The Power of Value Selling

11Speak Value to Power

You don't have to be an executive's peer to sell to the C‐suite.

Over the course of my career, I've seen sales professionals fall prey to that thinking again and again—it's by far the biggest roadblock. They tend to be intimidated by the differences: They focus on differences in age, pay grade, experience, business expertise, and countless other factors. They assume the executive has better things to do with their time than meeting with sales professionals. As a result, they fear the interaction, and this manifests as avoidance.

The magic happens when you flip your mindset and start investigating the similarities. Yes, every company and executive is unique—and the mechanisms and motivations that facilitate their buying processes are eerily similar.

The secret to selling to the C‐suite is being relevant, credible, and engaging executives in business conversations. As we talked about in Chapter 5, this all starts with speaking the language of executives. To engage at this level, your expertise must go beyond product knowledge—you'll need a working understanding of business and financial terms to understand how a business operates and get a glimpse into its current state. After all, from an executive's perspective, the value of these conversations isn't merely the outcomes offered by your product/solution, but the conversation itself. C‐level executives seek business advisors who can share novel insights and actionable ideas to expand their thinking.

For ...