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Video: Agenda Setting

© Andrew Sobel & RAIN Group www.RelationshipStrategy.com

http://www.relationshipstrategy.com/



The Challenge

Senior executives are time-starved and you are one person on a long list of people competing for their time. They have to be selective because their time is valuable. Senior executives will usually only meet with people they already know or who are recommended to them.

Senior executives usually already have an existing network of advisors they’ve been working with for years. It’s not easy for you to break into that inner circle.

Another challenge is that senior executives often don’t directly hire external service providers—they delegate this to their teams and to procurement. So even if you’re able to get their attention, they might direct you to someone else or to a procurement process.

You don’t have the luxury of forfeiting relationships with senior executives. After all, they’re the ones who set strategy for the organization, lead the most important initiatives, and can tip a decision in your favor with just a word or two.

So, what can you do to overcome these challenges?

Building relationships with senior executives has become a top priority for many

sales and service professionals, which is the main reason why it’s so hard for you to

reach them.

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Contents

This report provides you with practical strategies to help you gain access to senior

executives and build enduring relationships with them. It is organized into four sections:

Who and Why Understand who senior executives are and why relationships with them are so important

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Preparation Understand the concerns of senior executives and how to become the type of person they want to spend time with

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Gaining Access Learn short-term and long-term strategies for gaining access to senior executives

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4 Becoming a Trusted Advisor Learn how to add value for time and establish the mindset of independent wealth

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Who and Why


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Who Are “Senior Executives”?

• Have the authority to say “Yes!” and can sign a check to buy from you

• Set strategy and operations

• Can influence top management (board members, other advisors)

• Often run functions or areas within an organization

• Are in the “C-Suite”

o In the United States, people often use the term “C-Suite” to refer to executives with “Chief” in front of their role—for example, chief executive officer (CEO) or chief financial officer (CFO). Senior executives may or may not be part of the C-Suite.

When we refer to senior executives, we mean senior

decision makers and key influencers who:

Titles Don’t Tell

the Whole Story For example, a vice president at a $30 billion company may have a large discretionary budget to hire external service providers and buy various products—but in a small company a vice president might have no buying authority whatsoever. Company size and the degree to which decisions are centralized or decentralized are important factors in evaluating an executive’s influence and authority.

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Why Are These Relationships So Important?

• They can implement real change and allow you to make an impact.

• They can offer insight into top management thinking, which provides you context for your own work and allows you to be more effective.

• They can “unblock” a situation when others are afraid or don’t have the budget to take action.

• They can give you referrals and references to other decision makers.

• They usually have an impact—directly or indirectly—on revenue, not just costs. This means they can budget or find the funds for your work.

• Finally, it’s easier for you to start at the top and move down into the organization than it is to start at a mid-level and work your way up.

Senior Executives

Think Beyond Costs A mid-level HR executive may only have a cost budget. The fact that your proposal will grow revenues and impact the top line won’t really move them the way it would a more senior executive or a line executive who is also thinking about revenues and profit.

Beyond the obvious reason that they have the authority to buy from you, there are

many other important reasons to build relationships with senior executives:

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Preparation


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Before you build meaningful relationships with senior executives,

you need to understand their institutional and personal concerns.

Understand Their Institutional and Personal Concerns

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Understand Their Personal Concerns

Let’s start with personal concerns since they are often ignored in favor of the more

easily accessible business issues.

CAREER: All executives are deeply concerned about their career. They’re wondering: “How am I doing in my current role? What does my boss think about my performance? What should my next move be? Do I have broader support in the organization? Should I think about leaving for a new company?”

PERSONAL LIFE: In the end, every client is human and has a personal life, which usually revolves around family, friends, and personal pursuits. If you’d like to connect more deeply with your clients, you must understand and appreciate this aspect of their lives.

RELATIONSHIPS & NETWORK: When it comes to investing their personal time, one criterion that executives often consider is: “Can this individual or organization extend my network and provide valuable contacts for me?” Everyone can offer opera tickets and seminars; but truly valuable personal contacts are proprietary and not subject to gift rules or other corporate restrictions.

WEALTH: While executives think about personal wealth creation a lot, they discuss it very little. Given today’s levels of executive compensation, the stakes for some are very high indeed. Their personal wealth is directly impacted by their company’s stock price and by their ability to hit certain performance targets. The success or failure of your work could, in fact, have a measurable impact on a client’s net worth.

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Understand Their Institutional Concerns

THE SENIOR TEAM: All executives think long and hard about their team of senior managers. Are they the right individuals for the job? Are they aligned to the strategy? Do they work as a team and collaborate? Can their performance be improved? What can be done about conflicts? This is an area where you can often add surprise value by offering insights about how to improve the performance of your client’s senior team.

THE CAPITAL MARKETS: The investors and credit institutions that provide equity and debt financing to a company are crucial constituencies. Executives—especially CEOs and CFOs—spend a lot of time focused on what their investors think, their access to additional funds, and their stock price.

