TOP Level Selling
TOP Level Selling
David A. Peoples brings an interesting example to this in his Book "Selling to the Top":
After an important loss the top manager arranged a meeting with the top decider. Nobody in his enterprise has ever this person during the sales conversations met or called at him. The top manager said to the decision maker: "We would like to understand, why you selected the rival product despite of the unique advantages of our product and listed these advantages. To what the decision maker replied: "I wished somebody had this told to me 30 days ago."
Before you look for an appointment, you must answer the following question without hesitating:
What is the target for this conversation?
Mostly, who doesn't have any good answer here already fails with the secretary ("what are the concrete reasons to have an appointment with....")
So about what would you talk to the top decider?
Top managers of IBM customers said in an interview that they expect first excellent knowledge of their enterprise, their line of business and the surroundings in which they make business. Only secondly they expect a sales person to understand his products and services.
So this primarily indicates preparation, preparation, and again preparation. If the first conversation should become a flop you never will get a second chance! At first so you must intensively ask about the enterprise of your potential customer: Business reports, web pages, image brochures, press publications, but ideally you win a person out of the surroundings of the top manager as a mentor who supports you. This can be absolutely from a lower hierarchical level since the access usually is found easier here. And now you should be prepared to ask the right questions, primarily according to the "Critical success factors".
Critical success factors are those few things which must run absolutely correctly in an enterprise if it shall have success and prosper. You can count out the critical success factors at the fingers of one hand in most enterprises. If these look good, the enterprise will prosper; if not, it will go down. All other things might be average.
The following functions are ascribed to critical success factors:
- They provide a management main emphasis.
- They serve as a catalyst for management activities.
- They define the threats and chances for the enterprise.
- They make it possible for an enterprise to assess his strengths and weaknesses.
- They provide an orientation of the resources possible with the plans.
- They define the information desire of the enterprise.
One the next page you will find some examples of questions to managers of different areas:
General Management
- Goals and
objectives
- Strategies
- Focus
- Opinions of customers (the opinions of customers are always an important issue)
Production and logistics
- Inventory
- Stock turn
- Trash rate
- Delayed Deliveries
Finance & administration
- Profit margins
- Price-/Earning relation
- Cash flow
- Deprecation of claims
- Tax regulations
Research and development
- Development cycle
- Innovation
- Marketing Focus
- Quality
Marketing and sales
- Competitive situation
- Sales cycle
- Market share
- Product differentiation
- Price elasticity
- Customer service
- Administrative work
Human resources
- Fluctuation
- Rate of absenteeism
- Labor market
- Moral of the workers
- Wage settlements
TOP Level Selling - To learn more about this author, visit Hans-Peter Holzwarth's Website.
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Selling strategically means not only convincing one contact person with the customer particularly at greater projects but the enterprise as a whole. At this it is necessary to overcome hierarchy levels and to get in there where the decision actually makes. This must not be the much lectured "Top Down Selling" during the seventies. At the team orientation spread today often in the enterprises "Bottom up" is necessary as well to include the later users in the decision-making process. It is, however, fact that many sales persons are afraid of it to look the contact high. On the other hand many sales persons don't believe that particularly top decider need unfiltered information to decide correctly.
David A. Peoples brings an interesting example to this in his Book "Selling to the Top":
After an important loss the top manager arranged a meeting with the top decider. Nobody in his enterprise has ever this person during the sales conversations met or called at him. The top manager said to the decision maker: "We would like to understand, why you selected the rival product despite of the unique advantages of our product and listed these advantages. To what the decision maker replied: "I wished somebody had this told to me 30 days ago."
Before you look for an appointment, you must answer the following question without hesitating:
What is the target for this conversation?
Mostly, who doesn't have any good answer here already fails with the secretary ("what are the concrete reasons to have an appointment with....")
So about what would you talk to the top decider?
Top managers of IBM customers said in an interview that they expect first excellent knowledge of their enterprise, their line of business and the surroundings in which they make business. Only secondly they expect a sales person to understand his products and services.
