Selling to senior-level executives requires a different set of skills and strategies from the more traditional departmental-level transactional sale. Until the early 1980s, product was king. When a company introduced a new product, it was in many cases proprietary, allowing the company to get months or years of mileage of it being “best in class” or “leading edge” before a competitor leapfrogged it with an alternative offering.

Because of strong product differentiation, manufacturers dominated the business environment. For them, the standard go-to-market approach was a direct sales force, whose key functions were to provide basic product information, a point of contact with the vendor, and a human face to associate with the product. This sales force was typically made up of geographically assigned salespeople, each of whom called on a large number of accounts within a territory. They often sold to operations-level employees within individual departments like procurement or purchasing.

In the mid-1980s, priorities shifted. Customers were knowledgeable and comfortable with existing products and no longer needed a direct sales force to supply product information. Now they wanted low prices. Not altogether by coincidence, India and China stepped in as offshore providers of lower-cost manufacturing and services, and Western producers flocked to them in a bid to meet their customers’ demands for savings while preserving their own margin. Supply Chain Management, Business Process Reengineering, Total Quality Management, and Six Sigma had their roots in this wave of stripping cost and inefficiency from the supply chain. The shift to lower-cost channels of distribution—or multichannel marketing—also began in this era, spawning hundreds of thousands of call centers, resellers, and online ordering portals.

At the same time, customers began to wonder how they could extract even more value from their suppliers, and they woke up to the fact that salespeople who were desperate to make a sale could be given the task of providing free consulting on ways to solve the more complex business problems. All of us who sold in that era needed knowledge of our own products, how they fit into our customer’s operation, and how to assemble other components of a solution using products and services from third-party suppliers—we had to become solution architects and partner relationship managers, for whom selling a solution became a matter of juggling multiple relationships across our own company, the customer’s company, and other vendors’ companies. We were moving from the neat model of being a representative of one brand to being a broker for many products, services, and stakeholder agendas. To paraphrase from the tale of globalization that Thomas Friedman paints in The Lexus and the Olive Tree (HarperCollins, 1999): Sony moved from the stereo and CD market into the digital camera market where a 3.5-inch diskette became the film, the computer printer became the photo-processing store, and e-mail became the post office. Sony learned it could be Sony, Kodak, and Federal Express all at the same time as a one-stop business solution. Kodak responded to the challenge by promoting itself as a personal computer company. Compaq and Dell responded by saying computers were now commodities and they’d evolved to selling “business solutions.” Accounting–consulting firms that had previously held business solutions as their bread and butter were less worried about the computer companies and more concerned by the likes of Goldman Sachs and other investment bankers that started selling tax and investment advice. You could read about these trends in books available at Borders stores, which now sold CDs—Sony’s original market. Everyone is now in everyone else’s business. Now even Borders is out of business, having closed its doors in 2011. Rival bookseller Barnes & Noble acquired Borders’ trademarks and customer list.

That’s the world of “business solutions,” and by definition it demands that as salespeople, we move beyond the operations level and middle managers if we want to be heard above all the noise—we have to be more visible at the executive level.

In the 1990s another trend emerged. Business solutions that once seemed complicated to assemble, hence needed the input of salespeople to sort out the details, now became commonplace. Customers got the hang of them, identified the best vendors, and started compiling solutions themselves. The internal departments responsible for building these multivendor solutions started to get very good at it. Some of them were spun off as separate businesses, and one-stop-shop systems integration was born in the information technology market. The integrator ethos then spread in different forms to other industries.

Salespeople had educated the market on how to do it, and they were now competing with their very own customers for services work that had become more profitable than selling the product itself.

With the rise of Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, and other portals, the commoditization of high-value services and next day delivery accelerated. We remember not so many years ago people saying: “Okay, so we accept that customers can buy PCs over the Internet, but they’ll never buy something as complicated as a server without seeing a rep!” Then came Dell, followed by a slew of others selling ever-more sophisticated products online. With information so freely available, transaction protocols so secure, and returns policies so lenient, there’s almost no limit to the complexity of product that companies are willing to buy over the Internet. In an environment where buyers can conceive of, research, and complete procurement exercises totally online, salespeople need to work harder than ever to be seen as relevant.

