Clues and Tactics
We all know that it is critical to any enterprise software deal that the sales rep needs to have access to the ultimate decision maker in order to predictably win and win in a given timeframe. What is (for some reason) less obvious is how to plan and conduct meetings with senior executives.
Going into an executive meeting takes planning with a clear vision for a desired outcome. For starters, what is the purpose of the meeting from the seller’s perspective? What is the customer’s expectation for the meeting? Is the meeting 1:1 or will other people be involved? If others from the customer will be in the meeting, what is the meeting objective for each attendee? Obviously, the seller's meeting team needs to be current on all current news regarding the customer, the CEO's letter to the shareholders and all LinkedIn profiles of the attendees need to be circulated to all attendees from the selling team attending the meeting. The final planning item is to “test market” the agenda with our customer to ensure meeting expectations will be met.
Once the preparation is complete, managing the meeting becomes the focus. Who is leading the meeting — the sales rep or a senior leader from the seller? Even if a senior leader is present, the sales rep should kickoff the meeting, review the agenda, make any introductions, set the meeting in motion and, ultimately, close the meeting.
Reviewing the agenda is a critical meeting step, ensuring that there aren’t any surprises — particularly on the part of the customer. If there is a topic added on the spot to the agenda, being agile enough to address it is vital. If something arises that requires additional research, it limits the success of the meeting, but depending on its criticality, may also impact the decision and/or decision timeframe.The roles of each attendee in the meeting (from the seller) should be well defined (and rehearsed), so that customer questions can be addressed crisply and by the people best positioned to respond, accordingly.
So lets turn this into math. Let's operate on the assumption that among other things in this meeting we will (i) have met with the executive sponsor, (ii) hopefully identified (or not) the compelling event, and (iii) hopefully listened to the executive sponsor either own (or not) the business case. Loading these events into Pipeline Grader, all other things held equal, getting an accurate read from the executive sponsor on just one of these factors raises probability more than 2x. That is a big number.
Executive meetings are important, not just during a deal cycle, but need to be ongoing throughout the customer lifecycle. Failure to plan and execute them well can be fatal to sales cycles and customer relationships. If your SaaS company needs help ensuring that executive meeting are occurring at the proper time during sales cycles and getting the desired outcomes, please reach out to me at dave@moicpartners.com.
