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In this episode of the Advanced Selling Podcast, Bill shares our sincere gratitude for you, our listeners.
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I share a clip of some crack detective work that gave me a gut-busting laugh.
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And we bring you tips and ideas on how to sell to a C-level buyer.
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Welcome back to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast in podcast history.
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I am one of your hosts, Bill Kasky.
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I m the other host, Brian Neal.
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We are really glad you re with us today.
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You know, I don t know that we have said thank you to our listeners either recently or enough.
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That s nice.
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But we do appreciate.
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And you know what?
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We really appreciate not only the consistent listening and interaction on our LinkedIn group, but also when you tell other people about us.
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Yes.
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That really is inspiring.
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And we re up to, I don t know, who knows on the stats.
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We talked about data last week on the episode.
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And so who knows what to believe.
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But I think we ve got 18,000 to 20,000 listeners.
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We get over 150,000-ish downloads a month across all the platforms.
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Sneaking up on 10 million downloads total.
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That s a big number.
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9 million downloads.
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10 million downloads.
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We did a great try.
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The people that listen to the show are just awesome.
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They re just great and fun, and they re smart, and they re inquisitive and want to make themselves better, and that makes us really happy.
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Yeah, so we re glad for you, and we appreciate you telling your friends and neighbors, colleagues, family about us.
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We do.
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But enough about us.
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We would love to come into your place, to your retreat, to your sales event sometime in the next six months.
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Brian and I both do one-day gigs or half-day gigs, and we can either do it together or do it individually.
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All you have to do to get the ball rolling is send us an email at listener at advancedsellingpodcast.com with the subject line, come see us.
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I like it.
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And we ll start, and we ll book a phone call with you and talk about your team.
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and talk about what you want to accomplish.
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And so there.
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And we also have situations where, if you re a salesperson, you re thinking, well, we have a sales meeting every year, but I m not really involved in it or whatever.
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We ve had multiple occasions when our listeners, the salesperson, and they ve passed it along up the ladder.
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Then we come do the gig, and just telling you the response is usually really good.
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And then the VP of sales is like, how did we find these two cats?
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And then you, that salesperson, said, well, I m the listener.
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Meow.
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I missed it.
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So that s better.
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It s almost like a horse.
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Sorry.
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So we would love to see you.
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So send us an email and we ll get that ball rolling.
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The topic to, oh.
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Yeah, so the other night, my wife and I were spending a Saturday night watching Flipping Stations.
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Maybe it was Sunday.
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Either way.
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We both like 20, 20, 48 hours types of things.
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Those murder mysteries.
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So we re watching this murder mystery, and I don t know what got me going on this, but I videotaped it, or I videoed it.
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So I m going to play the audio, and I think Travis will get this.
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And tell me if you, as you listen to this person talking, if there s anything that kind of gets you.
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Are you thinking, OK, like, oh, really?
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And these are like detective people.
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In my mind, I m kind of like, you ll just have to listen and see.
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All right.
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You ready?
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Here we go.
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At first, it looked like an ordinary piece of luggage to Virginia Beach Police Officer John Runge.
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I opened the suitcase and found it to be two legs from the knees down.
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The moment I took a look at the legs, along with all the items of evidence inside of them, I thought to myself, this is a start of something that s going to be very, very bad.
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Okay, thank you.
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I ve got my idea, but go ahead.
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Are you with me on this?
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Yeah.
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So the cops open up a suitcase that washed up on the beach.
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They open it up.
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There s a pair of severed legs and the detective makes this statement.
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As I looked in the suitcase and I saw the severed legs and the evidence, I knew this was going to be something really bad.
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What gave you that impression?
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Was it the evidence or the legs?
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Oh wait, did some ventriloquist lose their bag on the way to the airport or something?
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It s unbelievable.
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It s really bad.
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Oh, that is funny.
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Beth Dutton is a forensic scientist in Virginia.
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Five days later, a second suitcase washed up.
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So five days later, a second suitcase washes up on the beach.
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Listen to this time.
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Listen to how inquisitive this person is.
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Inside the suitcase itself was the torso of a white male.
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In the back of your mind, you re still thinking, there s still another one out there.
