Top Tips for Selling to Top Guns
By Robert Carey
August 2010
You might not be the largest player out there, but that’s no barrier to catching big fish. Small- to mid-size firms can indeed attract interest from large companies – and even get in with their C-level executives – to secure an anchor account.
Kimberly Rodgers, president of Jungle Promotions (asi/237854) in Huntington Beach, CA, wondered how he would react. Would the interested prospect from a multinational Fortune 1000 firm still want to use her services once he learned that her company had just 10 employees?
Her solution: “I did a ton of research about their recent financial performance, product lines, industry trends and what types of programs and products they utilized in the past, so that I could show that my company was big enough to handle their business but small enough to personally care about each project from beginning to end.”
Rodgers' homework paid off: The mobile phone network services provider is now a big-spending client of hers, and she also has relationships with several departments.
Cris Nigro, principal at Proforma Creative Precision (asi/300094), thinks that Rodgers played her hand exactly right. Nigro works with a few big fish herself, including a $1 billion-a-year French manufacturing firm and a $3 billion-a-year construction company. “Targeting a large company takes a lot of time, so you have to really stay with it and be consistent – always thinking about who you’re contacting, what you’ve said and used in your past contacts, and what you’ll say and use in your next contact,” she says. “But, if you do that well, the result can be incredibly worthwhile.”
Here’s more advice on how to get big business from a large company – and even snag a meeting with its CEO.
First Steps: Schmoozing and Sleuthing
The easiest way to get an audience with managers from large firms is to attend networking events. Jane Munro, president of As You Wish Promotions (asi/125450), belongs to the National Association of Women Business Owners. At a recent meeting, she made a connection with Lynn Elsenhans, chairwoman and CEO of oil giant Sunoco, who spoke at the event. “I gave her a quick overview of what I could do for her firm, and she gave me a name to contact. While you won’t usually meet a CEO, you should put yourself in natural social settings where corporate managers and bigwigs will be,” Munro says.
Even in their own offices, reps have a powerful tool for gathering the right contacts and specific company information when they’ve chosen a specific firm to target: the Internet. In the past, cold-calling to interview employees or to get an annual report was the norm; today, “just spend half a day on a company’s website,” Munro says. “You can find most of the names you’ll need in marketing, development, PR, advertising and specific product lines.”
Nigro also notes that the “media/press releases” and “case studies” areas of a firm’s site are quite revealing. “You can quickly find quarterly results, as well as what the firm’s top initiatives are for the next year or two,” she says. Reps simply must know these things in order to make an impression with their initial contact.
“If you get an appointment and then go in there unable to discuss their particular situations, you look like an amateur. Find out how they are trending, how they are trying to grow or increase efficiencies in certain areas” so you can offer ideas they can use right now, says Tony Parinello, a sales trainer and author of Selling to VITO, the Very Important Top Officer.
Rodgers adds, “If you can help a new client with those things, you’ve made a friend who will refer you through the company – not just in that office but in others around the country.”
Interestingly, while Nigro has the support of Proforma behind her small operation, that fact is not necessarily what her big clients focused on when they chose her. “They saw I knew their company almost as well as an employee,” she says. Being an alumna of corporate-research firm Dun & Bradstreet instilled that diligence into her and exposed her to a deeply informative source. “I run every large prospect’s ‘Dun’ report, which costs less than $100 because you don’t need the company’s credit information, just their sales and marketing information,” she says.
From these reports, Nigro learns the corporate structure and hierarchy across every large office in a corporation, “so you can actually see where decisions are most likely made.” In fact, reps could also buy from Dun & Bradstreet specific contact information for people within a company, though such information changes so quickly that it’s somewhat unreliable after six months.
The moral: Do your research, target your prospects and then act quickly among one or two departments of that firm. Munro warns that soliciting too many departments over a short period could create a negative impression within that company.
Second Steps: Showcasing and Slipping Under the Radar
Getting an appointment often requires making contact multiple times, in different ways. Nigro landed a large company’s marketing programs, followed by the awards programs across several product lines, this way: “It started with a postcard to a specific person, then a follow-up e-mail, and then a drop-off where I made friends with the receptionist – who has become a great source of information about other areas of the company,” she says.
“After that, the prospect finally answered my phone call, and I said, ‘As you can see from the things I’ve sent, I understand what you do. Can we meet?’”
Once in front of her prospect, Nigro learned about what she calls the prospect’s “pain points, which are the issues that keep her up at night.” In this case, the marketing manager ran a small department that had to service a large sales force. “When the reps weren’t happy, she was on the hot seat,” she adds. “I had found my opportunity.”
Nigro’s work on that project resulted in contact with various product-line managers, whom she persuaded to improve the sales awards at only slightly higher cost. She replaced dated-looking walnut plaques with heavy lucite ones, screen-printed from the back with the company’s name and then printed in white ink on the front with the award’s name and the rep’s name. From these two successful projects, Nigro’s standing within this large company is now secure.
