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THE CxO POWER MATRIX
Dan:
I attended your workshop recently and learned a lot. I wish I would have taken the course much earlier in my career. I have one question about working with the senior executives in my accounts. I have tried to make appointments with them and have had little luck. Please discuss any best practices that may improve my ability to access my executives.
Kaitlyn
San Antonio, TX
Kaitlyn:
Thank you for your kind comments about the Trust Triangle Selling™ workshop. I am happy to pass on some information that will help you increase your access to CxO-level clients and to enhance your ability to effectively work with them.
First, please refer to the basic best practices that are dictated by the Trust Triangle™. Remember that you can never gain trust by talking about yourself, your product or your company. You can only gain trust by focusing on your client and her needs. Please refer to my book Building Trust, Growing Sales, along with prior newsletters on building trust and the Trust Triangle. All of the best practices hold true whether you are working with mid-level managers or CxOs (senior executives).
Second, recall that in the January, 2010 newsletter we shared the powerful "3Rs": Research, Reference and Request Opinion. Understand that when working with CxOs there is arguably nothing more important than research. In my workshops I stress that you should know more about the clients' businesses than they know themselves. With widely available research tools and the internet at our fingertips I really believe that it is possible.
Finally, there is a golden tool I developed related to researching your targeted account and CxO that I'll share with you. It is called the CxO Power Matrix (see example below). I call it that because I have never seen anything as effective at gaining access to CxOs. It makes use of best practices from The Trotter (coffin/halo) Matrix format I learned during my days at GE. It draws upon the CxO's need to outperform his competitors and indexes, and incorporates the research you have completed on the top goals the CxO has delineated for his corporation.
Start by creating a four-column table. Place the CxO's top two to four goals that you gathered from your research in the left column. Be sure to pick goals that are both important to your client and made possible by your offering/solution. Examples are operational costs & trend, profit and trend, EPS and trend, productivity and trend and customer satisfaction and trend.
THE CxO POWER MATRIX
The data/measurements from those goals will be in the second column. The data from your target account's top competitor will be in column three. The industry benchmark data will be in column four.
Once you have entered the data into the matrix place a rectangle (coffin) around the losing scores and a circle (halo) around the winning entries. This data will then allow you to make use of the 3-R's with even more power. Your 3-R's now sound like this:
Research:
Jim, I have spent a great deal of time researching your corporation's key goals and initiatives for 20XX and comparing them against Acme Corp (their top competitor) as well as industry benchmarks. In particular I noticed that the Profit/Growth ratio appears to be lagging as compared to Acme and the benchmark.
Reference:
"We have had great results in tackling the same challenge for YXZ (Situational Fluency)."
"I believe we may be able to do the same for your company."
Request "Opinion":
"I would like to get your opinion on what we have done for XYZ and how we may be able to help your company achieve similar or even greater results."
There it is. The matrix is simple and yet very powerful because it forces you to perform the necessary research to demonstrate how your solution can impact your client's goals and objectives.
Kaitlyn, I hope you find this information valuable to your quest to improve your access to CxOs.
Good Luck, and Close 'Em!
p.s. For a preview of the other strategies, be sure to visit www.salesstrategizer.com for the new Selling Power Sales Strategizer iPhone app. The Sales Strategizer "Pro":
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Analyzes data input to provide intelligence in the form of recommendations for the proper major account sales strategy (strategies) to employ
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Consolidates user inputs to illustrate the chances of winning with an indicator gauge and digital readout
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Submits "red flag" coaching feedback with action items to improve chances of winning
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Coaches and explains why inputs are critical by providing hyperlinks in each question
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Presents a simple and concise summary report to facilitate coaching & major account review
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Provides summary report e-mail capability for sharing and printing
- Creates a database to store account Strategizer results for subsequent updates and modifications
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