Mastering Leadership Commitment: Steps to Success

by: Mark Hordes, MBA, MS – Mark Hordes Management Consultants, LLC

Houston Texas 77006

713 416 1781 office  mark @hordesconsulting.com

It has been my experience that executives have very little time to educate you about their business. They expect you to have done your homework and already know the critical issues facing their company and what services trends are evolving in the market place that will impact their top-line and company performance. This, of course, is what they get paid for, and time is money! So given these known parameters, how do you get high-level executives and others motivated and committed to actions that will ultimately lead to a services sale? Several guiding principles are necessary to make it work:

Master a business acumen presence

As a business development professional talking to “C” levels, several things are critical to have in your back pocket to get the conversation rolling. These include knowledge about the strategic issues facing the client, competitive landscape understanding and change management issues. Let’s examine each one a little closer.

Knowledge of Strategic Issues

deally, you have done your homework, (reviewed their company’s website for the latest press releases and news, followed them in the Wall Street Journal, talked to colleagues who work in the industry and have an understanding of both internal and external environmental factors that are currently affecting the company).

Some insights can be found in their annual report, other perspectives gained by talking to service industry analysts or better yet, interviewing a contact at the company who can be a coach to you before your meeting. Quite frequently, senior executives operate in a vacuum, and your knowledge of industry trends and issues that will impact their strategy is seen as quite helpful. This is a critical first step in building rapport that should ultimately lead to trust and their taking the time to take a next step in the sales process.

Competitive Landscape Understanding

Executives usually are familiar with the competitive landscape, but they often like to see if you have insights into the competition as well. To prepare for this point of inquiry (often a credibility tester), your prior research also needs to include knowledge of who their key competitors are and which new players are starting to make a move into their space. It has been my experience in having numerous business conversations with C levels that they often focus on the larger competitors and don’t have the time to track smaller players that are starting to make aggressive moves through acquisitions, mergers and the starting of new service lines that compete directly with them. Your knowledge of this market information can help establish your expertise and knowledge of their business.

Sensitivity to the Change Management Realities

We all experience change differently. Some of us are quite resilient and can handle all kinds of change, and never blink an eye. Others ignore the realities of change and ultimately, instead of working at managing the change from a preventive perspective, the change will manage them.

I believe that there are very few new initiatives in a company that will not be impacted in some way by the human side of change. These include communications, sponsorships, managing resistance and creating broad based ownership and acceptance. Make sure you always bring up change management issues in meetings with executives. Your personal knowledge of how organizations and people deal with change will help you be viewed as a skilled business person who has a perspective that is not only strategic but balanced with people skills as well—a winning combination

Create a power map that identifies key players in the organization

Selling professional services is usually a multi-level process. Rarely will you be able to meet an executive for 30 minutes and emerge with a purchase order or contract to do work. More often than not, several executives and other stakeholders in an organization will want to have some input into the overall decision process. This is particularly true in the sale of complex services since the solutions normally offered affect many parts of the organization. 

As an example, when a company is transitioning from product support to professional services, product sales people will have to be trained to sell services, accounting will need a PSA system to track costs and service delivery issues, managers will perhaps take on new roles as coaches and services champions and delivery consultants may also need new information on the array of new services being offered and sold. Marketing may need to develop new collaterals, alter the company website and create case studies that showcase illustrations and benchmarks.

Given the various stakeholders in the process described above, these players may fill different informal roles in an organization. They can be influencers, users, coaches, deciders and approvers. The ultimate goal is to have knowledge of these roles and who is in what role so that you can effectively position your efforts at multiple levels of relationship within the company. A power map can help you navigate the informal organizational chart in order to meet this sales objective.  

Frequently, your sales objective in meeting with a C level is to simply gain a referral to an influencer or to any of the role holders in the power map. Through this process, you are gaining internal support for what you are trying to sell. And without that support, it will be a hard field to plow.

Build a deck of advocates and other C levels

Sometimes C levels prefer to talk to other C levels. Having a deck of advocates and senior executives within your own company for them to meet with will positively impact the sales process. Also organizing a benchmarking trip to visit another client’s location where a similar solution was implemented can be quite a motivating experience for the executives as they see first hand your recommendations that made a difference. These types of events also provide great opportunities for building social relationships as well. There’s nothing like spending quality, fun time with an executive in a non-work environment to build lasting relationships.

Organize a “Share a Cup of Coffee” best practices meeting for executives

One of the most successful ways I’ve ever seen to motivate an executive to take an action was through a series of “Let’s Share a Cup of Coffee” events that a services consulting company ran in 10 different cities for targeted services executives. Prospects were sent invitations (that looked like a cup of coffee), a small espresso coffee maker and a bag of exotic coffee. The invitation asked for two hours of their time, from 7-9 in the morning, to meet with the company and other executives to hear about best practices and to network. Each event was held in a local hotel, and the process was complimentary and followed up with a telephone call from the consulting company.

The reason that the event worked so well was the fact that it was grounded in the philosophy that executives and their executive team often like to hear about best practices and see a provider in action before they invest a lot of their time and money. They were willing to check out the company for the time spent eating breakfast and meeting with other executives.

The mutual value exchange was that the consulting company learned a lot about executive issues and started building relationships—which was the goal. My recollection of that process is that they got an average of 20-30 executives to attend each event and were able to set up appointments with at least 35% of those in attendance. From the consulting companies perspective, the event was a terrific success that eventually led to several large engagements.

Conclusion

Motivating an economic buyer to take action on your behalf is not an easy task. By following the principles outlined above, you should be able to achieve your goal of getting the executive to be a supporter and ultimate buyer of your services.

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Mark Hordes, MBA, MS is an independent consultant with Mark Hordes Management Consultants, LLC based in Houston Texas. Mark is an management consultant and trusted advisor to major organizations in the U.S. and internationally in the areas of: Executive team development, organization transformation, culture change, professional services business development and the management of change.