Such examples also show that reps should never be discouraged by the presence of a procurement department in big firms. Why? “Many times the official vendors charge so much that the departments go around them when they stay under a certain spending threshold – they know that project won’t get noticed upstairs,” Munro says. “We do a lot of business with large companies where we are not on the vendor list. If you reach the right people, you can fly under the radar with no problem – your name gets around to others in that same situation.”
While it might seem easier to simply make a pitch to procurement in the hopes of getting on a preferred vendor list, more than one rep notes that procurement departments are rarely creative, and often bid out jobs simply to find ideas and price points, with no intention of using a small distributor who responds in detail. Besides, “If you do enough projects internally by getting referrals, you can then go to procurement and say, ‘Hey, somehow we are not on your list, but look at all the work we do for your people and how much they like us,’” Munro says.
Not as Easy as A, B, CEO
If a rep wants to make an impression on a C-level executive in a big company, doing extensive research on that company and its industry is, as mentioned, critical. But, where the challenge really differs from trying to win over top-level people is in the pitch itself. There is, quite simply, no room for error.
“It’s so tempting to talk first about all the interesting products you offer, but that is poison with the occupier of a C-level office,” says Parinello. “Forget product, especially the features and functions. Focus instead on what results you can bring to this executive. Think about what they want and need, which are ideas that improve the corporate economics or shareholder value. Yes, your ideas and products can create greater brand awareness or loyalty or whatever, but that is someone else’s job in that firm. This top officer’s job is about gaining market share and wallet share, and controlling costs. So what measurable and intangible results will your ideas result in, and over what time frame? Tell these executives your story, but in their language.”
Nicholas Read, president of consulting firm SalesLabs and co-author of Selling to the C-Suite, adds that when you can blend the findings from your research with a results-based pitch, an executive is more likely to keep listening in person, or at least return your handwritten letter, phone call or e-mail (use these only in the case of a referral). “Study your prospect’s external and internal business drivers, which helps you put into context how your products and services will make a contribution that’s better, faster or easier than what they presently use,” he says.
Reps should be as specific as possible. If the prospect is a manufacturer, then improving the ability to outsell foreign competitors in America or another country might be an executive’s current financial driver. Or an executive might be presently focused on a regulatory driver, where employees must comply with new laws or industry regulations. Or there could be an operational driver at top of mind; in that case, “Look at how you can help the executive do a better job of actually creating their product or service, maintaining quality and delivering on their business plan, all of which is impacted by the firm’s effectiveness (doing the proper things) and efficiencies (doing those things properly). Tell the executive exactly how you can help with those,” says Read.
Lastly, an executive will want examples of the largest projects and/or the largest companies a small- or mid-size distributor has dealt with in the past. So be ready with case studies that contain measurable and intangible results, plus testimonials from executives.
Tapping Into the Hidden Power
There’s often no way to make contact with a C-level executive unless a rep goes through an executive’s personal assistant or some other “gatekeeper.” But as much as reps want to get to the decision-maker as quickly as possible, Parinello stresses that it’s a mistake to try to circumvent that gatekeeper. “They’re trained to not allow that to happen, and to act as filters,” he says. The solution: Bring the gatekeeper onboard by offering information and respect.
For example, if a rep cannot get through to the executive, she should not simply ask the assistant to take a message. Instead, she should ask if they have a minute so she can run something past them, and pitch that person the same way she would the executive. The rep should finish by asking what the next course of action should be, and the executive’s preferred means of receiving such information. “Not only did you show that you don’t consider them just a message-taker, but you’ve also given them an opportunity to look good to their boss, because they’ve vetted and passed along a good idea,” Parinello says. A handwritten thank-you note to the executive that mentions your positive interaction with the assistant is also good form – and could cement an informative relationship with that gatekeeper.
This tactic works for Rodgers. “I make my presentation to assistants about half the time, because they have to do the groundwork and submit the best possibilities to the executive almost on a platter,” she says. To start off on the right foot, she makes all her mailings look personal enough so that only the executive or the assistant will open it, and, “If it’s interesting enough and the pitch is personalized to that firm, the assistant will pass it along. And, when I call to ask if they got my package, the assistant says, ‘Yes, it was clever.’ Now I stand out a little bit in their minds,” she says. The bottom line: “You have to treat everyone with respect and not take anything for granted, because the dynamic is unique in each executive suite,” she says.
Whenever a rep does land a large firm as a client, servicing it should not be the only focus. First, making new connections in that company can minimize losses from sudden changes in an individual department’s personnel or budget. And continuing to track the trends in that firm’s industry will protect reps from being blindsided by changes which cause the client to cut them out altogether. “We don’t have any client who represents more than 20% of our business,” says Munro. “The distributors who were too heavily reliant on auto and pharma taught us that.”
Then again, Munro points out that there are sunny possibilities, too: “Sometimes you do so well that you get hired by a big company as their full-time supplier for their promotional and other programs.”
