One Percent™ Sales – The C-Level Meeting

Congratulations, you secured the sales/consultation/lobbying meeting with the C-level leader. You garnered the leader’s curiosity, hence the meeting. Now, it’s time to acquire his or her attention, engage his or her intellect, and begin a successful professional partnership. It’s time to be the one who succeeds when 99 others settle. Here’s your checklist for the meeting.

1. Prepare. It’s not enough to be just prepared with knowledge of your information. Knowing your “stuff” is Sales 101. Knowing the other party’s “stuff” is graduate level. Review their website. Read their newsletters. Quote their leaders. Follow their tweets. Find ways to understand a day in their lives.
2. Be confident. The C-level leader did not open up his or her schedule out of the goodness of his or her heart. You had something fine to offer. You suggested the meeting. Take that identical level of confidence to the get-together.
3. Be thankful. Not everyone gets the meeting. Demonstrate honor, present respect, and thank him or her for the meeting – twice (to begin and close).
4. Build trust. If your meeting is about making a sale, the C-level leader sees an expense and cash outflow. If your meeting is about improving the C-level leader’s sales, operations, influence, and more – the C-level leader sees an asset and business multiplier. Be the latter by building trust.
5. Ask and listen. Relevant, insightful questions will give you the information you need to make suitable recommendations. You can plan many of these questions in your research from # 1 above.
   
6. Trust your gut. If the meeting is going well, you’ll know. And, if the meeting has run its course, you’ll know. Move in the direction you both want to go; and, sometimes, it may be your respective ways.
7. Be courageous. Shoot straight with the C-level leader. If you can help grow revenue, lay out the plan. If you can build more commitment, show the strategy. Now is not the time for figuring out a way to make it all work; it’s time to prove your worth and begin helping the C-level leader prove his or her worth, as well.
8. Present a big idea. C-level leaders like C-level ideas. How can you help to double sales? How can you help to dominate market share? How can you help to sway conventional thinking? If you were the C-level leader, what big idea would – intentionally – keep you up at night? Bring that idea to the meeting.
9. Know your close, but don’t recite your close. Ever rolled your eyes when someone is, clearly, reading from a script? We all have. Know what you want to say (and sometimes it comes to you in the meeting) and make your statement part of your personality. You’ll be much more genuine – and trusted.
10. Play to win. Okay, football fans – Prevent Defense does what? Prevents you from winning, they say. You will not be good by deciding not to be bad. You will not succeed by deciding not to fail. And you will not win by deciding not to lose. You will be good when you decide to be good. You will succeed when you decide to succeed. And, you will win when you decide to win.

 

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