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That s what I was thinking, too.
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She s thinking in her mind, where are the arms?
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Where are the arms?
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We got the legs.
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We got the torso.
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There s got to be another one out there.
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And this thing is solved if we can find those arms.
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That just got me laughing.
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And my wife, I was laughing so hard.
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I m like, you got to be kidding me that she just said that.
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I thought that was funny.
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It s just funny when they do these things.
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And I m sure in the editing room, are they now looking going, did she really just say this?
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And you can t blame the person.
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They re not used to being on camera.
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They probably haven t even thought through what they re going to say.
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So the camera s on, and they re going.
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But yeah, that s funny.
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I ve got one next week that I ll play for you that s a 911 call.
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Yes.
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That I think we might have talked about, but it s been years.
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But I always laugh.
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So go ahead, and we ll do that next week.
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I like that.
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So our topic today, we re going to talk about a really cool topic about how to talk to C-level people.
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Before we do, my question for you is, are you frustrated by the leaky
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sales funnel with prospects falling through the cracks and deals that don t close.
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I know sales managers get really frustrated by this.
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Sales people too.
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You kind of get to the end of the month and all of a sudden you realize two months later you forgot about something and the deal just evaporates.
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We know time kills deals.
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That s a bad thing.
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If that is the case, you need to talk to our friends at outreach.io, the leading sales engagement platform.
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It supports sales reps and their managers by making it simple to humanize and personalize communication
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at scale, automating the soul-sucking manual work and dramatically increasing the productivity and efficiency of all your revenue-generating teams.
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You can check them out at outreach.io slash ASP to chat with them.
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And while you re there, you ll receive a free copy of their new book on sales engagement we call The Book on Sales Engagement.
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Go to outreach.io forward slash ASP and check them out.
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You ll be happy that you did.
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My daughter was home from, she lives in Denver, and she is in the interviewing process for a new position.
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Her company that was out there closed up, or they merged with somebody else, and they let go of some people.
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So she s in the process.
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And looking for a job today, and we re going to talk about this on our next episode, I think, talking about some interviewing tips and tips on how to sell and brand and promote yourself.
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But it s not hard because there s lots of people looking, but it s just the process that s kind of a pain.
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And you know you go through 17 interviews with some of these companies and then they don t even they don t even call you back You have to call them back.
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So well, what happened?
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Well, we decide on somebody else.
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Well, I d have been kind of nice to have a phone call, you know But she s got an interview coming up with the with the chief executive CEO of this company and we started talking about some of the types of questions she should ask him in this case, it s a
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man, and talked about how to talk to him, and just things like that, just little stuff.
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And it got me to thinking that I don t think we ve either ever done a podcast episode on how do you sell to the CEO or to the top executive.
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But in this case, I think we need to confine it to the CEO or the president, the leader of the firm.
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We ll talk about it from the context not of interviewing, but of selling.
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And when you get there, I think it s really an important person to call on, especially since most of our listeners are not calling on Fortune 100 companies, publicly traded companies, or calling on private companies.
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And so I wanted to talk a little bit with you, Brian, about how do we do that?
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How do we get our mind right to approach these people when we re in a meeting with them?
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How do we behave?
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How do we interact in a way that promotes ourselves and advances the deal, not
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you know, affects us negatively.
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Yes.
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And we ve been talked to about this over the years.
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There s even a book called Selling to Vito, V-I-T-O, that stands for very important top officer.
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And a lot of you I know have been talked to, well, as a CEO, as a president involved, if you re selling to a medium to small company, maybe not to
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CEO of Boeing or P&G.
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But in some cases, you re talking to those people, too.
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It doesn t matter.
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When you get to that level, it seems like sometimes to people it s a different deal.
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So Bill and I want to give you some advice on how to get ready for that stuff, how to handle yourself mentally, and also some things to do and not do in the verbiage when you re speaking to these individuals.
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I have some pre-stuff.
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You have some?
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Yeah, I have a couple of pre-stuff.
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Go ahead.
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OK, so my first one is you have to get your energy right before you go into a meeting with a C-level person.
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And I have a little trick that I use for myself.