GROWTH: Profits drive stock price, and the perennial concern of the corporation’s top officers is: “Where is our future growth going to come from?” They direct a laser-like focus on investors’ expectations for growth, on how much organic revenue growth they can realistically achieve, and on how they can fill the gap—if there is one—with acquisitions, partnerships, licensing, and other means. Advisors who can squarely and convincingly connect their service offering to increased growth will get management’s attention.

COSTS & RISKS: Nearly all managers are under continual pressure to do more for less, and almost no area of a corporation is exempt from these demands. Today’s business environment is fraught with risks for executives at every level. No one wants to have to face their boss or the company’s board and say, “Something very bad has happened that we did not anticipate.” Any proposal which will help a client control costs, improve efficiency, and minimize risk is going to get noticed.

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Here are five tips for becoming the type of person that senior executives want to spend time with:

1. Make your implicit knowledge explicit. Create short checklists to summarize what you’ve learned from your experiences, e.g. ,“The five most common pitfalls of cost cutting” or “Five things every leader should know about the economy” or “Seven strategies to restart growth” or “10 ways to immediately increase cash flow.” Your conversations will become richer as you are able to more systematically articulate what you’ve learned.

2. Cultivate your own interests. You won’t be interesting to others if you have no interests outside of work. If you have dinner with a top executive or a thought leader, you’re not going to talk very much about your latest methodologies or the project you’re working on—rather, you’ll discuss general business issues and your personal lives.

Become a Person of Interest

“If you are not spending 50% of the time you have with a senior executive talking about things other than the immediate project you are working on, you’re probably not really developing a relationship with that person.” - A Relationship Manager

Senior executives are drawn to thought leaders, to people they perceive as being

leaders in their own fields, and to people who have an incisive point of view on

where the world is going.

If you are one-dimensional and have few professional or personal interests outside your core specialty, it’s unlikely your relationships with senior executives will grow.

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Become a Person of Interest

3. Become a better ‘Deep Generalist’. Develop not only deep expertise in a specific subject , but also a breadth of knowledge that surrounds that core specialty—knowledge about your client as a person, the client’s company and industry, and the general business environment in which the client operates. Deep Generalists can make knowledge connections that others cannot; and they are usually better conversationalists in a variety of circumstances.

4. Build relationships with individuals who are themselves

persons of interest. Senior executives are very focused on their networks, and you must be perceived as someone who knows other influential, well-connected individuals.

5. Always have in mind the key issues and interests of

others. Be a source of insight and information for them on these issues and interests, periodically sending interesting articles and ideas.

“In order to be interesting, you’ve got to have interests.”

Think about broadening your understanding of your client’s world at multiple levels—your client as a person, their company, their industry, and the general business and economic environment that surrounds them. You must be able to put the particular issue you’re working on into a broader context.

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Gaining Access


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Strategies to Employ All the Time to Access Senior Executives

• Follow the person, not the position. This is especially important for young people starting out. The deepest, most trusted client relationships are not formed over a couple meetings or even a couple shared successes—they form over a longer period of time. Build relationships with ambitious, intelligent, motivated people and they will go places!

• Network effectively and ask for referrals. Identify where the leaders you want to get to know “hang out.” What do they read? What conferences do they go to? What associations do they belong to? What are their “watering holes?” Become a regular in these same venues. Work your referral network. If you know one senior executive, and they like you and your work, you can get connected through them to several other equally senior leaders.

Becoming a person of interest will help you become the type of person senior

executives want to spend time with.

Here are two more methods that will help you establish relationships with senior executives over time:

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Strategies to Employ Today to Access Senior Executives

1. Get a warm referral. This could be from a retired executive , a board member, another client of yours or one of your colleagues’ clients, or someone else the senior executive knows and trusts. Tap your network. You’re probably only an introduction or two away.

2. Meet with a more junior executive. This is often the easiest point of entry. Establish a connection with a functional head or business unit head, and then leverage your way up from there.

3. Show how you can help. Identify a key priority or business opportunity for the senior executive. There may be something unique and valuable you can offer (e.g. , a new potential customer, a joint venture, a new service or product opportunity, a potential business partner, new market research, interview findings). Then request a meeting around it.

4. Have one of your company’s leaders set up the meeting. Some clients are very hierarchical and you’ll need to engage an executive of equal rank to set up the meeting.

5. Be persistent. Executives’ short-term priorities shift from week to week. Your topic might not be of interest today, but in a month, it might grab their attention. Don’t give up.

Before you can build a relationship, you need to gain access. Here are five tactics

that can help you get a first meeting:

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Sometimes, your goal is to reach senior executives at a company you’re

already working with.

In these situations, your goal is to convince the client you’re working with that it’s in their best interest to connect what you’re doing to senior management, and that doing so will enhance the engagement’s success and their own reputation.

Moving Up in the Organization with an Existing Client

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Try to get on the agenda of other internal meetings or forums where the audience would find your work relevant.

Continue to convince your immediate client of the need to gain the perspective and buy-in of key senior executives.

Use your time on site with the client to network, walk the halls, and meet other executives.

Try to explicitly connect your work to the organization’s broader agenda, therefore making it a natural step for your immediate client to want to involve more senior executives in your work.

Moving Up in the Organization with an Existing Client

during the sale at kickoff during engagement

Ask to meet the senior executive in whose domain the work falls.

