4 Tips from a CTO on How to Sell into the C-Suite
The C-Suite comprises the senior executives that run a company. These include roles like the chief executive officer (CEO), chief technology officer (CTO), chief financial officer (CFO), and chief marketing officer (CMO), among others.
As someone who has held multiple C-level positions, I can appreciate that selling products into the C-suite can be a daunting task. Senior executives tend to be really busy, have a low tolerance for beating around the bush, and are constantly being inundated with sales queries. So how can you cut through the noise and stand out from the crowd?
Here are 4 key takeaways to refine your on-call techniques for senior executives, from my own perspective as someone who's been on the other end of those calls.
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Get to the point: Senior executives are going to appreciate it if you can cut to the chase quickly. What is it you're selling and why should they care? Speak in clear and concise language and avoid overhyping your product or making exaggerated claims. You probably only have a short amount of time to get your foot in the door, so make sure you get your key points across early. Tell them that you'll be brief and then respect their time by getting to the point quickly.
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Be prepared: You need to do deep research on the company ahead of time and have some hypotheses on their pain points and challenges. From this, you should prepare some arguments around the value your solution can offer the specific prospect. Most senior executives are going to have limited patience to explain all of their challenges to you, but conversely if it's clear you've taken the time to understand their business, they may be more amenable to talking more. Tell them what you think their major challenges are and why, and how you can help.
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Be strategic: Don't get bogged down in the individual features you're offering. Focus on how your solution can solve their major business challenges or help meet their strategic priorities. Can you improve the efficiency of an entire class of employees, or eliminate an annoying time-consuming process, or reduce the costs for one or more divisions? Try to quantify the high-level ROI and business impact that your solution offers. For example, you could ask the executive what their KPIs are to get a better sense for the problems they're trying to solve internally.
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Build credibility. Demonstrate that you understand the industry the company is operating in. Perhaps you have worked with similar companies and can offer some marketplace insights. A really strong driver will be if you can show that a competitor or similar company is using your solution and share their success story. In general, showing that your knowledge and experience can bring value to the executive will help them to see you as a strategic partner instead of just another salesperson. You could even state that you're not trying to sell them something on the first call and just want to share some marketplace insights to become a trusted advisor.
Most importantly, you should practice your pitch and presentation skills before diving in. Making a sale into the C-Suite can be huge, but you may only get one shot at a lead, so make sure you've practiced and refined your technique to maximize your chances of success.
At SalesMagic, we recently added a new training module to help you with just this task. The new "Executive Communication" training module lets you practice your communication skills with different virtual C-Suite executives and get instant analysis and feedback on how well you did. Simply add the new module to your organization within SalesMagic and assign it to yourself, or anyone on your team. Then start making practice calls to improve your C-Suite selling techniques!
SalesMagic. Where practice makes profit. Rewrite your sales story and experience the pinnacle of sales performance simulations and training.
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