Last week I spoke to the High Performance Technologies Sales Team…

Delivering a Keynote on, The Secrets of High Priced Consultants…lessons I’ve learned from the Big Six and others, who know how to call on C-Level Executives.

There are 5 major disciplines I see high-priced consultants mastering.  For instance, they sell one of 4 things – Customer Experience Gains and Risk Mitigation being the two most compelling value propositions.  Technology is then just a means of achieving these things.

But perhaps the most important aspect of my message came from a recently interview with the CISO of Sodexo. From our 45 minute discussion I gleaned 5 important things sales people should stop doing if they really want to peer with C-levels.

• Stop calling with generic messages like, “I wanted to introduce myself.” CIOs get thirty to forty of these every week from technology sales people. They don’t have time for this.

• Stop Showing your generic corporate presentation. I know your marketing people think it’s great, but it looks like every other company’s presentation. There really is nothing unique or compelling about it.

• Stop making things sound worse than they are. Security is a big issue, but without proper justification, you can’t just start throwing statistics at them.

• Stop calling to tell them about the latest hack printed in your local paper. They probably knew about it before you did. It’s not interesting or insightful to them.

• Stop showing up with nothing meaningful to say. Instead, start reading about the things they care about, become an expert in something they would find helpful, and then give them a call about something specific.

I’d love to hear more from anyone who has first hand experience with “What not to do” when meeting with an executive…

Copyright 2016, David Stelzl

PS. I was on a call years ago with a sales rep from the company I was involved in. The sales rep managed to get a C-Level meeting, which I attended. One of his first questions was, “So what does your company do?”  Big mistake…