If you have an innovative product or service with the potential to change the way your clients do business, you need to sell it to executive management.
Here’s an approach that works for me. I first came across this when my good friend Bill brought a new product to market, beating SAP and I2 to a big enterprise software deal in Dow Chemicals.
I’ve created a set of terms to describe how you can build relationships in an organization, create compelling business case and get it in front of the senior decision-maker.
The Coach: After you’ve built an outline proposition for a target prospect, you need to find a coach to validate your assumptions and fine-tune your message. They will you who you need to influence and how to anticipate the objections.
The Anchor: The Anchor is the person who puts their neck on the line. They make the recommendation and introduces you to the decision maker. This is likely to be a senior line manager who has a stake in the outcome of your proposition.
The ‘Up Front Contract’: Borrowing terminology from the psychotherapy professionals, you need an ‘up front contract’ with the Anchor. This is an informal agreement to get the message landed and followed through to successful implementation. Complex sales are fraught with unpredictable hurdles. This contract allows you to cut through the politics.
Executive Memorandum of Understanding: Big deals have two critical success factors; strong executive sponsorship and stakeholder alignment. The EMoU gives you the sponsorship necessary to gain alignment in the wider organization. It gets people to accept that change is coming, otherwise they might derail your plans.
The Monkey’s Fist: Big commitments generally take some effort on the part of an organization. If they’ve got to go away and do this before they buy your solution, you risk losing control of the sales cycle. So you need to sell them a joint planning exercise — you become an integral part of their decision making process.(The name comes from a knot on a light line that a deck handler throws to a large ship that’s docking. The light line is then used to pull in the heavy hawser. Guess which you are.)
I truth, it’s not often that bootstrapping gets you through to the big deal. Nevertheless, you usually establish yourself as a trusted partner, leading to a string of quick and profitable deals On the occasions it does turn into a big deal, you will know from an early stage that you are going to win, you will minimize the selling cost, marginalize the competition and know that you’re not the patsy in someone else’s sales campaign.
…and if anybody asks, working out how to do this kind of stuff is why the successful sales guys get the big pay days.
