1. Ways of Circumventing Roadblocks
2. Summary of Studies Examining How Client Executives View Their Relationships with Professional Salespeople

Ways of Circumventing Roadblocks. I have just completed a new handout on Ways of Circumventing Roadblocks that is now used in my SellXL workshop. I am making it available to readers of this Newsletter, simply by clicking the link to the left.

I have also developed a concise summary of some of the research I have conducted over the years with CXO-level executives, where I asked them about their relationships with professional salespeople. That document is also available by clicking the link to the right.

Selling to Senior Executives: Part 1
By Stephen J. Bistritz, Ed.D.

Originally published in the Journal of Selling and Major Account Management

Executive Summary

As salespeople strive to differentiate themselves and retain established customers, they need to reach higher levels in their customer’s organizations to remain competitive and build long-term relationships. Selling to senior executives requires a different set of skills and strategies than does the more traditional department-level or transactional sale. In this first of a two-part series, the author presents results of two studies that explored how senior-level executives view salespeople, when they get involved in the buying cycle, why they will meet with a salesperson and how they test salespeople during the initial and subsequent meetings.

www.sellxl.com/downloads

Selling to Senior Executives: Part 2
By Stephen J. Bistritz, Ed.D.

Originally published in the Journal of Selling and Major Account Management

Executive Summary

Customer executives require a new sales approach that includes a definition of unique value based on their business needs. Part 1 of this article described how to approach key decision-makers in the customer organization. Part 2 moves beyond the initial meeting to discuss building the credibility required in developing the loyal, long-term customer relationships needed to sustain a competitive advantage. The shift from an individual salesperson selling to an individual buyer toward a diverse global account team working with multiple levels of the customer organization requires both different skill sets for the salesperson and different processes for the sales team.

www.sellxl.com/downloads

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Researching your prospects and clients has always been a key focus of my Selling at the Executive Level (SellXL) workshop. In fact, as part of the workshop delivery, participants receive a free copy of my Guide to Internet Resources – which has been described as a treasure trove of information on that topic by numerous professional salespeople and sales managers. That document is updated and each link is checked at least three times a year!

In the past month I have come across several key articles related to this topic – a sign that others are starting to focus on this area.

For example, in the January/February 2008 issue of Selling Power there was an article called: A Gold Mine of Info – How to use the Web to research and gather selling data. That article directed you to a white paper on the subject, entitled: How to Convert Prospects to Sales Faster with Pre-Call Planning.

That white paper is available on the Internet at the following link: http://www.whitepapercompany.com/pdfs/Appum-Hoovers.pdf

It’s interesting to see the renewed focus on this topic now. It has been a major element of my SellXL workshop for more than five years! Researching clients and prospects should be part of a natural process that professional salespeople follow before they have any type of face-to-face meetings with key client executives. I’m delighted to see that the industry is now in lock step with me on that subject!

You can also purchase a copy of my standalone Guide to Internet Resources from my website at the following link: http://www.sellxl.com/index.php?pr=Store

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By Andrew Sobel
www.andrewsobel.com
Author of Clients for Life: How Great Professionals Develop Breakthrough Relationships

Extracted from Andrew Sobel’s Client Loyalty Newsletter:
STRATEGIES FOR BUILDING INNER CIRCLE RELATIONSHIPS
Number 53, January 2008

Reprinted with permission of Andrew Sobel

Developing into a "deep generalist" is a fundamental part of the journey to becoming a trusted advisor to senior executives. One of the most accomplished deep generalists in history was Leonardo Da Vinci. Arguably, he was history's first management consultant. In this newsletter, I want to share with you some of the details about Leonardo's life and career that make him such an exemplar for modern professionals. Checklists of tactics and techniques are useful, but once in a while it's rewarding to look at some of the great minds in history.

By the way, it's proper to call him "Leonardo" not "Da Vinci." Da Vinci means "from Vinci" - it is not a name, it is a prepositional phrase. We also refer to other renaissance artists by their first names-Raphael, Michelangelo, and so on.

In 1481, at the age of thirty, the Italian artist Leonardo Da Vinci left Florence and moved to Milan in search of a client. While living in Florence, he completed his apprenticeship to Andrea Verrocchio and established his early reputation as a brilliant and original painter. Florence had an abundance of artistic talent, however, and the competition for clients - wealthy rulers or noblemen who could afford to give out commissions for works of art - was intense. Milan lacked Florence's artistic resources, so Leonardo headed to a city where he had a greater chance of establishing his own base of loyal patrons.