This dilemma is compounded by an increase in competition brought on by modern online technology. In the twenty-first century we have inexpensive offshore production, crowdfunding, and peer-to-peer lending platforms to seed product and company development. With these, barriers to competition are reduced. Start-ups with new products, services, and niche expertise are cropping up at an increasing pace and chasing the same customers. This creates a noisy market that executives have learned to filter out. This makes getting on their radar even more of a challenge.

Forbes estimates that globally there are over a quarter million new product launches each year.¹ Invitations to learn about these hit the in-boxes of executive buyers at a rate of 96 e-mails a day,² of which 17 on average are weeded out as spam, and executive assistants patrol the rest. It’s not surprising that recognition and recall are low.

In the current Most Memorable New Product Launch annual survey produced by Schneider Associates and Sentient Decision Science, a question is asked about how many people remember anything about new products they’ve just been introduced to:

•   Baby boomers (born 1946–1964) recall 35 percent

•   Gen X (born 1965–1976) recall 41 percent

•   Gen Y Millennials (born 1977–1995) recall 49 percent

•   Gen Z (born >1996) recall 61 percent, but only with repeat exposure in different sources³

The media sources that most impact product recall include:

•   Television advertising = 60 percent

•   Social media = 48 percent

•   E-mail and YouTube = 24 percent

•   A colleague’s recommendation or search engines = 21 percent

•   Print advertising = 15 percent

There is little difference in media response by gender, but there exists a clear generational gap. Gen Z and Gen Y leaders are much less likely than older executives to learn about new products through traditional information like TV commercials or paid-for media. These new generations binge-watch their favorite television shows and skip commercial breaks altogether. They’re ad-resistant online as well, with a five-second trigger finger when ads pop up on YouTube and other sites they visit. Instead, the new generation of executives relies far more on personal referral, social media, and social proof from their trusted community than previous buyers. If you’re not seen in the places they search for information when they’re in the mood to find it, you’ll find it difficult to break into the C-Suite in the next half-century.

BUILDING A FOUNDATION OF C-SUITE KNOWLEDGE

Recognizing that generational buying trends were changing as early as 1995, an Atlanta-based sales training company called Target Marketing Systems conducted a study in conjunction with Hewlett-Packard and the University of North Carolina’s Kenan–Flagler Business School in Chapel Hill. This research was managed by Steve Bistritz, EdD (a coauthor of this book), who sought to discover what salespeople needed to do in the Internet age to remain relevant to senior executives, and what factors most influenced the executive decision-making process.

The original purpose of the research project was to examine not only how professional, business-to-business salespeople interacted and interfaced with C-level executives in client organizations, but to see how they built lasting, trust-based relationships with those executives. In addition, there was an interest in learning from the executive’s perspective what salespeople had to do to deliver effective meetings. Coincidentally, at the same time Hewlett-Packard was attempting to establish a new national sales organization that would focus on selling to senior client executives, and the company genuinely wanted to understand what it took for those salespeople to gain the trust and credibility of those executives.

From its perspective, HP was trying to determine how its salespeople could be perceived as Trusted Advisors to client executives. The company decided to co-sponsor the study and did so by contributing to the cost and participating in the planning and execution of the study. It might be said that HP saw the researchers as Trusted Advisors and were prepared to coinvest in their work. As you’ll see later in this book, it’s possible to develop this type of relationship with your clients too, which unlocks budgets and relationships you seldom tap when your only engagement is around your standard list of products and services.

The rationale for Target Marketing Systems to cosponsor the study was that the company was in the midst of developing an instructor-led workshop for professional salespeople on selling to executives and was interested in determining the best ways for salespeople to create, maintain, and leverage relationships with senior-level executives in client organizations. In perusing sales journals and the existing literature in 1995, few articles were written by C-level executives discussing their relationships with professional salespeople or why they would want to meet with new salespeople attempting a first contact. At that time, most books and articles on this topic were written by salespeople about their anecdotal experience dealing with senior client executives. The literature did not speak about creating and establishing those relationships from the executive’s perspective.

Interest developed at the University of North Carolina’s Business School because a professor of marketing at the school, Dr. Jay Klompmaker, was a member of the advisory board at Target Marketing Systems. He saw the research project as an outstanding opportunity for four of his graduate students in the MBA program—all of whom had previous experience as business-to-business salespeople—to participate in a practical study that could make a significant contribution to the profession. Their participation subsequently became part of the practicum requirements for the MBA. Dr. Klompmaker duplicated the literature search and reached an identical conclusion about the lack of empirical information in this field.

Preparation for the executive interviews took nearly six months; a detailed questionnaire was developed, a list of potential executives to be interviewed was created, and practice interviews were conducted. The executives interviewed came from the client bases of Target Marketing Systems and Hewlett-Packard. The executives were not prescreened in any manner, except that each needed to be willing to commit an hour of their time, and had to function at the vice president or CXO level. Purchasing and procurement executives were specifically excluded from the survey.

The experienced sales professionals on the MBA track at UNC practiced with HP executives, then interviewed more than 60 client executives, ranging from vice presidents to chairpersons. Interviews were conducted in person or by telephone and lasted up to 60 minutes. The reason for conducting interviews in this manner was to make certain that all responses came directly from the executives themselves. If we had sent an executive our questionnaire on this topic, it may have been completed by the executive’s assistant or a lower-level manager and would have compromised the process. We also wanted to capture anecdotal comments from executives. These goals could most likely be achieved in face-to-face or telephone interviews.

Executives were selected from diverse industries, including transportation, textiles, telecommunications, utilities, financial services, technology, printing, and office furniture. Four years later, in the spring of 1999, the same study was expanded in collaboration with the Center for Business and Industrial Marketing at Georgia State University in Atlanta, with more than 125 senior executives surveyed in total.

In preparing for the initial interviews with executives, Hewlett-Packard arranged for each of the four MBA students to conduct a series of practice interviews with some of HP’s own senior executives. These in-person practice interviews took place at HP’s corporate headquarters in California. The purpose of these practice interviews was to carefully vet the questionnaire that had been developed, make certain that there were no questions that could be misinterpreted or issues that could arise, and also confirm that the MBA students were thoroughly prepared to conduct effective 60-minute interviews with client executives.

To ensure that the process was conducted appropriately, the research manager accompanied the MBA students to each of the practice interviews to validate the process and help set the tone for each interview. We also wanted to verify that each of the four MBA students was prepared, confident, and competent, because their next step was a live interview with a senior-level client executive. These initial interviews were very successful and provided us with additional insight into how to conduct the interviews with client executives, as well as how to treat the executives during the process. The executives at HP who participated in the practice interviews also told us that the process provided value to them because they gained additional insight into how they could perhaps work more effectively with the salespeople they dealt with on an ongoing basis.

To test for cultural variance, the research was expanded in 2005 by Nic Read (this book’s other coauthor), who at the time was president of the sales consulting firm SalesLabs and an advisor to the Hewlett-Packard Business School in Beijing, China. Hewlett-Packard again proved invaluable in the research process. Its business school in China, in concert with Ivy League universities, provided Executive MBA programs to Chinese executives. Over a two-year period, when executives and senior managers finished a course of study, they were asked to complete a detailed questionnaire about how they viewed China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in terms of the challenges it created for local companies, the implications for them as leaders, and what they looked for from the salespeople and vendors who were knocking on China’s door with new solutions. The research team collected surveys and interviewed more than 400 chairpersons, vice presidents, and managing directors of Chinese state-owned enterprises and multinational companies in the insurance, biotech, pharmaceutical, telecommunications, banking, airline, steel, and information technology industries. A number of respondents came from regional neighbors that included Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Australia. This study lifted the total sample of executives who were interviewed to more than 500, from which surprisingly consistent findings were extrapolated on how executives get involved in the buying cycle, regardless of culture, and what salespeople need to do to gain their trust and create value.

The following sections reveal what we learned.

EXECUTIVE INVOLVEMENT IN THE BUYING CYCLE

Salespeople who want to build relationships with executives must enter the picture early in the buying cycle because this is when 80 percent of executives usually become involved in significant purchase decisions (see Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Executive Involvement in the Buying Cycle

The executives’ motivation at this stage is to understand current business issues, establish project objectives, and set the overall project strategy to deal with what might be termed a breakthrough initiative: something that is critical to the client’s success because of significant payback from its implementation or serious consequences if action is delayed or not taken.

According to one executive from the office furniture industry:

I get involved in the “what” and “why,” not so much the “how.” At the beginning, I put in a lot of personal time making sure the project’s on the right track and moving in the right direction.