So this primarily indicates preparation, preparation, and again preparation. If the first conversation should become a flop you never will get a second chance! At first so you must intensively ask about the enterprise of your potential customer: Business reports, web pages, image brochures, press publications, but ideally you win a person out of the surroundings of the top manager as a mentor who supports you. This can be absolutely from a lower hierarchical level since the access usually is found easier here. And now you should be prepared to ask the right questions, primarily according to the "Critical success factors".
Critical success factors are those few things which must run absolutely correctly in an enterprise if it shall have success and prosper. You can count out the critical success factors at the fingers of one hand in most enterprises. If these look good, the enterprise will prosper; if not, it will go down. All other things might be average.
The following functions are ascribed to critical success factors:
- They provide a management main emphasis.
- They serve as a catalyst for management activities.
- They define the threats and chances for the enterprise.
- They make it possible for an enterprise to assess his strengths and weaknesses.
- They provide an orientation of the resources possible with the plans.
- They define the information desire of the enterprise.
One the next page you will find some examples of questions to managers of different areas:
General Management
- Goals and
objectives
- Strategies
- Focus
- Opinions of customers (the opinions of customers are always an important issue)
Production and logistics
- Inventory
- Stock turn
- Trash rate
- Delayed Deliveries
Finance & administration
- Profit margins
- Price-/Earning relation
- Cash flow
- Deprecation of claims
- Tax regulations
Research and development
- Development cycle
- Innovation
- Marketing Focus
- Quality
Marketing and sales
- Competitive situation
- Sales cycle
- Market share
- Product differentiation
- Price elasticity
- Customer service
- Administrative work
Human resources
- Fluctuation
- Rate of absenteeism
- Labor market
- Moral of the workers
- Wage settlements
TOP Level Selling - To learn more about this author, visit Hans-Peter Holzwarth's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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George LudwigGeorge Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website |
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John PowerJohn Power, founder of Biltmore Franchise Consulting, has extensive experience developing and marketing franchises and business opportunities. He has been in and around franchising for over twenty years. From 1980 through 1990 he conceptualized, organized, and developed the American Video Association. He grew AVA to 2,000 national members, before selling the company it 1990. It was later merged into another home video marketing company. From 2000 to 2005 he worked as a contract marketing and human resources consultant to several local and national companies. In 2005 Mr. Power began working as a franchise development consultant on a full-time basis. Since that time he has helped more than three dozen companies initiate and develop their franchising program. He notes that there are many companies interested in developing a franchise program, and who need his specialized assistance. Mr. Power is a “hands-on” franchise consultant. He said, “I am the ‘nuts and bolts’ person who tends to the details for my clients.” Mr. Power holds a B.S. degree with a major in Marketing. See: www.biltmorefranchise.com You may contact Mr. Power at: jpower@biltmorefranchise.co - Visit John Power's Website |
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Staging DivaDebra Gould, aka The Staging Diva®, is President of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company. Inspired by many requests from aspiring home stagers wanting to start similar businesses, Gould created the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. Gould has trained over 1000 Staging Diva Graduates worldwide to start staging businesses. Buying decorating and selling six of her own homes in four years lead to an interest in real estate staging which she turned into a career with the launch of sixelements.com in 2002. Since then she has staged hundreds of homes in addition to teaching home staging training. Gould is the author of several home staging resources including a series of popular ebooks made up of a Design Guide, Color Guide and Portfolio Guide. For more information about Debra Gould visit stagingdiva.com. - Visit Staging Diva's Website |
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Jay Kubassek(Jay's Full Bio: EvanCarmichael.com/jaykubassek) In five years, Canadian-born entrepreneur Jay Kubassek went from selling mufflers at a Midas franchise to revolutionizing Internet marketing with the 2004 launch of CarbonCopyPRO, a online marketing education company, now worth over $20 million with customers in over 160 countries.
As an independent film producer, his upstart film fund Aliquot Films is currently producing a films with Spike Lee and Abel Fererra (starring Ethan Hawke and Dennis Hopper.)
Jay's entrepreneurial spirit is irrepressible. He’s the owner of five companies, a professional speaker and trainer, international real estate developer/investor, extreme sport enthusiast and emerging philanthropist. Jay resides in NYC with his wife Jamie, son Milo and dog Cooper. Visit Jay's official website: www.JayKubassek.com - Visit Jay Kubassek's Website |
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