Develop professional relationships with senior managers responsible for P/L and competition will not exist, price will be a benchmark only, business you never thought existed will surface, budgets will be created, and you will increase your sales and market share tremendously.

1. Use your Golden Network to Get to the Top. You have contacts that have benefitted from you, your services, and/or your company I call these contacts your Golden Network of relationships. Now if you ask these contacts to introduce you to higher-level people, and give them a creditable reason why, they will do it. You want these people to transfer their credibility with their bosses to you. This is the easiest way for you to gain access to a top level exec.

However, many sales people have gotten to the leaders and blown the opportunity by being product/service focused. That is; they try to convince or present why this upper level person should be interested in what they have to sell. So here are some tips.

2. Meetings with leaders are not about you or your company. They are always about the senior exec where s/he is giving you an opportunity to listen and learn about her or him.

3. Your initial meeting is your best and only opportunity for the senior exec to open-up and explain his situation to you. You may be thinking just the opposite, but he knows you don't know him and he's willing to offer you some insights. But he'll have to be prompted.

4. Therefore you have to ask focused questions to get this rightfully self absorbed leader talking about his issues, her environment, his threats, and her opportunities as they relate to your world.

5. If you try to make it about you initially - talking about what you're selling, giving reasons why s/he should listen to you, and/or what others are doing with you, you'll be perceived as self serving and a typical vendor that no high level executive wants to spend time with.

6. First meetings are not forums to present, consult or pontificate. Don't be concerned that if you don't tell about what you offer, you may never get another chance because if you do, it's a guarantee that you'll never get back.

7. So you have to set the stage for this busy exec to want to see you again and here is how it's done. Give him assurance that you understand what he explained to you. Tell him you need time and other resources to prepare a response targeted at correcting, solving and/or improving what he told you about. And then ask him if he would be interested in meeting you again to hear your ideas.

8. Even when senior managers ask you to tell them about what you have, you have to push back and ask them what exactly they want to hear about and how come. You've got to learn where this individual is coming from or else your presentation will be weak and uneventful. Don't be anxious to let-out all you know and don't get intimidated into revealing your information before you get his.

9. The higher the level of the executive, the more the issues are personal. You can't think what you have is good for his or her company. That's what they get paid to do. You have to find out what is good for him or her. So let them tell you what they want and why.

10. When you do come back, it will again be personal and about what you can do for him - not his company or her subordinates. These meetings have to be one-on-one and carefully rehearsed.

As simple as these steps seem, they are really very difficult. Developing the confidence and poise to network, ask and listen - without presenting, letting the exec say whatever without getting defensive, are all very difficult and seldom practiced skills. However, once mastered, the sales person's closing ratio and selling performance will skyrocket.

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