Another executive from the airline industry told us:

I’m planning now for how my business will look 10 years from now. It’s difficult to forecast on our own, so we depend on the ideas of suppliers and partners in the same industry, on the belief that separately we might be wrong, but together we’re probably right. Vendors who can’t engage in that forward thinking don’t get off the ground with me.

Comments regarding executive involvement in the early phase of the buying cycle were consistent in each of our three studies.

During the middle phase of the buying cycle, executives tend to reduce their involvement and delegate decisions to subordinates or committees. Executives in the survey said that once a clear vision is set, it’s time to empower the people below them. “Once we’ve defined the parameters, my tendency is to get out of the way,” said one respondent. Most of the executives never or only occasionally involve themselves at this stage.

However, all three research studies confirmed that executives get significantly involved once again late in the buying cycle to evaluate whether the vendors can really deliver the original vision and to measure the results of the implementation. They want to understand whether the vendor delivered the value that was originally committed to. They also told us that the closer they get to the contract being awarded, the less likely they are to supersede the recommendations of the evaluation team; the purchasing decision has usually already been made in their minds, if not on paper.

Do you see the problem here?

The middle-to-late phase of the buying cycle is the period when senior executives in medium-size to large companies are least likely to open their calendar to a salesperson. But this is when most invitations to quote and submit proposals happen. Salespeople who get their first scent of a deal at this stage and expect to “meet the boss” are usually frustrated by the difficulty of doing so. If you are able to gain access to the right executive early enough in the buying process, your efforts are likely to be rewarded. But don’t expect marketing to line up those meetings for you. Here’s why.

Executives are increasingly using the Internet to inform their views, but they do not search on the category of solution because, this early in the process, they’re not educated enough to know where a solution will come from. Instead, they search based on the problem confronting them. This is a challenge for marketers if their search engine optimization program uses only tag words that describe their solution (which is most of them).

Try this experiment. Imagine that you are an executive and you’re early in your buying cycle. You don’t know what the solution will be yet, but you know that your problems are “customer growth” and “declining revenue.” You want to see who can solve those problems.

Key these two phrases into a search engine and write down the top three hits for each. Here’s what we found doing this experiment on Google:

“customer growth”: 326,000,000 hits

1.   An in-app analytics software company

2.   A professional services company

3.   A direct mail company

The top three hits for this problem reach very different types of vendors talking about their products and services. This doesn’t add value to an executive who wants to explore a specific business problem and isn’t ready to home in on a solution.

“declining revenue”: 45,500,000 hits

1.   A 2017 BusinessInsider news article about a software company in decline

2.   A 2017 Forbes news article about a beverage company in decline

3.   A 2017 USA Today news article about an online review company in decline

The top three hits for this problem led to news stories by journalists about companies facing declining revenue. So did the next 70 hits. It wasn’t until the eighth screen of this query that the first potential supplier of services weighed in with an opinion. Let’s face it, nobody clicks eight screens deep.

This exercise shows why so many salespeople don’t get invited to talk to executives early on—when executives are looking for ideas about solving their problems, most companies that offer answers can’t be found. The reason is that when marketing teams create search engine listings and meta tags, the phrases they use are focused on how the seller sees the world (all about the product), not how the executive buyer sees it (all about the problem).

Let’s put this hypothesis to the test. Do the same experiment again, but this time let’s think like one of those marketing people who can’t see beyond their product (which, as we’ll discuss in the next chapter, is most of them). Let’s choose the well-worn product categories of “customer relationship management” and “account management” as solutions that would be a good fit for the previously cited problems of “customer growth” and “declining revenue,” and see if the search result shows a tighter grouping:

“customer relationship management”: 17,000,000 hits

1.   A CRM software company

2.   A CRM software company

3.   A CRM software company

“account management”: 33,000,000 hits

1.   A scholarly article by a sales training company

2.   A scholarly article by a sales training company

3.   A scholarly article by a sales training company

Look at the comparison. We see 584,000 hits when our executive is first exploring these problems and is most open to new ideas (early in the buying cycle). But as we’ve seen, most of these hits failed to connect to relevant sellers. It’s only after the buyer is already educated about a product category (usually the middle of the buying process, when executives are least likely to be involved) that most Internet marketing connects buyers to sellers, in this case 50,000,000 of them who were marketing their wares using product-speak, not customer-speak. Ever wondered why so many evaluators have already pigeonholed you before your first meeting? Or why so few executive prospects spend their time camping on your doorstep? Now you know.

