The Pipeline

Renbor Sales Solutions Inc.'s weblog.

06
Feb

Saturday Sales Tip – 6

Stored in General, Saturday Sales Tip

Leveraging Executive Referrals

A couple of weeks back, the Saturday Sales Tip 4 looked at the need to pursue and involve executives in your selling process. Expanding on that, it is important to remember that executives can be great sources of referral, both internal and external to the company you are talking to.

As discussed, executives sit at a high enough perch to know what is going on beyond their functional area, as such they can make for great referrals source into other areas within the company. Assuming you make your approach and it turns out that they at that moment are not a viable or qualified lead for you, don’t hesitate to spend a bit of time (if allowed) to explore beyond the obvious. Two clear areas are first, a better understanding of the lay of the land, second, people who they feel would be either interested or impacted by what you offer.

Remember that just because they may not be an immediate buyer for your offering, does not mean that they do not see the value, they are just not the one who will ultimately make the buy, not his budget, not his direct mandate. But the adoption of your product/service could have an impact on their area, they could have clear opinions on the need for and fit of your offering. They can very much steer you to the right people. Along with that they, being part of the executive team, they are aware of the priorities, objectives and projects of interest to the executive team. They can enlighten you about the drivers and results the executive has agreed to and set. This knowledge will help you with positioning your product to the right people, for the right reason, in the right language. All of which can help you engage, help with your timing, help differentiate you from the others and at the same time accelerate the velocity of your sales cycle.

The other thing to remember is that while executives are competitive by nature, they know many other executives performing the same function at other companies beyond their natural competitors. So while the CFO at Coke may not be keen to help the CFO at Pepsi, she may well know the CFO at a tire manufacturer, software, construction or other companies not directly competing with her. She may be aware of someone who can use your services, so why not ask. If they are agreeable, you can then ask if you can use them as a referrer, when they agree, depending on the rapport you have created to this point, you can go further and ask if they could introduce you. Looking to the long-term forward, if you are successful with the referral, you can then leverage that when the original referrer is ready to do business.

With either of the above it is just a question of asking, well in fact it is a question of planning and then acting. If you are not thinking in advance as to what your next move is after you find out that now is not the time to engage with a given individual, then you will never get past that point. So be prepared, ask who else would find value in the type of discussion you are having, don’t ask who they know is “looking to buy”.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto