Selling to CXO in International Market:
Selling to CXOs in International Market specially in IT and ITes Industry is a final outcome of a process which require correct execution of plan at each level right from inception research on organization, mapping, gatekeepers, Influencers, Blockers, Evaluator and finally the Decision maker which is the CXO.
Lesson #1: Selling to CXOs requires Empathy
The most important skill in selling to CXO’s is to have empathy for and understanding their challenges. They have set objectives for their organization. If they meet their objectives, they will be highly regarded by board or senior management. This results in career advancement and additional compensation – good thing for CXO. If they fail they might be out looking for a new opportunity for them self.
Great CXOs want to be best CXO they can be. They recognize that they can do that only if they select right technology vendor and one which they can trust and are more of a consultant to them than just merely a supplier in long run. It’s at time a gradually build up process so that they can test the vendor before taking big decisions on buying new solution or taking a path if road map suggested by vendor Sales Director or Account Director etc. It’s a symbiotic relationship which is ideally a win-win for everyone involved.
So the bottom line is that your ability to make CXO successful is critical to her or his being willing to establish and buildup a business relationship with you and purchase you technology product, solution and services.
Lesson#2: You can’t sell to CXO if you don’t meet with them
You cannot win a Tennis match until you participate or are in the match or Tournament, so you need to play to win.
So you need to have as much opportunity to be front of CXO, but then with proper homework either to present a solution or understand a big picture strategy or deliberate on long term road map plan or upcoming technologies or new priories so that the vendor can align themselves for upcoming requirement trends and come up with solutions for customer requirement or suggest appropriate products and solutions.
Most companies fall in the trap that “We have got a great technology offering that can help people but they do not have enough sales opportunities with CXO’s to explain the benefits”.
If a Tech company isn't getting enough “at-bat” opportunities, it could be due to following reasons:
· Either the sale force is understaffed, under experience or under talented or wrong fit. Most technology companies are started by technologies, not by sales people hence its quite typical for such companies to spend a ton of time and money in building new products and solution with out at times getting a sign off by sales and marketing on the product, price and features which is most case handled by Product management team. Those of have successfully in selling to CIO’s know that the right information for kind of solutions CIOs buying resides with them since they have regular interface with them and hence the need to be integrated in the back end integration of the vendor own value chain. This also one of the reasons customers does not buy the best product which might not be right for their requirement but they buy form people who they know understand their requirement.
If your company isn't hitting sale’s projections, increasing revenue and shareholders value, you should consider expanding the sales lineup and bringing in people and process that have proven track record of securing sales opportunities with CXOs. Alternatively hire sales consultant who can work with your existing sales team to raise the level of its game.
- Your personal reputation does not precede you when dealing with CXO’s but it their experience dealing with you and your relationship. I have personally experience that Customers have done business with me in different continents Asia, Europe, North America etc. and common thing was their trust and my honesty and integrity.
- The lesson for an aspiring salesperson is cultivated Trust and relationship with CXO’s and individuals who are likely to be CXO’s in future. My recommendation to CEO is hire sales people who are adept at building new friendships with CXO’s.
- Your firm’s reputation doesn’t precede you. If a firm has not mastered to marketing to CXO’s, it won’t stand a chance when it tries to sell to CXO’s. CXO receive thousands of email and phone messages per year trying to sell technology products and solution to them. Given their bust Schedules CIOs only have time to look at and evaluate a very small fraction of these inbound messages and message mentioned a network source common and ones they know/trust do get their attention, hence networking is the key.
o Social Media is an important new age marketing tool and SEO used for inward marking for websites , blogs, podcast are extremely important and marketing needs to ensure that they build, optimize and engage with CXO in digital word.
o Content is extremely important which should be updated regularly to keep the JG engaged and build T-R-U-S-T-E-D content (timely, useful, situational, transparent, engaging and deliverable).
o Evangelizing with professional A-D-V-O-C-A-T-E-S: (amplification on personal accounts, delivery of brand experiences, voices, and oversight of brand ambassadors, content creation, activism, trusted communication and scaling of brand relationships).
o Enchanting Influencers through O-U-T-R-E-A-C-H: (organic reach, user relationships, topical relevance, endorsement creditability, authority within concentrated community, compelling content and hubs of important conversation) much like the role-played by the Advocates, influencers are key to spreading brand stories that would otherwise stall out. Audience growth at any stage of social media development inevitably requires the help of key influencers who benefit from audience and a lot of clout.
o Enlisting followers with S-T-A-M-P: (social networking strategy, thought leadership strategy, media relationship strategy and profit strategy) each follower and connection that touches my content has audience in the hundreds on average.
o Engaging Target communities through C-O-N-V-E-R-S-A-T-I-O-N: (Contest, open dialog, negative complaints handling, exclusivity, responsiveness, sharing customer stories, ask and answer dialog, twitter chats, interactive infographics, opinion polls, and network groups)
o Getting Audience to T-A-L-K: Trust me, Align with me, Like Me, Know Me.
· The “Sales pitch” is poor. This is biggest reason that companies fail to sell to CIO’s. There for a good lot of research needs to go in before we approach CXO’s which is information from internet, Influencers in organization etc., basis same understanding the pain areas and designing an appropriate solution and incorporating in pitch. It also important that pitch if is followed with PPT should be time bound based on time availability for meeting communicated. It is always recommended to have a visual presentation in form of pot or white board presentation incorporated with pitch this is especially important when we dealing with CXO’s in different countries to overcome cultural and language barrier. Socio-cultural sensitively is extremely important before we prepare of pitch or presentation and proper homework on same should be done before hand.
Lesson#3: Understanding the Business and Technology Landscape before you call
As mentioned above, CXO might not have time to investigate how your technology offering can help them. You need to do that for them.
Most CXO’s have call filtering tools to help the screen the calls and hence it very important that we use social media to build reputation and trust and proper solution for them when we connect with them over phone.
We can get information from internet, influencer in the organization, engineers through network and engage of engineering department to come up with right solution for CXO’s pain area and formulate a presentation with step by step mention of company’s capacities and best practices that are enabler to provide solution, than solution proposed followed by evidence by providing case studies of similar solution been provided for other customers.
Lesson#4: Knowing where to look for business Intelligence
A truly exceptional technology company will have internal or external resources that support their sales forces by researching a prospective client. But you try Hoover, Jigsaw, and OneSource, EIU etc. For company related information their financial, key stake holder, spend etc. Once you have found the key stake holder follow their articles, blogs etc. which can give some inform on technology been used by the company. Another source is Job opening, the company would be hiring people for the technology and skill they have and the same would be mentioned in desired skills and technology experience required for the Jon. Of course we can go to the company’s website to extract more information. I personally have found most information apart from above source from networking which is highly accurate and insightful.
Lesson#5 Try to dominate a Vertical
Vertical Specific sales focus help in specialization in the industry, knowing the pain area, trends and solution of the industry. Companies don’t buy products but they buy solutions more especially they buy solution for their Industry and their companies.
Accordingly as discussed you should become one with their industry. If you are telecom you should attend events and shows related to Telecom have good understanding of Telecom regulator policy that can affect the strategy. Similarly if you are selling in Government Sector do attend Digital Event, Department of IT budgets, directives, Ministry of Defense’s IT budget and directives etc.
Brainstorm about what industries your company should be pursuing. Marketing department should engage a public relations firm to secure speaking engagement for your vertical industry conferences. Possibly they should pursue article placement s in publications that focus exclusively on the vertical that you want to pursue. Maybe your company should host seminars and invite CXO’s from the particular industry to attend an event that special addresses challenges they may be facing in their industry.
Lesson#6 know the Technology and know the Competition
The bottom line is if you are in charge of building sales force for high tech company, hire people who are technology savvy. People with good knowledge of Search & social media marketing and previous IT selling experience. Facilitate your sales team staying current on IT trends and make sure they fully and intimately understand competition.
If you are on the front lines selling, spend as much time as you can on learning about technology and Social media marketing so that you can “talk the talk and walk the talk” with customers who are increasingly sophisticated. Lobby your upper management to help you to be more educated and update with latest technology platform, trends and technology by sending you to conferences reimbursing education program, and helping buy relevant technology books. Attend competitor’s seminars. Encourage marketing department to do detailed competitive analyses on competition offerings.
Lesson#7: Customize your presentation, POC and your Demo.
Ensure that your presentation starts by talking about your company, best practices and enablers build a brand for your company and increasing the perceived value hence getting you self in a position of demand premium over you competition later during price negotiation and getting the customer mindshare. Design you offering and solution as per you research of customers pain areas and define a time bond solution. Involve your technology team while designing the solution side in your presentation and understand from them on the competencies you would want to highlight apart from case studies you would showcase in the ppt.
When providing a POC or Demo do prepare a list features and function customer wants to see and get a sign off once you have shown the POC or demo.
Lesson#8: Understand the business of Technology
Have an understanding on what, why, how, when and who at your prospective customer. You should find answers to what is they want to achieve? Why do they want it? How they plan to achieve it? When are the budget finalized? And who are people to make it happen?
We should also find out if the company has new strategic initiates and there seed funds for these technology initiatives and once they take shape than they can champion it for more funding. Does the company have “management by objective” compensation based on hitting defined objectives? If so, what are the objectives? Once we know them we can try to propose solution and products which can help CXO meeting their objectives.
Lesson#9: Selling to CXO is more than Just a Sales Function and Sales Isn't over once the contract is signed.
If you have sold to CXO you would know that selling to CXO is not about selling to him alone but different function and level in the organization right from IT, R&D, Marketing, Legal, Finance, Purchase etc. and once you have concluded the deal and ensured Purchase Order, SLA, Master Agreement etc. have concluded than it your responsibility to ensure that customer gets what is promised and all milestones are delivered; you need to endure that the other functional departments in your organization which is delivery team, operation, purchase, Finance, marketing, support etc. helps in meeting the customer expectations and delivery and lead to their delight. The customer support should take feedback and have time bond action based on feedback. The CXO once convinced that product and services delivered as promised and his different department gives him positive feedback he would trust you and the perceived value which you created during your interactions and presentations will met and you are in for a long term business association with the CXO.
