in identifying and calling on higher level executive targets within a company's decision making infrastructure.
• Because we often put on blinders when focusing on an opportunity or key executive. It's important to take a deep and wide view of the organization, to determine how/why decisions are made. How to get a better snapshot of the organization; determine how to illustrate/sell value; how to leverage the organizational decision process in my favor. I also want to learn about the best approaches to use to reach senior-level executives more consistently.
• I would like to see additional strategies that I can use to reach out to a higher level of management while eliminating the chance of damaging relationships already established. My personal goal for this training is to gain greater skills in calling on C-Level managers and executives about their "hot buttons". I also want to learn new approaches to securing appointments with this level of executive.
• It is always important to sharpen your sales skills, no matter how many years you have been selling and to learn new, fresh ideas. I also need to be able to do a better job of defining the executive who stands to gain the most or lose the most as it relates to the products and applications that I am selling.
• This workshop looks like it will be beneficial because something new will be added to our arsenal. Anything that will help me get more appointments with decision makers is where I would like to concentrate. I can always use help on cold calls.
• This workshop looks like it will provide techniques for establishing contact and building relationships with the key executives that can impact our business within an account. Identifying and understanding the business dynamics and personalities relating to each opportunity are also important. It will help me engage more frequently and effectively at the executive levels in client organizations.
• 1) It will help me to be more creative in identifying key decision makers
  2) It will help me sharpen my selling skills to client executives
  3) It will help me to gain better knowledge of selling to those same executives
  4) It will help me to perform my overall job of prospecting more effectively
• It will increase my effectiveness in reaching the decision maker when developing a new account. I'll also learn how to analyze companies better and how to use that knowledge to my advantage when meeting with them.
• It will help me improve my knowledge regarding sales influencers within an organization. It will also enable me to gain a better understanding of the organizational roles people play within the sales cycle.

Here's what the participants said after attending the SellXL workshop (with respect to the value of the workshop and what they would now do differently)...

• I now realize that I may be leaving opportunities on the table by staying at the Operational Level in the client organization (because I don't want to jeopardize lower-level relationships). Through this training I have found ways to access executives in a respectful way and gain credibility along the way.
• [From a sales manager]: I'll now perform more research before each key executive call; I'll learn more about the people and the organizations we do business with and I'll hold my team more accountable on preparation
• I'll now approach opportunities differently by first trying to identify the relevant executive. I'll also prepare better for executive-level calls and focus on developing meaningful Value Propositions for my sales opportunities
• I'll spend more time planning and researching the needs of my clients and focus on determining the relevant decision-maker for each sales opportunity I pursue
• I'll now create a strategic approach to large clients and opportunities and increase the time needed to make key steps happen during the sales cycle
• This workshop has convinced me that I now need to work to implant this training into each future sales cycle.
• I am now convinced that I need to spend more time researching target accounts more thoroughly and identifying the relevant executive in each client organization
• The preparation I now do before meeting with key executives will be much better - you have convinced me that my homework will either get me in or do me in!

The three compelling questions are:

• Is This an Opportunity We Should Pursue? Is there a project or application, a corresponding budget and has the budget been approved? Do we understand the customer's business drivers, business initiatives and compelling reasons for the customer to make a decision or is the customer simply gathering information?

Developing an in-depth understanding of the customer's business, their key customers and competitors is an important facet of this question.

Since time and resources are limited, it's important to determine that the opportunity being assessed is a real and worthwhile investment in time and resources.

• Can We Effectively Compete for This Opportunity? Solution fit is but one component of whether you can be competitive in a sales campaign. Are there enough internal or external resources available to compete successfully for the business? Are there existing business relationships established with the customer? Do we understand the formal decision-making process? Does our solution offer specific business value that enables you to differentiate yourself from your competitor(s)?

Knowing how your company, as well as your solution, relates to the specific sales opportunity can be a key ingredient to winning the deal. Being able to realistically contrast that information with that of your competitor(s) is an important factor of assessing this compelling question.

• Can We Reasonably Expect to Win This Opportunity? This question is the one most overlooked in sales campaigns. Many opportunities are lost even if the salesperson has the best solution, the best delivery and even the best terms and conditions. This question deals with how well the salesperson understands the customer's organizational structure that reveals the inside support necessary to win the deal.

Do the most powerful people in the customer's organization want you to win? Do you have credibility with the customer's key players? Most importantly, is there alignment with the key players in the customer organization who either affect or are affected by the buying decision? Finally, what facts support these assessments of your customer relationships?

Contrasting these factors with that of your competitor(s) can have a significant impact on your decision to continue to pursue a sales opportunity.

Examining each of these three compelling questions at multiple times during a sales campaign can be compared to an airline pilot examining his pre-flight checklist. No matter how many times a pilot has flown a certain plane, she meticulously examines that checklist prior to each and every flight, probing each question, using a structured and methodical approach. She clearly doesn't want to be surprised in the midst of a flight and does not want to leave anything to chance.

