Selling key accounts is often described by sales teams and management alike . . . as a complex sale. But is it really? Or is it because the sales and management team make it complex because of their lack of prospect control and lack of correct deployment of the right sales techniques?

Complex: a group of interrelated ideas, activities, etc.

When attempting to sell a large company or an expensive product or service or both, often multiple decision makers and advisors are involved in the buying process. This path of multiple interactions is managed simultaneously by the sales team and the buyer based on how each person approaches their interaction and how each one views the other. Often sales teams immediately make their key account sales transaction difficult because they launch their sales process too low in the organization and without a structured plan. This often happens when the key account prospect opportunity is generated by an inbound lead received from a tradeshow, direct mail piece or a web site offering. With the lead in hand, the sales team immediately follows up regardless of the business title of the lead and forces themselves into a complex sale.

It is important to remember that prospects make judgment calls about your offering and its value based on your entry point into their company.

By taking any entry point or the easiest entry point into an organization chart, you reduce your sales success and often (depending on the first business title you speak with) position your entire key account sales cycle as a commodity sale -- before you have even started the sale. If you start your first conversation with a manager, a supervisor or even possibly a director, in most cases you are already in commodity.

Why are you not talking to the Vice President of the department or someone higher? Because it is hard to get to them, but that does not mean you can't. A few years ago, I was interviewed in CIO Magazine by Jerry Gregoire, former CIO of Dell Computer and Pepsi-Cola, about my marketing and sales strategies. Jerry and I had extended conversations about how companies sell key accounts like Pepsi. During the conversation, I asked him if as CIO of two global 1000 companies had he ever responded to an inbound cold call . . . and he said YES. But only to callers who described their value uniquely based on his company needs. This is a common observation. In another conversation with one of our Value Forward CEO coaches who is a former CEO of a public company, I asked him when vendors try to sell large companies like his, should they focus on selling lower level managers. His response was "It is a total waste of time." "When I was a CEO, I had plenty of lower level managers start entire sales cycles with vendors to make themselves look busy when my company was never going to buy anything."

To be successful selling key accounts, you must use a premeditated process where each action step is coordinated and where your company as a whole works together as a team to sell the account. This approach often means sometimes bypassing lower level leads (that may be easy to generate) and leapfrogging up the prospect's organizational chart to the right business title before your sales cycle starts.

Best practices to sell key accounts include:

1. Develop a unique written process to sell each targeted account. Selling all targeted key accounts the same way is a strategic mistake.

2. Penetrate the organizational chart at the right business title level -- not the easiest.

3. Create a unique value proposition for each targeted account you are trying to sell.

4. Use a Key Account Sales Planning Form to create specific action steps based on the targeted client's business needs and your business offering's positional value. (Click here for a complimentary form.)

5. Use a client engagement outline as a sales process tool to control the prospect's lower level managers during the sales process and to pull you into the executive decision process.

6. Understand the personality types (Enneagram) of the prospects you are trying to sell.

Yes, selling targeted key accounts can be a multi-layered decision process, but complexity only happens when sales teams lose control of their sales process or lack a coordinated approach that is managed and planned.

To Sell More -- Plan More.

"Planning does not deal with future decisions, but with the future of present decisions." Peter Drucker

Click the following link for our complimentary Key Account Sales Planning Form

Rick Erling
President  The CxO Group, LLC and Publisher of The CxO News
www.thecxogroup.com
info@thecxogroup.com
(972) 727-6880