When Leonardo arrived in Milan, he brought with him a rare lute he had constructed in the shape of a horse's head (in addition to being an accomplished painter, he was also a highly skilled lutenist). Milanese high society was apparently quite taken by his musical talents and his unusual instrument, and the social contacts he developed as a result of his hobnobbing - not unlike some modern consultants or bankers - turned out to be instrumental in procuring art commissions.

Eyeing his ideal client, Leonardo drafted a letter offering his services to the Milanese ruler Ludovico Sforza: "I offer to execute, at your convenience, all of the items briefly noted below." The extraordinary list consists almost entirely of descriptions of innovative military inventions that could be put at Sforza's service. "I have a model of very strong but light bridges, extremely easy to carry...During a siege, I know how to dry up the water of the moats...I have models of mortars that are easy to transport...I will make covered vehicles, safe and unassailable, which will penetrate enemy ranks..." and so on. The list is amazingly prescient - it describes many military inventions that didn't come into mainstream use until centuries later.

Why did Leonardo, an artist who had no particular experience in designing or building weapons, position himself to Sforza as a military engineer? The answer is quite simple: 1482 saw most of the Italian city-states on a war footing-the Turks had invaded southern Italy, and Venice had hired Swiss mercenaries and was threatening Milan. Sforza was being inexorably drawn into the conflict. Leonardo was adjusting his service offering to his client's presumed needs at the time. Sforza needed ideas about how to wage war, not altarpieces with depictions of the Virgin Mary. The ever-creative Leonardo emphasized his inventive engineering skills rather than his artistic abilities.

Great client advisors have both depth and breadth, and Leonardo Da Vinci was an example of a consummate deep generalist. An illegitimate child who grew up in a small town in Tuscany, Leonardo had virtually no formal education. When he was brought to Florence and apprenticed to Verrochio at age 15, he knew nothing of Latin and probably could barely read. Although he lacked education, Leonardo rarely failed to master whatever discipline or task he set himself to achieve. At his death, he had become one of the most accomplished artists in history. He was credited with hundreds of inventions, including a water-powered alarm clock, a parachute, a variable-intensity table lamp, and a helicopter-all of them well before their time. He wrote, "The desire to know is natural to good men."

Leonard exemplified an important trait of great learners - he got his hands dirty! He valued practical, hands-on learning rather than academic study, perhaps a reaction to the fact that he found himself keeping company with highly literate renaissance scholars who quoted left and right from recently rediscovered Greek and Latin texts.

Not surprisingly, many modern professionals talk about the need to get deeply involved with the nuts and bolts of your relationships, no matter how senior you are, in order to experience the client's situation and issues first hand. Former General Electric chief executive Jack Welch calls it "diving deep" - he once spent an entire week with Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton at, for example, in an effort to understand why his retail chain was so successful.

President Abraham Lincoln, as a young lawyer, similarly "dived deep" by riding the 8th judicial circuit for three months each year across the state of Illinois. He traveled by horse with a judge and other lawyers, working with clients in dozens of small towns across 11,000 square miles of rural countryside. Despite the hardship - sometimes Lincoln would sleep in a hotel room with a dozen other men - he accumulated a wealth of practical experience and knowledge through his exposure to so many different clients and legal issues, most of which had to be resolved in a few days. Getting his hands dirty yielded another benefit: he built relationships with thousands of voters who later supported his political career.

Leonardo put great emphasis on inventiveness, which, according to some historians, explains why he actually painted so few works. Writes one biographer, "He was incapable of repeating what had already been done by someone else, and only took up his brushes once a revolution in the mind had been accomplished." He developed an innovative technique in his early paintings, for example, that involved carefully applying many fine layers of thin paint over a primed surface, resulting in a mysterious luminosity created by the light as it passed through the surface layers and was reflected back. When he painted the famous Last Supper, he completely broke with convention, and instead of placing Judas off to the side without a halo (the custom among renaissance painters), he placed him close to Christ and on the right, differentiating him with nuances of expression and shadow.

Even in his sixties, near the end of his life, Leonardo was busy studying new areas of science, and developing more projects than ever. One of his last proposed inventions was a huge parabolic mirror that could be used to harness solar power in the dying of textiles.

Although Leonardo was clearly born with innate genius, his learning habits - which anyone can emulate - are very relevant and certainly worthy of duplication for modern professionals.

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Overview of SellXL and SOS Workshops

Build Your Executive Credibility

SellXL (Selling at the Executive Level) is a one-day, highly interactive workshop that helps professional salespeople create, maintain and leverage relationships at executive levels in client organizations. Based on findings from research with executives in each global region, SellXL makes a unique contribution to the sales profession that is empirically accurate and culturally sound.

Who Should Attend

Professional salespeople, account and relationship managers who need to effectively leverage their executive-level contacts.