Although it may only take a few minutes for a salesperson to examine those three compelling questions and some of their underlying criteria, you will find that by doing so you'll be much more in tune with your chances of winning each sales campaign.

And, by the way, if you want to get bad news about a sales campaign, where would you rather learn that news? At the beginning of a campaign before you've expended any time, effort or resources, or at the end, after you've invested lots of time and resources? Clearly, you'd want to know as early in the sales campaign as possible. That's the whole idea of assessing your opportunity at multiple times during a sales campaign, beginning with an assessment early in the process.

Disengaging from a sales campaign can be an important step in the overall process of managing a series of sales opportunities. While that step can also be difficult, sometimes it is the important decision a salesperson can make; in other words, deciding where not to spend your time. Disengaging also means that you probably don't have a chance of winning the deal, and by implementing that step it allows you to focus on the opportunities you have the best chance of winning. By disengaging from one deal you have substantially increased your odds of winning other opportunities.

Call to Action

What are three things you can do right now to improve your approach to analyzing your top 10 sales opportunities?

• First, assess those opportunities using the three compelling questions and the criteria outlined above.

• Second, review proven sales methodologies that are available in the marketplace today to determine the specific process that is best suited to your company's needs.

• Third, develop a plan to infuse and implement a sales process in your company within a realistic time frame.

Summary

Only by using a structured approach and a common language for each sales opportunity can you make informed decisions about the application of resources, as well as the amount of time you should be spending on the opportunity. When you consider how important time is to a salesperson, you realize the importance of analyzing opportunities early and frequently.

Typically, the allocation of resources cannot be done at the sales team or salesperson level, but rather by sales managers or sales executives, who can consider all of the key opportunities in the pipeline or about to enter the pipeline. Using a common language, a common terminology and a common set of criteria for assessing sales opportunities is a requirement for success in this venture.

As a salesperson selling to executives, would you like to close more business without doing any more work? Most salespeople would jump at the chance to do that; however, they don't seem to want to take the time early in sales campaigns to determine where not to spend their time. The most successful sales professionals win more business not just by working hard or by making more sales calls, but by carefully assessing the viability of each opportunity.

One thing that the most proficient salespeople instinctively and intuitively do on a consistent basis is to focus on the right deals.   This is true in any sales situation, but particularly so in selling to executives, where the stakes are higher, and mistakes more costly.  These salespeople seem to have their own built-in or hard-wired qualification system for accurately and effectively assessing their sales opportunities. They clearly don't chase every deal that's placed in front of them. It's like they have a sixth sense about working on the deals they have the best chances of winning. They can quickly examine 10 deals and determine which ones they should focus on immediately and which ones to disengage.

Objectively qualifying sales opportunities can be a difficult task, particularly if the approach to qualification is inconsistent or unstructured.

Using a Common Language and Structured Process

Today's sales organizations, when selling to executives, are involved in high value, complex sales, and they must coordinate resources from a wide range of functions, both inside the company and externally, through business partners. These resources can include people from sales support, manufacturing, engineering, product marketing and, perhaps most importantly, external partners and alliances. Every person on the virtual sales team might be having discussions with a variety of people in the customer organization. Each may have crucial roles to play at critical points in the sales campaign.

Sales managers often serve as the final arbiters for the use of the scarce resources available to their salespeople. They have to make some critical decisions regarding the application of those resources, often deciding which opportunity should receive the most valuable, and often most expensive, resources. These decisions have a significant impact on the outcome of complex sales opportunities. Therefore, it is essential that sales managers understand the status of key deals currently in their pipeline.

One way to ensure that a team leader can assign the right resources to a specific opportunity is to have a common language. A common sales language makes it easier for the sales team to discuss the customer, the details of the sales opportunity and the customer's long-term needs. Many problems associated with resource allocation dissipate if an organization has a common language, a common approach and a common reference point that provides everyone who ‘touches' the customer the ability to understand the significant business issues. If there is a common way to describe a business problem and talk about the pain in the customer's organization, it will help the sales organization's move more quickly to solve the customer's problems. In addition, a consistent way of communicating and tracking value with each customer gives the salesperson and account team the ability to manage a customer's requirements as well as their expectations.

Assessing Each Sales Opportunity - Three Compelling Questions

Every salesperson believes that his deal is one they can win, provided they have the right resources at their disposal. But how can a sales manager evaluate all of the deals currently being pursued within their sales team without being present on every sales call that's made in the client organization?

Resource deployment can be very expensive, yet it's critical to place the right expert or resource in the right place at the right time. Without some consistency and common understanding of the sales opportunity and the long-term relationship with the customer, it's difficult to assess when and where the appropriate resources should be applied. With an effective opportunity assessment process, the management of the sales organization can agree that specific sales opportunities are worth the investment of resources. Using a common language and a structured, repeatable process for analyzing each sales opportunity makes it easier to allocate its limited resources.

