Value-forward selling to management can take sales to new levels.

ALL SALES AND MARKETING TEAMS MUST CONSIDER the following questions: How do management prospects see you? Do you appear to prospects as a peer in the boardroom, or as a vendor waiting in the hallway?

The goal of every salesperson is to increase efficiency in selling products or services. As salespeople, we must deal continually with prospects who are too busy to respond to the increasing number of sales contacts they encounter on a daily basis.

It may not be you personally whom prospects reject, but all salespeople. Despite this obstacle, it is our job as professionals in the field to penetrate each prospect’s
no-talk zone, communicate the value of our products and services, negotiate pricing and collect sales revenue for our firm.

This leaves you with two familiar choices. You can either: Talk to anyone in the targeted company who will listen to you; or deal with the decision-maker directly and bypass lower-level bureaucracy that middle managers will try to force you to navigate. I recommend you look straight to the top.

It’s your choice.

By focusing all your energy on selling management, you will increase your closing ratio dramatically, kick your compensation up a few notches, and spend less time working with unqualified buyers. But if this tactic works, then why doesn’t everybody do it?

To prove successful with management, you must earn the right to sell them. It is not an automatic right-it is an earned right. Most sales training methods overcomplicate selling by pushing you into the middle of a prospect’s organizational chart, into the slow-as-you-go sales cycle dominated by middle managers.

Unfortunately, prospects don’t know your value. Only customers do. But salespeople often treat prospects and customers the same way.

People who talk about relationship sales methods are really referring to generating a long sales cycle interaction with a prospect who is not a qualified buyer, then holding on until they wear them down.

Sales relationships start after the second sale.

The problem, of course, is that most salespeople don’t have two-year quotas. Either you sell on or near your quota this year, or you will be looking for a new job next year.

Most sales training processes discuss selling management as a goal, but they end up using techniques that drive you away from top brass into the arms of middle managers who may waste your time. Then, through a slow and tedious process, these selling methods try to teach you how to manage the complex variables and egos of all of the middle managers you must now handle on your slow climb back up to top-level contacts.

What a waste of time. You should have started at the top from the get-go. If you want to sell more, sell management only.

Don’t trust middle managers to sell your product for you.

Every time you launch your sales cycle by talking to middle managers, you risk your sales commission.

When selling middle managers, you are essentially empowering them to take all the information you provide, filter it, edit it and pass it on to the boss when they feel the time is right (and that moment may never come). In these cases, your professional training and experience evaporate as soon as you make your first product or service presentation. And there goes your commission, because that middle manager is unlikely to be able to match your level of sales acumen.

Middle managers are not salespeople. They are accountants, buyers, IT directors or HR administrators. But regardless of these valuable job functions, they are not necessarily trained salespeople or professional communicators. When they describe your product or service to their boss, they won’t be able to offer the depth and range of information that you can, or manage any questions from the boss like you would.

Your goal should be to use a “value forward” sales process to management, whereby you communicate your value to the prospect throughout the sales cycle to eliminate competition, shorten the cycle and validate to the prospect that you are a business peer.

Many salespeople talk in such extreme terms about how great their product or service is, they end up forcing qualified prospects to push back. The problem may not be that your prospect doesn’t believe you personally when you pitch your product. Instead, it may be a defense mechanism-your prospect may be in the habit of always distrusting salespeople at an initial meeting.

A “value forward” model of sales communicates your business value up front, so your management prospect can identify that value before you even start trying to sell them.

Management buys for three reasons...

1. Your product or service will increase the prospect’s department or company income.
2. Your product or service will decrease the prospect’s department or company expenses.
3. Your product or service will manage the prospect’s business risks or consequences.

Those are the three keys. Any other reason may be a pleasant surprise, but is unlikely to drive management prospects to take an action step to buy. Salespeople often try to communicate their value up front to prospects by announcing the superiority of their product or service, without backing up those claims with demonstrated value.

But if you talk like your competitors, sound like your competitors and act like your competitors-you’d better price like your competitors, because you have now entered the commodity vendor zone, where your value is seen by prospects as suspect.

To validate your business value up front to prospects, so they will trust you and your product, you must create a presales communication process based on one or all of the three drivers that lead management to buy.

...and you can sell management in three simple ways.

1. Create an executive dictionary based on common words and phrases that relate to the prospect’s business title and industry (CFO of a manufacturing company, VP of Marketing for a healthcare provider). Then use this dictionary in all your interactions with the prospect (email, cold calling, presentations, etc.). If you know their language, they will see you as a peer.
2. Develop a sales value proposition based on the three business drivers that induce management to buy, then use it as a tool for describing what makes your offering unique. Be sure to hit all the specific value points you know your prospect cares about.
3. Author a white paper that counters common sales objections. Management rarely has time to read brochures. Instead of offering your prospect a glossy trifold she can easily toss aside, collect the top 10 sales objections your prospect would be likely to offer based on her title and industry. Then provide counterarguments to all those concerns in the form of a specialized white paper that illustrates logical reasons why she should buy: “Seven Reasons Why Financial Services CFOs Should Invest in New Retirement Programs for Employees,” “Five Reasons Why Healthcare CIOs Should Fund IT Outsourcing,” and so on.

Follow these guidelines, and you will find yourself interacting with more executives. If you sound and act like a peer, they will be much more likely to buy from you. Sound and act like a vendor, and you will be treated as such.

Remember, low-level prospects buy based on price and features. Management buys based on its impression of how your product or service can drive business results. To sell more, communicate directly with management by focusing on their needs-not yours.

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paul dimodica (pauldimodica.com) is a speaker, author and consultant on value forward sales and marketing methods. Email Paul at editor@executivetravelmag.com.