When you book a meeting with the C-Suite, what are the Top 3 things you must have prepared for that meeting?
(Interested to see various perspectives here — where there is clear overlap, and where there’s differentiated thinking.)
Back when I sold digital advertising at YP, I was encouraged to spend about 30 minutes prepping before a face-to-face call. It was an enormous technical prep process. Years later at Microsoft, we were also encouraged to spend 20 minutes prepping before a call.
The challenge is we are expected to have 20 quality customer calls each week. By the time you add in sales team calls and internal calls and support calls, you’re likely over 50 hours and your schedule is back-to-back with little to no time for even lunch or a bio break.
So currently, I do no prep. My customers are assigned by territory. I sell mostly to C suite. About 50% of my customers stay with me year over year. For new customers I do spend time reading their web site, scanning for news, looking at Glassdoor, review competitive signals, their active licensing and consumption. My goal is to form a unique and personal perspective about their current state.
The rest is simply learning what’s important to them – desired business outcomes – risks, concerns blockers. You can prep for hours/days and then be totally surprised by what they say on the first call. So rather than invest that time upfront, I prefer to have a series of conversations with the customer. This forces you to become agile and think on your feet, looking for pivot points to your solutions. But that’s a good skill to develop.
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So fantastic podcast….there is one big missing link…
Now that you can talk to 1 or all 7 key metrics for an exec…the real magic would be to connect how each LOB can contribute to these metrics and identify what is preventing them from contributing.
They touched on it a bit, but AEs often focus on the shiny object. The real magic happens when you can weave everything all together.
You touched on a great point where leadership
Is asking reps to complete X number of meetings. Some look at it as quality, some just look at the volume. IMO…they are asking the wrong question.
That said, leadership looks to manage the following metrics in order…
1.) are you closing business? If not…
2.) if not closing business, how does your pipe look? This is a big difference between the haves and have nots of sales leaders…haves will focus on quality pipe. Have nots focus on adding pipeline sludge. If you don’t have pipe…
3.) what does your activity look like? How many meetings are you having, how many e-mails are you firing off, etc.
The idea around quality meetings tends to vary.
I can get high meeting counts by focusing on lowers level folks…or…
I focus on 3-4 members of the C-Suite and roughly 2 xVPs that roll up under them. This way O get to the decision maker and EB. In each account, I’m only targeting 12-15 people/account.
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Appreciate the run-down on how maximize your prep without going overboard.
Question: do you ever look through mutual connections on LinkedIn and sort of back channel to get info if you have connections in common? Any recommended best practices there? And does it ever backfire? (not sure why it would, but figured I’d ask)
@tim.hartwell, not sure if your question was direct to Steven or for the general audience, but thought I would provide my two cents…
Yes, mutual connections are fantastic! I have yet to have them backfire. Some best practices/heads up that has worked for me…
Unless you have permission from your contact, do not drop their name.
Ask them if they are willing to make an intro
Don’t get frustrated if they come back and tell you they don’t know them well. Some folks will just accept invites, but have never met.
Sometimes I often reference we share connections with several awesome people. I feel you are letting them know it is ok to vet you out with people you are mutually connected with.
It’s not what you know, but who you know.
Hope this helps!
Great Podcast…
POV
Understand the customer’s business.
Understand the problem they are looking to solve.
Have the right people in the room to solve.
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- Know their story
- Know your story
- Know what makes their story stronger with your story …
These 3 items need deep research - for example for a recent Cxo meeting , we found out that they were planning to come up with a generative ai based digital marketing product … we created a pitch on how we could do it faster and with higher accuracy and also figured in some sweeteners … basically a plan to make the Cxo looks even cooler and he bit the bait …