Oct 062023
 

 

Corporate Visions is a provider of corporate sales training. My team members, and I, participated in a two-day CVI training session last month. It was applicable and systematic. With that said, here are a few instructions from the course:

  • Executives’ business is their business and not your products. Talk in terms they care about.
  • The seller will get delegated down to who he or she sounds like. Sellers need to speak to something the person cares about personally. If not, they would delegate you to someone whose job it is to do that specific thing.
  • Be specific to your customers. We can save you $ a year based on this/that calculation, which itself is based on research you have done on them. This shows your competency and your compelling proposal.
  • Do the math and show them the numbers that are specific to line items they care about as proof of what you have just told them or asked them. “I saw your presentation and specific to you we can deliver ROE of/a market share of x%…”
  • Ask yourself whether what you are saying is what your competitor is probably also saying.
  • A lack of budget does not mean a budget cannot be made available if the problem is worth it and seller can create a buying vision. Get executives involved early on.
  • You don’t need a complete answer. You need to create the custom answer alongside the customer.
  • You need to know more about their business than about your products (elsewhere and outside of the training the salesperson needs to know enough to generate credibility).

 

CVI has done executive research and advises that the framework for a conversation is DIQ. This stands for Data, Insight and Question.

  1. Share Data related to an external factor e.g. a relevant research stat
  2. Share Insight e.g. problem or opportunity or risk they may not be aware of and
  3. Ask a Question that may be hypothetical, comparative or prioritization type that provokes a conversation and leads to your solution without directly ringing up your solution because customers care about their business not what you are pitching. For example, “A customer on one channel may be the same customer on another channel. In fact, research from ABC shows that is the case 20% of the time. Yet, you think the earlier customer has left your site. Why would you limit yourself to not following customers through unique IDs even if they are guests? How are you preparing for monetization in an omni-channel world?”

Things That Need To Go Away: Being generic, not citing $ or % regarding the customer and not personalizing for your customer.

 

 

 

Oct 022023
 

My team and I attended sales training by Corporate Visions recently. The pitch was that the training is backed by science and delivered by former C or V-level (persons with titles like CEO, CFO or CMO or vice-presidents) instructors. The instructors who deliver the training have personal experience holding upper management roles and are the type of folks sellers like to reach.

It was instructive.

The outline for selling to the c-suite:

Highlight External Factors: Sharing problems that are out of their control and unconsidered frames the conversation and establishes your expertise. This may include global changes, regulatory affairs, technology advancements and more.

Examples: 44% of customers leave after just one bad experience (improve your CX), new Asian competitors like XYZ are entering the market (compete in the ‘green’ material market and blunt them by re-gearing and retraining your team) or the forecast now is that the economy will crawl to 0.5% meaning… (save money by improving margin by 2% since saving 833 hours on… is saving on the payroll line items). Executives react with initiatives in order to change.

Identify Business Initiatives: Relate these to the company’s or executives initiatives that you have dug up or that you are prescribing to them based on their competitors known action items if you cannot find theirs.

Introduce Unconsidered Needs: Telling them something they have not thought of is more valuable than sharing something they know. This will make you less of a commodity. Be sure you are specific to them. Do they have an opportunity or an exposure or a risk or problem they did not know they have or did not fully appreciate? Even if they do not find your assessment an epiphany they may be introduced to a risk in their execution. Risk is theirs and cannot be passed on.

Provide A Solution: Tell them a story of how you have removed the problem or addressed the issue elsewhere. How will the future look like with your help? Again, be specific about how you can help and impact their business. Your value track: Outcome (what) + Impact ($).

Give Them The Financial Impact: Even though they are not being personally measured by ROI they do need financial justification. Look up, or assume based on their role, how they are compensated and measured and make it specific to them. It is much better to speak to their line item as opposed to generalities like ‘revenue ‘ or ‘profits.’ The financial metrics are comprised of ‘why I care?’ (which is emotional) followed by ‘why it makes sense’ (the logical side).

Two related notes:

  • Sellers should not be afraid of walking into the conversation with a perspective
  • It is alright that not every answer is bolted down and things are locked down. Things do change and that is part of the calculation.

The CVI training was useful and the insights relevant.

 

Things That Need To Go Away: Training that is too general to be followed and training that is not followed up on and practiced by the trainees.