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And it s a mental trick, because what I try to do is I try to reframe all my energy in my mind away from, boy, I hope they really need some sales coaching and want to hire me.
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And I switch that, and I call it my little PE trick, private equity.
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And what I imagine is, if I m a private equity person, and I have my own money, and I ve got hundreds of millions of dollars, and I m going to buy this company, how would I want the conversation to go?
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So I m going to stroke this individual, man or woman, a check for $40 million.
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I m going to show up with that kind of energy.
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Now, I don t have $40 million.
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I don t have that check to write to them.
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just yet.
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But I can get my energy there.
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It s a perspective.
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It s a perspective.
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It totally shifts my whole energy, my perspective.
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I don t have to buy their company.
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I may not want to buy their company.
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I may want to buy their company.
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I may not want to buy it for as much as they think it s worth.
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And it just totally changes the energy.
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So I think you need a little trick, a little brain switch there to help you.
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That s my little trick.
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It works really well.
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And if I go to meet a CEO in my car on the way there, that s kind of the framework I m getting in.
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So you ve adjusted your thinking around, what am I doing here, so that you don t look like you re pitching anything.
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Totally.
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There s no part of me that s going in prepping, OK, be a great sales coach.
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Yeah, right.
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Impress them with your sales coaching knowledge.
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Yeah, tell them how great and wonderful you are.
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Show them the results of your clients.
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There s no part of me that s doing that at all.
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I m strictly learning about their business at a real high level and trying to decide if it s a kind of business that I want to be involved with beyond just this first meeting.
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Yeah, I had a pre-event tip, too.
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And that is, we always say, well, what are CEOs concerned about?
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What do they spend their time thinking about during the day?
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And I do think it s different in different industries.
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So I would suggest that one of the pre-work
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items you check off your list is know what the CEOs in your world are conscious of, what they re thinking about.
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What are they paying attention to?
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Are they paying attention to customer experience?
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If you re selling to a CEO something that s going to help them get more customers, then is that on their mind?
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You ve got to make a list of all the things that you know.
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And by the way, if you don t know these things, go interview a few CEOs in your business and find out what are you spent, not what wakes you up at night.
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Ask that stupid question.
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Just say, what are you paying attention to throughout the day?
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What are you paying attention to?
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Because wherever the attention goes is what s on their mind.
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And what s on their mind probably could be painful.
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Or there could be some circumstances that they re trying to fix.
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So knowing that in your industry is really important.
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Very, very.
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There were two really strong things Bill just said I want you to hear.
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One, you ve got to get the knowledge.
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That s first and foremost.
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You have to do that.
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And two, the best way to get the knowledge is to interview other CEOs that are either your clients or just people that you know.
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You have to do that.
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Because when you get in conversations with those people, you ll start to see and hear the vibe and the flavor of the type of language that those people use and the thinking that they use.
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That s probably, you know, some of you I know are exploring doing podcasting in our listening audience.
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And if you are thinking about that, what a great podcast is to interview CEOs of not just your client companies, but other companies in your space, maybe other vendors, maybe partners, distributors, reps, whatever, but get
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Get familiar with what s on their mind.
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Talk like you said, Brian.
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Talk the way they talk.
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Use the same language they use.
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You re not trying to be somebody you re not.
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You re just communicating with them in a way that they can relate to.
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Absolutely.
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Because my guess is, when you start to sell, you re not being who you are either.
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You re not being who you really are.
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So I think you re even almost better off just being in this curious mode.
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Yeah, I like that.
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For the most part.
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OK, so I ve got my second thing is, and this has to do with all encompassing, I do think you need to prepare for these calls.
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And I think sometimes what happens is we get in a habit of not preparing as our regular.
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So when I m going to talk to buyers, let s say, or procurement people, or mid-level managers, I kind of get in my groove.
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And I ve been there, done that a bunch of times.
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So I get out of the prep mode.
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And then I get a meeting with the CEO, and I sort of freak out.
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But I don t know how to do anything different.
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So I don t really do the level of prep.
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And if I do prep, it s all about my pitch.
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And so these things that we re talking about, you need to really spend some time.