While writing this book we attended an enormous marketing event staged by a major business intelligence software company. A record number of prospects, customers, partners, and media representatives attended. The company had spent real money on this event, and it showed. Anticipation built as huge screens counted down to the opening address, punctuated by spinning lights and rock music. When the vice president of marketing mounted the stage, he delivered a passionate presentation about how his company was redefining its industry, and how its customers were no longer satisfied being sold a bunch of widgets; they wanted solutions to their business problems. Our curiosity was piqued by the expectation that we were about to see a company make the leap to true customer-centricity.

The vice president revealed the next slide, which showed the company’s products grouped into neat boxes, and declared they were now going to market several preconfigured solutions to make selection easier, labeled in industry-speak.

We didn’t hear the rest of his speech. Instead we sat pondering why it is that so many companies come so close to getting it right, then choke. This company was clearly on the right path, but it was no more than one step away from pushing its product, despite dressing it up with the word solution 26 times, before we zoned out. To truly focus on solutions means to solve problems. To talk about problems is to abandon the self-indulgence of promoting our products. This is not a comfortable place for most marketers. Which is why next year, when this company runs the same event, it will probably be attended by the same gearheads attracted by shiny toys described in product-speak, and never be discovered by executives who are searching in customer-speak.

All three of our C-Suite research studies told us that 80 percent of executives get involved early in their buyer’s journey to prioritize projects and set the vision. We know they use the Internet to explore options for solving their problem. And we’ve seen that most companies fail to position themselves around problems, so don’t get on the executive’s radar early enough.

This means that unless your marketing machine changes its approach to lead generation (which we discuss in the next chapter), you need to rely on good old-fashioned prospecting and selling skills to reach executives early in their buying cycle. To pull that off, you need sales proficiency that’s beyond the capabilities of most salespeople.

But you can learn it.

There are four stages of sales proficiency that you may pass through during your sales career (see Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2 Four Stages of Sales Proficiency

FOUR STAGES OF SALES PROFICIENCY

1. Commodity Supplier

Salespeople who are Commodity Suppliers see the world through a pair of product glasses. They believe that if they can just get the opportunity to show their product or service, the features of their product or their brand will help them succeed. Their world extends little further than the execution of tactics such as setting up meetings, making sales presentations, giving demonstrations, and writing proposals. As a result, they rarely get involved early enough in a sale to create opportunities with an executive buyer.

We participated in a conference call between one such salesperson who was attempting to make a sale and a Symantec vice president in California. The sales rep boasted before the call: “I don’t need to know their business, their issues, or anything about them. We’ve got the best product on the market, and that speaks for itself.” To his credit, when we suggested that he might prepare for the call by at least checking the firm’s website for the latest news, he spent a few minutes browsing. However, to our chagrin, his first words were: “So what’s this new initiative I see listed all over your website? It looks like this S-Y-M-C project is pretty important!” The salesperson didn’t know SYMC is Symantec’s stock market symbol!

This rep’s belief that product is king was so deeply entrenched that he never felt the need to understand the client’s world and believed that clients existed only to help him meet his quota. Those operations-level customers who agreed to see him considered this rep nothing more than the guy to call when they needed a discount on an order that they’d already decided to place. They also knew that he’d always buy the drinks when they had people in town, so they would regularly dent his expense account under the guise of account management. Consequently, he was one of the highest-selling yet least profitable salespeople in his company.

The executives we interviewed typically called this type of salesperson a “product expert,” and one that they would rarely waste their time on. One said: “If all someone can do is talk features, functions, and benefits, then he’s going to turn me off pretty fast.” Another complained: “At the end of these meetings, I feel like I was interrupted, that they wasted my time.”

Many executives indicated that they would immediately refer these salespeople to either executives or staff members at lower levels of the organization who can deal with the product and technical issues that the senior-level executives perceive to be the only issues that these Commodity Suppliers are comfortable discussing.

