The CEO of the Problem is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino

You don’t always need access to the highest levels of your dream client to make a deal. You don’t necessarily need access to the C-Suite to find the authority you need to win. But you do need the “CEO of the problem.”

The title “CEO of the problem” isn’t a real title (as if you didn’t know that). You won’t find it on your dream client’s organizational chart, and they won’t likely know what you’re talking about if you ask who owns that title (mostly because I think I just coined the phrase with this post). But there is someone within your dream client company that owns some problem (or some outcome). They have a deep concern for the result and they likely have the real authority to bind their organization to a deal.

The CEO of the problem is the real linchpin in any deal. They have enough authority to make a deal and get what they want, even if the title doesn’t line up with your expectations as to what that title should be. They also have outsized influence, so even if they aren’t the final signature on your contract, they hand it to the (mostly uninterested) person who will sign it. Sometimes influence is enough. And sometimes the real authority is a person with no authority … they are the just the subject matter authority and owner of the problem.

It’s the way selling—and buying—sometimes works. Sometimes you need the ultimate authority in the room, and other times you may only need the “CEO of the problem” in the room. But if you are trying to get in by starting at the very top, you might be running into so much resistance because you aren’t calling at the right C-level. The real C-Level executive might need might be the “CEO of the problem,” and that title might be a level or two below the level at which you are starting.

Questions

Where do you usually start when you try to “get in?”

Why have you been told to start at the top? Is this still the best way in?

If you get in at some lower level, what do you need to be prepared to do to ensure you have the authority you need?

How are you sure that you have the stakeholders you need to win an opportunity?

Why Your Contacts Are Territorial About Your Relationship is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino

There is a reason your contacts sometimes don’t want to allow you to develop relationships with contacts in other parts of their business. There are also reasons they sometimes don’t want you to develop relationships with the people north of them on the organizational chart. It isn’t always pretty, and it isn’t usually easy to find your way out of a territorial relationship.

Crossing Boundaries

You’ve developed a nice relationship with a contact inside your dream client. You’ve spent time with them, you understand their needs, and your opportunity is progressing nicely. But moving your opportunity forward requires that you engage stakeholders from another part of the company. Maybe you need the IT department to approve the technology piece of your solution. Or maybe you need finance or purchasing to acquire budget. Without bringing in the stakeholders you need, your opportunity is dead on arrival. But your contact doesn’t want to give you access.

And why not? Is it that she’s a control freak bent on taking the credit for the solution to work her way up the corporate ladder? Probably not.

Your contact may fear losing control of the solution. She might fear that by allowing you to bring in other stakeholders, her peers will radically transform your solution. And her fears are completely rational; she’s may know or have experience that suggests that another group’s needs conflict with hers. Or maybe your contact has had the unfortunate experience of having finance or purchasing negotiate a deal that destroyed the value the opportunity would have created. But sometimes it’s something else.

Maybe your contact really doesn’t want to lose her relationship with you. She might fear that as soon as she allows you access to the C-suite, that you’ll no longer focus on helping her with her needs. Once you find your way up, you’ll forget how you got there, start serving the leadership team, ignoring here, and make her job even tougher.

These are legitimate and real concerns. The only way to move successfully past these concerns is to get them out on the table. You can’t resolve concerns unless and until you know what they are. You might have to say something like, “I feel that you have some concerns about bringing other people into this process. How can we do that and still address your concerns.”

It’s about trust. Just acknowledging that the concerns exist and are real is sometimes enough to break out of the box.

Questions

Do you have contacts that refuse to let you develop relationships with contacts from other departments?

What do you with contacts that won’t let you access people north of them on the organizational chart? What do you do when you need authority and executive support?

Can your contacts trust you to maintain the relationships they’ve built with you when they allow you to bring in other, sometimes more powerful, contacts from within their company?

Selling to the A, B, and F Suites is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino

You’re might be overly concerned with selling to the C-suite. Authority used to reside in fewer people. Now decisions are more and more made by consensus. The elevator from the ground floor passes through every floor on its way to the Executive Suite. And it’s likely your deal does, too.

The A, B, G and F Suites

There aren’t any A, B, or F suites, I know. But if there were they might look something like this:

The A Suite: The highest level of manager that has a real reason to care about what you sell isn’t always found in the C-suite. The A suite is full of the highest level of stakeholders that do care about what you sell.

