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March 21, 2009
Making Executive Meetings Count
by Sridhar Ramanathan
“Believe it or not, there are some bright spots out there…” said an executive vice president of sales for one of our technology clients, a Fortune 500 company. He went on to say “….but the hard part is getting an audience with our customers’ executives for a top-down view of these bright spots.” Sound familiar? The key to successful sales has always been to get a peek into your customers’ executive level mandates and business challenges. The VP went on to say how surprised he was with how often companies don’t get the most out of the executive level meetings that sales reps work hard to land.
We’ve been blessed in Aventi Group by having the ear of many executives here in Silicon Valley. We’ve found that a few open ended questions with business executives can reveal much about their goals and needs while also creating an opportunity to add value to them. Here are some “high insight” questions that we found helpful:
- How’s business?
- How is the economy affecting your business?
- What is the top priority right now for your organization?
- What led you to decide this was the top priority?
- What are your growth initiatives?
- Imagine it is March 2010. What would “success” looks like for you and your company?
- What are some of key challenges you face?
Naturally, you can’t just pepper the executive without offering useful insights yourself such as sharing your own customer insights, intelligence on their competitors, and relevant (suprising) market trends.
Try just using two or three of these in your next executive level meeting and see how that works for you in identifying some opportunities for you to add value. We’d welcome your suggestions for other pithy, “high insight” questions.
Posted March 21, 2009 | Permalink
Posted to Leadership
, Marketing
, Sales Effectiveness