Back in 1993, I was a New Business Sales exec in HP's France South East branch (Lyon).
After some painful losses against competitors with better executive access, It didn't take me long to react and decide that we should only invest on the deals that we can close and subsequently disqualify quickly the ones that look too much like a Silver or Bronze medal.
By deciding to invest only on those with 50+% chances, I started creating tools to instrument this selective business selling approach. BTW the ones rated at 25% or less were only worked and progressed on Friday afternoon and "polite but concise" proposals were sent out to those prospect customers.
Reaching and establishing relationships at executive level became an obsession.
We tried hard to get access at C-Level (board level) very soon in the sales process. It actually worked quite well ( with some initial surprise from our counterparts), but proving the value of speaking to the executives of our prospects, understanding their Business issues and building their Business Initiative together opened us a fresh new avenue for being Creative at Right decision level!
Of course Selling to executives means you will break some Internal Taboos!! Have you got all clearance from your management to sell differently? Results came before I had to justify my thinking out of the box.
150% quota achievement spoke for me and my team.
We won more than 1/2 deals in the pipe. We also developed a great team spirit by having more focus on the real Business.
To help us keeping focus on the "good Business" ( the one with 50+% transformation ratio), we decided that if our efforts to access the Business decision level ( CxO, Board members) was not successful we would simply put the opportunity in Less than 25%.
Of course selling to Senior executive requires some practice, a lot of practice actually! and a great team to support you with technical decision makers at the same time.
Daniel V. , Philippe M. and Ian B. were key in getting there, they appreciated our effort to sell more politically, more aggressively and driving them to the right opportunities eventually.