There are three compelling questions that should be used throughout each sales campaign to qualify the opportunity. These questions, and the corresponding underlying criteria, should be asked at multiple times during a sales campaign. They should certainly be asked near the beginning of a campaign to determine if a real sales opportunity exists and should be pursued by the salesperson. They should be asked again if there's a significant change to the customer's business profile or to the competitive landscape during a sales campaign. It might also be appropriate to pose the questions again if there is a major change to the profile of the sales organization (i.e., the introduction of new solutions).

The three compelling questions are:

• Is This an Opportunity We Should Pursue?
• Can We Effectively Compete for This Opportunity?
• Can We Reasonably Expect to Win This Opportunity?

Part 2 of this article will expand on these three questions.

About the Author

Steve Bistritz is a published author and lecturer in the field of sales, sales management and selling at the executive level. He also provides workshops on selling at the executive level.

Their second fear is lack of self-confidence. This is hard for many salespeople to admit. Their ability to review the technical details of their solution at lower levels in the customer organization is typically beyond reproach; however, they are, at times, intimidated calling at higher levels. The fact is that many salespeople are out of their comfort zone selling to executives at the top levels of the customer organization.

The third fear is their lack of equivalent position. At times they feel they have to be of "like rank" in order to call on senior-level executives. To compensate, they bring one of their company's executives without briefing them beforehand. The result is a "glad-hand" call that simply wasted the time of the customer executive.

The three fears cited above can all be mitigated by effective preparation for that critical first call on a customer executive. A salesperson, in selling to executives, should focus on three areas of acquiring knowledge about the customer; namely, the customer's industry, the customer's company and the customer executive. Knowing how to access and acquire this information on the internet is today's new skill that is a requirement of being a professional salesperson.

When the Chief Information Officer of a large technology corporation was asked: "Why would someone at your level meet with salespeople?" his reply was, "because salespeople can often offer solutions to my business problems that even people in my own organization can't address. I want to meet with them because of their experience in solving problems in other organizations and the subsequent value they can offer to me."

Only when salespeople demonstrate that they are willing to understand and listen to the executive's key business issues, articulate the business value they can deliver to them and demonstrate a consistent ability to be perceived as a trusted advisor can they begin to overcome their own fears of calling on and selling to executives at that level.

Building credibility when selling to senior-level customer executives is a critical factor in developing lasting business relationships, according to two studies done by OnTarget and the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina and the Center for Business and Industrial Marketing at Georgia State University. These two studies focused on the relationships that professional salespeople developed when selling to senior executives, from the perspective of C-level executives. The conclusion of the two studies: That becoming a trusted advisor to these executives should be a major objective for most salespeople involved in high value, complex sales campaigns involving selling to executives.

So how is credibility developed over the long term? Credibility combines the building of trust at a personal level and proving capability in getting the job done at the business level.

People buy from people they like, is an old sales adage. However, that’s not exactly true when selling to executives, considering the way senior executives make buying decisions on major purchases of products and services. The surveys cited above clearly indicate that personal feelings were usually not the deciding factor in the decision-making processes embraced by most senior executives. Instead, buying decisions were based on trust. What an executive feels personally about a salesperson is clearly beside the point. They want to feel that they can trust a salesperson to create value for them, and for their organization as well. That isn’t to suggest that salespeople shouldn’t continue to build relationships with customer executives to whom they are selling, but that they shouldn’t confuse being a friend with being a trusted advisor.

Too often, salespeople focus on either establishing capability or building a relationship based on trust. If salespeople only work to establish their capability for getting the job done, they often position themselves as a “technical expert or an extra pair of hands,” which does not offer much in the way of competitive advantage.

“Let’s pretend I have a problem that needs to be solved,” says one customer executive. “I know two people who have demonstrated expertise in that area: One I trust and respect. The other might actually have more expertise, but I don’t know him or her as well. If I call the one I trust, I’ll begin to act immediately on him advice. If I call the other person, I’ll probably double check and get a second opinion.”

On the other hand, a salesperson who focuses solely on building the personal side of the relationship may end up as a friend of the customer executive, while others who focus on both the personal and business aspects of the relationship will become viewed as trusted advisors, giving them an edge in selling to that executive. Executives examine both the trust and capability components of the relationship as they evaluate a salesperson’s credibility.

According to the executives surveyed, another essential factor in building trust was the salesperson’s candor. Executives can sense when someone selling to them is not giving them all the facts. Trust erodes very quickly when the executive feels that they are only receiving part of the story. Executives stated that salespeople who misled them make them “wonder what other problems weren’t being disclosed” and abhorred “last minute surprises” from solution providers. One executive stated that, ‘”There are always issues surrounding any potential solutions to business problems. I want to get as clear an indication as possible on what those issues are at the beginning of the project.”

Top performing salespeople understand that building credibility at the executive level comes from providing the executive with a sense that they understand the customer’s business, they have the capability and experience to help them solve business problems and their intention is in building lasting, long-term relationships. By operating in this fashion, a salesperson is able to enhance the relationship and become the executive’s trusted advisor.  This is critical in selling to executives.