You may want to skip this group and go right to the C-suite. But that’s probably a mistake. This group is probably more interested in what you sell. More still, the C-suite is probably looking for this group to make the decision as to what they need to buy before they’re even remotely interested. This group is also likely to have the greatest ability to influence the C-suite (if and when it’s necessary that you bring them in).

The B Suite: This level is the business owner. This is the group of stakeholders that owns the business outcome for your client company.

You might decide not to spend any time outside of the C-suite (or the A-suite). Even though this group may not be upper management, they have the most insight about how what you sell really needs to work for them. They’ll give you the ground truth about what could be improved. And they likely have a ton of influence with the A-suite.

The F Suite: Finance. Purchasing. Supply Chain Management. This is the suite where you find the economic buyers. Like it or not, your deal likely passes through this suite on its way from target to close.

You can try to avoid this group if you want to, but pretending that they aren’t going to be involved in your deal doesn’t make it true. Purchasing and Finance have grown in power over the last decade, and there isn’t any reason not to learn to sell effectively to this group—even if they are overly concerned about price.

The C-suite may or may not be involved in your deal. But there’s no doubt that a lot of lower-level stakeholders are going to be involved in your deal. And they’re going to be affected by whatever you sell. You build consensus by engaging with these groups, not by ignoring them. Stop at every floor on your way to the C-suite.

Questions

What is the title of the highest level of stakeholder that normally cares about what you sell?

Who are the stakeholders you work most closely with once you’ve been chosen?

Which stakeholders usually influence the decision to choose you?

How do you build consensus among all these groups and individuals?

How Many Agreements Do You Need? is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino

You think you need your power sponsor to agree that you are the best person to add to their management team, that your solution is best, and that they should move forward with you.

Not so fast! What about the rest of the organization that is going to be impacted by a decision to choose you?

Decisions are more and more made by consensus. You need to build consensus among all of the stakeholders who are going to decide (formally or informally) whether or not to buy from you. For our purposes here, let’s pretend that, including your power sponsor, there are five stakeholders. You might believe that you need three agreements. Three out of five is a majority, right? Maybe. Well, technically, yes, it is. But you may need more than three agreements.

Internal Agreements (and Disagreements)

Your power sponsor may need to get an agreement with one of the other stakeholders, let’s call him Stakeholder number 2. They may need to agree about how they’re going to deal with a challenge your solution causes one of them so that the other can get the major benefit they really need. That means you need your three agreements (or votes), plus this agreement between the two stakeholders. Now you need four agreements.

But wait! There’s more!

In the not too distant past, Stakeholder 2 torpedoed one of Stakeholder 3’s internal initiatives. Now Stakeholder 3 is withholding their agreement to buy your solution until Stakeholder 2 trades them something they need.

Stakeholder 3 did Stakeholder 4 a solid in the past. Now Stakeholder 4 decides to not only withhold their support for your agreement, but also to work on moving Stakeholder 5 into their camp. If there is no agreement from Stakeholder 3, then there is no agreement from Stakeholders 4 and 5. Now you need at least five agreements.

I don’t need to walk you through all the different scenarios that are possible with just a few stakeholders.

Building consensus is difficult, and there are all kinds of invisible forces at work behind the scenes. With five stakeholders, you may need three votes to make a majority and win the business. But you may need many more agreements. Unless and until you meet with the stakeholders and uncover whether or not you have their commitment, you’ll never know whether or not you have it. You also won’t know what you might be able do to help move their votes in your direction.

Questions

Look at your most complicated deal. How many agreements do you really need? (If it’s complicated, the answer isn’t the number one).

How do you discover the agreements that you need that our outside of a simple “yes” or “no” to your solution?

What are some of the obstacles to building consensus around a deal?

How many stakeholders do you normally need to win a deal? How many do you normally meet with?

]]> http://thesalesblog.com/blog/2013/02/07/how-many-agreements-do-you-need/feed/ 0 http://thesalesblog.com/blog/2013/01/19/value-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/ http://thesalesblog.com/blog/2013/01/19/value-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/#comments Sun, 20 Jan 2013 00:58:22 +0000 S. Anthony Iannarino http://thesalesblog.com/?p=40739 Value Is In the Eye of the Beholder is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino