Land bigger deals — from the client’s point of view

OK, we’ve covered confidence and preparation. The third key to landing bigger accounts is that you must have a greater understanding of your customer’s business at the highest level.

You have to know what motivates the CEO, for instance. Is it financial? Is it political? Is he making a decision just to make a decision?

Have you ever gotten really far along on a piece of business and then all of a sudden the new CEO comes in? And for no reason other than the fact that it was not his initiative, he tanks a $250,000 sale? It happens. He needs to put his own thumbprint on it.

We have to understand the politics of what goes on inside of organizations.

• What kind of economic decisions are being made?
• What kind of political decisions are being made? What kind of CYA or “cover your ass” decisions are being made?
• What kind of decisions are made at a tactical level?

Your customers at a certain level make decisions that are different than customers at other levels. We need to understand not only their business as well as we possibly can, we have to understand the competitive environment in which they live. We have to understand the political environment inside and outside their organization — from their point of view. And that’s the big statement: from their point of view.

How do you land big accounts? Prepare.

Going after bigger accounts requires a higher level of confidence. And a greater degree of preparation.

And it’s no surprise that these two just go together. The greater your preparation, the more confidence you will have.

So how do you become better prepared? Of course we have to know exactly who our customer is. As always, this involves asking some questions:
•    Who is the customer’s boss?
•    Who’s going to be most affected by this purchase, and which way are they going to be affected?
•    What is their world is like, with our product and without our product?

We’ve got to know what are the biggest concerns, the biggest pains, the biggest fears that our customers may have without the use of our product. And what are some of the biggest cures that they can have by utilizing our product or our service?

So we have to be prepared with our opening statements and conversational points. It might be things going on in the marketplace, or some other things of relevance to them. Maybe we’ve read their website and there are things going on in their industry that we need to be talking about. Maybe we need to be knowledgeable about their competition and what’s going on, trends in their marketplace.

Then we have to know how to transition from that opening statement to the meat of our presentation.

Want to land bigger deals? You have to go after bigger customers

Bigger customers mean bigger deals.

Seriously, somebody is going to be selling the enormous accounts, and it might as well be you.

The question is, how do you prepare yourself, mentally and tactically, to go after those big accounts – and bring home those bigger commissions?

That’s what we’ll be looking at in the next few posts.

The first thing is, your head has to be in the right place. You have to have higher levels of belief in yourself. What does that mean?

Well, sometimes we talk to the guy on the loading dock, or the mid-level manager who will take our call, rather than going to the person who can make the decisions for hundreds of purchases. Why is that? Maybe our self image makes us feel inferior to those key decision makers in an account. We don’t feel comfortable rubbing elbows with people at the top of the org chart.

This could be related to not feeling worthy, not feeling like you’re up to par, not feeling you’re smart enough, not feeling you’re going to have something to say. So you see, your image of yourself as a sales professional can make or break your bottom line.

You’ve got to believe that you’re somebody who is worthy to meet and deal with people at all levels within an organization. And if you don’t, you’ve got to understand that it’s holding you back. How much could things change for you if you transformed your self-image a little bit?