While, through diligence and consistent efforts, the salesperson who has a Commodity Supplier relationship may have been able to schedule an initial meeting with an executive, her inability to discuss the issues that are critical to executives converts an extraordinary opportunity into wasted time for both the executive and the salesperson. At that point, the salesperson’s ability to gain further access to the same senior-level executive becomes questionable, at best.

Salespeople typically only get one shot at impressing an executive, and Commodity Suppliers seldom score a second appointment. However, tactics that the salesperson can implement at this point are worth mentioning. To demonstrate some level of follow-through that might impress the executive, a salesperson should do two things to try to secure another meeting with him, namely, (1) ask the executive for an introduction to the appropriate lower-level person, and (2) ask the executive for a follow-on meeting to review the results.

Asking the executive for an introduction to the lower-level executive or staff person shows the person at the lower level the importance of the meeting, and asking the senior-level executive for a follow-up meeting may represent one way for the salesperson to secure return access.

However, don’t feel we’re saying that this type of selling is wrong. Commodity Suppliers have their place under the right circumstances. As former General Electric CEO Jack Welch said: “You can’t grow long-term if you can’t eat short-term.” Selling like a Commodity Supplier on deals where the customer has a fast buying cycle is exactly the right thing to do. These deals don’t need to be overengineered; they need to be closed before the competition finds them. A dozen small deals now is better than any large deal in the future.

2. Emerging Resource

A salesperson who is an Emerging Resource might get involved in a company’s decision process after being tested as a Commodity Supplier for some time, typically at an operations or middle-management level. These people have earned their spurs and won the right to do more work as a result of their track record.

Becoming an Emerging Resource is the result of a negotiation process in which Commodity Suppliers sell their value beyond pure product to other services and resources that they bring to the relationship. Once customers are convinced of this value, they grant the Emerging Resource the type of contract that keeps competitors out of an account and widens the “license to hunt” for a specified time in return for preferential pricing or service. This is the same principle seen in politics when nations ratify their relationship by signing trade agreements that confer “preferred trading partner” status on one or both parties. It’s based on the perception that transacting with Emerging Resources is less risky and lower cost than receiving submissions from countless unknown suppliers each time a need arises.

Emerging Resources stand out from Commodity Suppliers when they do their homework to identify what advantages can be created for the customer by awarding preference to a single supplier. This has to be more than a generic value proposition. It’s based on knowing how the customer orders and who else the customer trades with and being able to spot the inefficiencies that having a single one-stop vendor can solve. It’s also about having the patience to build credentials in small ways to earn the right to pitch this proposition and get credit as a logical thinker.

3. Problem Solver

It’s at the Problem Solver level of sales proficiency that salespeople shift from an internal focus on their products to an external focus on the customer’s wider world. As a result, they start to see and talk about issues that aren’t immediately connected to a current deal, but are yet to be handled. Problem Solvers seek an approach that will solve business problems and shift their gaze away from their own product long enough to listen to the customer and understand the larger environment within which the product must operate. Their ideas are usually forward-looking and more strategic, which qualifies them to meet with executives who are looking to the same horizon for answers.

Executives have a better opinion of Problem Solvers than they do of Commodity Suppliers and Emerging Resources. They describe a Problem Solver salesperson as: “Someone who is a potential resource. During the presentation, we explored several creative ideas together. I’ll take these ideas under consideration and possibly meet with him again.”

4. Trusted Advisor

Many salespeople plateau at the Problem Solver level, so how can you stand out in a pack of other Problem Solvers? Become a Trusted Advisor by focusing on the value of your personal relationship with the executive. You develop this relationship by understanding the executive as a person first, then recognizing the executive’s broad vision for his or her business. You advise on the common obstacles to avoid, suggest proven best practices, and build relationships within the political dynamic of the executive’s inner circle, that is, those trusted lieutenants inside and outside of the company who the executive turns to for advice. They serve as a compass and a mine detector by providing insight and foresight that the executive isn’t already tapped into.

Executives in our studies repeatedly cited the continuing value of dealing with salespeople who had obviously helped solve similar business problems for other customers. It was common to hear: “Some of these salespeople can relate to business problems at a very high level. They understand that their solution may not be a panacea, but they deliver business value by helping me explore various options. My objective is to discuss my business problems with them and develop realistic solutions, not to see a slick sales presentation.”