What You Will Learn

In just one intensive day, your team will learn how to communicate your value to client executives, thereby ensuring return access to them, as well as:

• Target the Right Executive by determining which key executive is most impacted by the buying decision. Learn to identify the difference between formal and informal power, why client satisfaction is not a reliable indicator of client loyalty, and how to connect to the executive value chain.
• Focus Your Approach to executives by using the methods they report as most likely to result in a meeting being granted. Learn the best time in the buying cycle to meet with senior executives, how to handle the gatekeepers, avoid roadblocks, and what to do when you’re sent down to lower levels.
• Establish and Enhance the Relationship by thoroughly analyzing the executive’s key business issues. Follow the executive thought process to identify how external forces drive internal initiatives. Research the executive, the company and their industry using the Guide to Internet Resources , a concise tool to help you harness the power of the Web. Learn how to communicate and get credit for your insight, and occupy the intersection of integrity and capability.
• Create and Articulate Your Value by helping executives see their business through a new set of eyes. Construct a value proposition that's meaningful to executives and sets clear implementation expectations. Learn how to communicate your value to client executives, thereby ensuring return access to them.

Take a Closer Look

Download our one-page SellXL Flyer for a high-level overview of the SellXL Workshop.

Take an in-depth look at the workshop details, including workshop objectives and module content, with our SellXL Design Document .

Opportunity Management Made Easy

SOS (Sales Opportunity Snapshot) is a one-day, highly interactive workshop that represents the next-generation in opportunity management for enterprise sales organizations. It provides a structured, scalable process for qualifying, planning and winning strategic sales opportunities where competitors are strong and customer buying protocols are influenced by formal and informal decision criteria.

Who Should Attend

Sales representatives, sales managers, and business development professionals who face long sales cycles, tough competition and multiple people in the buying process.

What You Will Learn

In just one intensive day, your team will analyze and improve significant deals in the pipeline, and learn to:

• Qualify the Sales Opportunity using a Snapshot assessment of the nine key criteria that determine if you should pursue or disengage from any deal.
• Align with the Political Landscape using the groundbreaking Influence Map to examine formal and informal power and find the relevant executives who affect the buying decision.
• Establish a Competitive Sales Strategy by examining your relative strengths, weaknesses and positioning compared to competitors, and plotting which of three sales strategies will accelerate your sales velocity.
• Develop a Value Proposition to align with the business and political dimensions of the buying process in a way that creates new value for the client.
• Plan the Next Steps using decision points from each of the previous modules to drive actions towards the next iterative Snapshot assessment.

Take a Closer Look

Download our one-page SOS Flyer for a high-level overview of the SOS Workshop.

Or take an in-depth look at the workshop details, including workshop objectives and module content, with our SOS Design Document.

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New Alliance

I’m delighted to announce a new business alliance with a company called Executive Performance Solutions – www.executivepresence.com – an Atlanta-based executive consulting firm that helps sales and management executives build on their natural leadership talents and better manage the vulnerabilities holding them back.

Using executive presence and communications programs, and one-on-one coaching services, Executive Performance Solutions helps sales and management executives become better at:

• Clearly focusing messages and selling ideas
• Getting others on-board with initiatives
• Managing conflict
• Listening and respecting others' points of view
• Being more collaborative leaders

The company’s founder and president, Paul Aldo, has successfully delivered his Executive Presence program to hundreds of sales and management executives from many of the nations leading companies. Because of the natural fit with between executive presence and selling at the executive level, Paul and I are creating a two-day session to be delivered in Atlanta. It will combine the key elements of his executive presence workshop with my selling at the executive level workshop. Please look for more information on this two-day, power-packed session, on my website: www.sellxl.com

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SellXL Videos on YouTube

SellXL now has a Home Page on YouTube and there are six SellXL videos that can be viewed there. In each of the videos, Steve gives highlights of his SellXL presentation.

Go to this link to view the videos: www.youtube.com/SellXL

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About Steve Bistritz

Steve Bistritz is founder and president of Learning Solutions International, an Atlanta-based sales training and consulting company that helps professional salespeople do a better job of creating, maintaining and leveraging relationships with senior-level client executives.

Steve also has a powerful opportunity management workshop offering that has been described as “the next generation in opportunity management”.

Steve is available as a speaker for sales meetings and client conferences around the globe. He speaks on a variety of topics including the following:

• Selling at the Executive Level
• Establishing Credibility with Client Executives and Becoming a Trusted Advisor
• Developing Alignment with Key Client Executives
• Effectively Assessing Sales Opportunities

Click here to see video clips of Steve delivering his presentation on Selling at the Executive Level.

You can contact Steve by calling him in Atlanta (eastern time zone in the US) at (404) 256-1801 or sending him an email using steveb@sellxl.com

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