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The things Bill talked about, about research, and listening, and observing things in their industry, thinking about people that you can connect to them.
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Like you said, new customers and stuff.
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Really putting some thought into your conversation, not into your PowerPoint.
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That s the difference.
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Prepare for the conversation, not the slide deck.
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Yeah, that s really good.
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All right.
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I think our society, too, has been, we hear about the pitch.
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We watch Shark Tank.
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Shark Tank has a big listening audience.
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If you haven t seen it, it s Mark Cuban s, and I don t know, who was he?
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Mr. Wonderful.
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Mr. Wonderful, and what s her name?
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Barbara Corcoran.
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Barbara Corcoran.
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Realty.
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So the whole Shark Tank thing, everybody knows it.
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Everybody likes it.
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I got to admit, I do enjoy the show.
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But those people get up there, and they ve got two minutes to pitch.
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You cannot go into a CEO s office with a pitch mentality.
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No.
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It s just not going to help you.
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And I know that we d love to say, oh, you know what?
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I closed that guy in three and a half minutes.
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I gave him the pitch.
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He couldn t resist.
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That s just not the way it happens.
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So good luck.
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You can try it.
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Let us know.
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But I think it s different than that.
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But you brought up something that I want to touch on, and that is this idea that should we talk to the CEO the same way we talk to the people in the rank and file of the organization?
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So if you call on sales managers or marketing heads, should you talk to the CEO of that company the same way?
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And I say no.
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I don t mean you have to put on some kind of persona or badge or armor.
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I just mean that their interest level in topics, their interest in topics is different than the person who s
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of VPN marketing.
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So you ve got to change, as you said earlier, change your whole dynamic of what are the topics of interest, what are the questions that will help me understand, what are the problems or pains in those areas of interest?
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So if customer experience is one of his areas of interest, then I want to be able to ask questions that will help me understand, well, what are the problems there?
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What would you like to have happen that s not happening?
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What happens if you don t get this fixed?
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Come up with your assembly of questions
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that relate to the interest level he or she has in those topic areas.
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Yes.
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And I would say, too, should you talk to them differently, the energy should always be the same.
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So you hear Bill and I talk in the podcast about intent or intention.
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The intention should always be, I m interested in other human beings.
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I m interested in everything about them and doing anything I can to try to help them make their life better off.
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Whether that s a mid-level manager, entry point manager, or CEO, that energy is the same.
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The verbiage, I think, changes.
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The subject headings change because their perspective is different.
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I m not going to talk to a first level manager, meaning let s say a sales rep just got promoted to sales manager for the first time six months ago.
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I m not going to talk to him or her about the 10-year vision and the exit plan for the business.
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No.
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More than likely.
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I m not going to talk to her about that.
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I m going to talk to her about how she s feeling about her new job and what she s nervous about and her team and coaching.
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The CEO, I may talk about, what s the exit strategy here?
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So as you look forward 10 years, you re not here.
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What does it look like?
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Is it ESOP?
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Is it private equity?
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Is it an exit?
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Or what is it?
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That person I would talk to.
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I agree.
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That s what changes.
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Your turn.
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Thank you.
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So I just kind of bled into that one a little bit.
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I wrote down the third thing.
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So now I m tactical.
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Now I m in the meeting.
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I want you to think about making sure that your questions are visionary in nature.
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And by visionary, I almost always want them to be forward thinking out.
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And so there ll be some time-based language in here.
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So when you talk into a CEO and you say things like, so as you flash forward into 2021, what do you see, dot, dot, dot.
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Or you might say, if we re in Q3 or the beginning of Q3 of 19, I might say, so as you wrap up Q4 of 19 and head into 2020,
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And you re making a list of priorities and starting to think that way.
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What s on the top of the list?
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And use time as your guide there.
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If you start to say, how were sales this month?
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Their CEOs already, they re not in that mode yet.
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That s a good point.
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Some smaller company, they ll be more of.
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But really, CEOs are really living out into the future, especially the good ones.
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And they ll appreciate that dialogue, because they like to talk about it.
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As you get further out, they know less.
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They know less of what to do.
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Does that make sense?
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So you may be more valuable to them as they look forward.
