Sending an executive briefing BEFORE asking for an appointment improves your odds of getting an initial meeting.  

By getting permission to send the briefing, you are congruent with expectations of senior executives and business owners.

An executive briefing, like an execitive summary is not a sales message.  Increase your odds of getting an appointment:

1. Narrow the business issue your service addresses to a non-operational level.  For example, relate your promise of efficiency gains to increased shareholder confidence rather than savings within a particular operating budget.

2. Pre-empt most likely objection such as “Does your firm understand our business” by framing the business issue within their lens.  For example, if your value proposition relates to driving revenue, frame that promise related to industry trends. 

Note: When a senior executive sends you to someone on their team after recieving an executive briefing , it  is NOT a brush-off.   It’s a ”green light“.  Why?

1. A referral indicates that the business issue  you claim to solve is on the executive’s priority list

2. You have established enough credibility that they are willing to guide you to the point person for resources

3.  The area of the company to which you are sent is an indication of where the senior executive has decided the solution will most likely be implemented.

Large investments in strategy-related services involve multiple stakeholders. Now you’ll want to change the framing of your message, since the benefits of your value proposition will be percieved differently by subject matter experts and influencers. 

Most sales-based messages describe ‘how” a solution is built, or how it is better in some way than the competition. The subject matter expert will be pursuaded by this distinction, an influencer less so.

Influencers may be business unit leaders, key clients or distributors and often have the power to kill a deal.  Frame your service offering in the terms they define. Remember the fable of the “Blind men & the elephant”.  Each stakeholder sees the business (and your offering) differently. 

 Selling to Big Business 

Catherine McQuaid: panel hosted by Ontario’s Minister of Small Business

 

Are you hunting water or tree-dwellers?

Where do they prefer to eat?

Do they travel in herds or are they loners?

Knowing the habitat and habits of the entity you are tracking means you have a greater chance of not scaring them away before they spend a little time to check you out.

Before deciding which kind of entity would best suit your business, look for clues in your successes… (and failures) in the past.

In what industry or sector(s) can you demonstrate competence?

Is the business problem you solved unique to that industry?

Can you demonstrate relevance to other sectors or industries?

If not, should you pursue work in the sectoryou’ve had success with before going to other sectors?

How might you demonstrate relevant credibility to other sectors without becoming a generic offering?

If your only credibility story is in a cyclical industry and that industry is in the trough of its cycle, they simply may not have the means to purchase at this time. You’re best to find new territory to hunt.

A couple of key accounts can be all it takes for a smaller business services firm to have predictable growth.

At times of mass enthusiasm for a trend, pressure to follow the herd rather than rely on one’s own information and analysis is almost irresistible.

Yet the best strategies break away from the trend. Some actions may be necessary to match the competition – imagine a bank without ATMs or a good on-line banking offer. But these are not unique sources of strategic advantage, and finding such sources is what strategy is all about.

“Me-too” strategies are often bad ones. Seeking out the new and the unusual should therefore be the strategist’s aim. Rather than copying what your most established competitors are doing, look to the periphery for innovative ideas, and look outside your own industry.

This will require access to stakeholders across all lines of business . In other words, major accounts need all stakeholders around the decision to hire your firm to be aligned. Trusting your “champion” inside the firm to sell your story is too risky.

Third-party stakeholders such as user groups and subject matter experts have more influence than the executive signing the cheque.

Here is how we pursue major accounts:  we start with the senior executive and, trickling down the organization by means of referrals, each conversation is therefore permission-based.

Isn’t there just one cheque-signer?

We shorten development time by negotiating a preferred vendor agreement at the same time as the first project contract is being signed.

Once the first assignment is secured and a company-wide vendor agreement is in place, an investment in multiple points of entry begins to pay off. Smaller companies cannot afford long sales cycles.

Once your firm has been awarded an assignment by one business unit, you can go back and brag about it to the others who may be taking a “wait and see” attitude.

More and more business is conducted virtually rather than by face-to-face meetings, so major accounts can be supported by smaller businesses.

Smaller businesses are vulnerable if they cannot provide coast-to-coast support when the project is running. Being able to respond quickly, right across the nation is a great asset, so demonstrating that you use alternative ways to reach nation-wide can set the stage favorably from the first contact.

This is why we suggest doing all early contact with major accounts by phone rather than face-to-face.  In addition, it is easier to schedule 45 minutes over the phone with a national team rather than waiting to get everyone into the same room.

Concepts like virtual delivery (you don’t have to be in your clients’ place of business to deliver your goods or services) are liberating small businesses from home-town thinking.

Smaller businesses cannot afford long sales cycles or expensive client acquisition processes.

Anyone starting a business today can play in the global marketplace. This is a long way from a storefront business model where geography limits the ultimate size of your business.