Another executive cited the salesperson’s ability to draw on internal or even external partner resources as a way of possibly solving a problem as a key indicator of business value. She said, “The salesperson I meet with should provide me with the benefit of his experience, but also be able to secure the additional resources required to provide a broader view of the solution.”

Salespeople who operate at the Trusted Advisor level of a business relationship with multiple executives in several organizations quickly develop skills that can be transferred from customer to customer. Senior-level executives in those organizations immediately recognize the salespeople who regularly connect with executives at their level because they can sense the business knowledge, confidence, and competence that those salespeople demonstrate. It’s as if the executives have a sixth sense and can spot the salespeople who are continually dealing with their peers in other organizations.

Of all of the traits demonstrated, being prepared for a meeting with the executive is most highly valued and quickly recognized. There is no substitute for having a substantial understanding of the customer’s industry, their company, and the customer’s executives themselves. Developing this insight into the customer is also one of the easiest ways to develop a genuine and lasting rapport with senior-level executives. This knowledge enables you to be in a better position to serve as a consultant to the customer, contributing your insights and creating the foundation for a long-term, collaborative relationship. Such demonstrations of business knowledge are observed to help convert what might otherwise be ordinary meetings into extraordinary opportunities, where you gain continued access to the executive and shorten your sales cycle.

One executive described a Trusted Advisor salesperson as: “Someone I consider a business consultant who gave me ideas about my business that even my own people didn’t come up with. As a result, I felt we had a business meeting where she demonstrated some compelling business value and also gave me some reasons why I should grant her continued access to me.”

This continued access to senior executives is critical to building the long-term relationships required to consistently succeed. Trusted Advisor salespeople don’t wait to jump in at the middle of the buying cycle, which is when Commodity Supplier salespeople first get alerted to a deal—they get involved earlier to help the client identify and assess options, then determine the most effective way to address his high-priority issues.

A famous deal by NBC illustrates what it takes to be a Trusted Advisor.

The broadcast rights to the Olympic Games are usually awarded in four-year packages, one Olympics at a time. NBC, ABC, Fox, and other broadcasters routinely compete in that four-year cycle to win the coveted contract. But NBC’s Dick Ebersol blew that model out of the water by locking up the broadcast rights for both Sydney in 2000 and Salt Lake City in 2002, followed quickly by a second deal for all Olympic coverage through to Beijing in 2008. It was an unprecedented deal in broadcasting history. Sports Illustrated magazine featured an excellent article on Ebersol’s deal in its Christmas Day edition in 1995. Here are a few outtakes that explain key principles by which Trusted Advisors like Ebersol operate:

•   Trusted Advisors determine what the object of their affection wants to hear. They know what these people want to hear because they are consistently better prepared and better informed than their rivals. “Ebersol rises at 6:15 every morning and reads four daily newspapers.”

•   Trusted Advisors know the personal agendas of their customers and find ways to leverage their company’s resources to deliver what their customers want. “Ebersol came up with an offer to broadcast a weekly Olympic magazine show from 1996 to 2002. He knew coverage in non-Olympic years held appeal for Juan Antonio Samaranch” (then the president of the International Olympic Committee). Ebersol changed the rules of the game and, in effect, moved the goal posts.

•   Trusted Advisors listen for little clues. “Samaranch congratulated Ebersol on the ‘stability’ they had achieved and on the ‘partnership’ they had forged. Ebersol was struck by Samaranch’s repeated references to the long-term nature of their relationship” and sensed that his customer might be interested in a much longer-term contract than the two Olympics already signed up.

•   Trusted Advisors create deals that offer personal value as well as sound commercial value, and they do so in a way that makes the buyer and the seller interdependent. Ebersol came up with what was nicknamed the Sunset Project—a deal for not two but five Olympic Games that created long-term financial stability for the IOC and a legacy for Samaranch to leave behind.

As one Trusted Advisor salesperson explained: “Instead of just reacting to a customer’s request for a quote, I start becoming more inquisitive about why the customer may want something and the eventual effects of buying my product or service.”

Being “inquisitive” the way this Trusted Advisor suggests means understanding the executive’s current issues and helping him establish objectives for his broad business interests before setting a strategy to explore external capabilities you can bring to bear. To make that happen, you need to do your homework on the customer, his business, and his industry.

Where do you rank? What do you need to do differently to advance? It’s food for thought.