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I love that.
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The question of, as you look out to the future, as you think about the next year or two, what s on the horizon, those questions are really good questions.
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I also think that
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A mistake that we make is we see them as elevated in position somehow.
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We see them as not better than us, but we see them in their rank position of being the CEO leading a company of 500 people, and we immediately assign some kind of godlike
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you know, a description to them.
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Well, they re not.
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Yes.
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And I think if you get, I know you re around a lot as am I, they have the same problems.
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They have more problems because they have not just a problem of themselves.
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They have the problem with their 10 direct reports and the 250 people and the payroll that they have to meet.
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So if you think that a CEO does not have pain, that s wrong.
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They have a lot of it.
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They have vision.
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They have aspirational goals.
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But I think it s a mistake to put them on a pedestal.
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Yes.
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Because then it doesn t allow you to be real with them because you re afraid of offending them or afraid you know what I?
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Enjoy talking to CEOs because I feel like they re more in many ways They re more real because they re not looking out for their for their
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They re not looking to save their job.
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Right.
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Most of them.
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And I know my side hustle, reffing on Sundays, I m around some really famous people, really close to really famous people, in and out of the locker room, and in the tunnel, and watching them eat, and watching them everything else.
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And I m telling you, they re all just people.
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And I tell you what else, they so appreciate when you treat them like a normal person.
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When they re real.
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They are so appreciative.
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It s such a breath of fresh air when someone treats a CEO not like a CEO.
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Because that s what everybody does.
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They re bouncing around them all the time.
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They re kind of catering.
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All the people within their company cater to them, right?
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And I mean, just talk to them.
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Give them an outlet.
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Be the one that allows them to vent about their stuff.
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Because they re the same.
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They re all just people.
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And people ask, like you said, this silly question, what keeps you up at night?
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What keeps them up at night is like the same thing for us.
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It s bad Mexican food, a sick kid.
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It s not like there s not worrying about their business.
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Like, well, I can t wait for a salesperson to ask me that tomorrow.
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No.
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They re just humans.
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That s such a good perspective.
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And they so appreciate it when you treat them like that.
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Yeah, I agree.
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So do.
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So that s all I have.
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I have one more.
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OK.
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Can I throw one in here?
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Yeah.
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And I think this is important for you.
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This is helpful.
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You ve got to do this with good intention.
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I wrote down the idea of observational reporting.
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I think one of the gifts that you can bring as CEO is other learnings and other observations you ve made as you ve worked with other customers, maybe in their industry or at places like them.
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And you re not going to be a know-it-all.
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It s not about coming and saying, oh.
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But when you re an observational reporter, when you re a reporting expert, and you can say, I ve got a client who runs a similar size organization.
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A couple of years ago, he put this rule into place about,
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Feedback, employee feedback is really cool.
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If you ever want to talk to him about that, he s very open to talking to other CEOs.
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I d be happy to connect you.
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Things like that completely put you peer to peer.
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They put you in the CEO mix.
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You re not a salesperson.
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And it s really valuable and helpful.
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So don t be afraid to be a reporting expert and connect people.
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CEO to CEO.
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But you ve got to listen for that.
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You ve got to pay attention.
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Yeah, you do.
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So my final thing, just to kind of bring it back to where we started, was don t sell, solve.
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Don t be a salesperson.
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Be a solver of problems, a finder of problems, an understander of problems and circumstances that they have.
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And take your sales hat off when you go call in CEOs.
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It will harm you, it ll set you back, and you ll be in a place you sometimes can t dig out of if you pitch too much.
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So just go in with a servant s heart to find, solve circumstances, problems, help them achieve their goals.
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And if you go in with that mindset, I think you ll have the confidence and you won t have to pretend like you re somebody you re not.
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So good.
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So good.
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Okay, so if you have an event coming up, a retreat, sales meeting, we d love to come see you.
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Just send us a note at listener at advancedsellingpodcast.com.
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All this is in the show notes as well.
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In the subject line, put come see us.
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Brian and I will come out.
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Brian and I or I will come out and see you and visit and have a lot of fun.
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And until next time, see ya.
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Bye.
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Bye.