Insist on meeting the economic buyer—the executive who must sign off on the decision to hire you.

Create a proposal that addresses the client’s specific need, but which also aligns with the strategic context of the problem you’re addressing.

Include interviews with senior management as part of your start-up process.

Discuss, with your immediate client, the need to gain the perspectives of key senior executives.

Ensure that the issue you are being asked to engage around is truly important to the senior executives at the client. Commodity work is rarely going to merit their attention.

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Becoming A Trusted Advisor


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Becoming A Trusted Advisor

As difficult as it is to get a first meeting with a senior executive, it is even

harder to get a second meeting!

Unless you add value for time, push their thinking, show that you’re a person of interest, and demonstrate why a relationship with you is going to help them accomplish their highest-level goals, you won’t get a second meeting with the senior executive. You’ll be delegated to someone lower in the chain of command.

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Adding Maximum Value for Time with Senior Executives

Mid-level executives are focused on value for money because they mostly control

cost budgets. Senior executives are focused on value for time (and later, ROI). Why

should they spend 30 minutes with you? What will they get out of it?

Here are eight tips for maximizing your value: 1. Like a great pop song, have an opening hook. You only have a few minutes to grab their attention and get them interested in continuing the dialogue.

2. Align to their agenda. What are this executive’s 4-5 most important issues or goals right now? If what you have to say doesn’t connect to this agenda, you’ll be pushing water uphill.

3. Be willing to have a point of view. Senior executives respect and are drawn to professionals who have a point of view and a well-thought-out perspective on the issues. Blandness is not memorable.

4. Provide insight about the internal organization. Can you enlarge their perspectives based on your intimate familiarity with their organization and people? Are you able to say, “We’ve been working with your people now for a year, and we’d like to share some observations about the organization with you, and perhaps a few ideas that you might find interesting…”

“Internally, it’s hard to find trusted advisors who will really challenge me.” - CEO, former client

Be seen as someone who is willing to say no when it’s in your financial interest to say yes.

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Adding Maximum Value for Time with Senior Executives

5. Provide insight about the external world. Are you offering valuable (and interesting) information and insights about trends, customers, markets, competitors, the economy, or government policies?

6. Understand what’s important right now. Short-term pressures and events often hijack an executive’s long-term agenda. You might ask, “What’s the most important issue we should be discussing today?” or “What’s the most valuable way for us to spend this time?”

7. Add value in different dimensions. Do you have an idea for them to consider? Can you suggest a valuable introduction to expand their network? Can you help on a personal level in some way? Can you suggest ways for their team to be more effective? Can you review a plan or proposal for them?

8. Help them use their time effectively. Don’t confuse quantity of time with quality. If you can help them get more out of their day, or finish a conversation in 30 minutes that would otherwise take an hour, you’ll make an impression.

When you ask for the meeting

A client of ours had been told for years to “ask questions, listen, and solve problems” when meeting with decision makers who could buy from them. Too often, it wasn’t working. Here’s why:

If the senior executive asks you for the meeting, you should surely find out what they have in mind and probe to understand why you’re there and how you can help. See Tip #6.

If you ask for the meeting, and you start with questions about needs and how you can help, they’ll often get frustrated—they’ll expect you to add value first!

In this case, Tips #1, #4, #5, and #7 will help you set the agenda, intrigue the executive, and inspire ideas and action.

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Develop the Mindset of Independent Wealth

• Establish a peer dynamic. Treat them as a friend or colleague; don’t be sycophantic or obsequious.

• Be in the moment. Don’t think about your next meeting. Listen intently, making the other person feel as though they are the only other person in the world at that moment.

• Exude enthusiasm. When you demonstrate passion for your work it is contagious. It gets the other person excited about what you are excited about.

If you exhibit these behaviors, clients will sense it across the room. You’ll build trust faster. It will be easier for them to think of you as a peer, as a trusted advisor.

To build relationships with senior executives you must exemplify the mindset of

independent wealth. You must:

“I wish that all my advisors were independently wealthy. That’s because, then I would know they were always telling me the truth, they would always be focused on my agenda, they would be objective, and making money from the relationship would never influence their advice.” - Chuck Lillis, former CEO of a $20 billion cable company

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About the Authors

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Andrew Sobel RAIN Group

Andrew Sobel helps companies and individuals build clients for life. He is the most widely published author in the world on the topic of business relationships, and his bestselling books include Power Questions,

All for One, Making Rain, and Clients for Life. His clients include many of the world's leading companies such as Citigroup, Ernst & Young, Booz Allen Hamilton, Hess, Cognizant, Deloitte, Experian, Lloyds Banking Group, Bain & Company, and many others. Andrew's articles and work have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, USA Today, strategy+business, and the Harvard Business Review. He spent 15 years at Gemini Consulting where he was a Senior Vice President and Country Chief Executive Officer, and for the last 15 years he has led his own consulting firm, Andrew Sobel Advisors. He can be reached at www.andrewsobel.com.

and training firm dedicated to helping companies succeed with the complex sale. Founded in 2002, the firm has grown over the last decade into a recognized leader in sales improvement with an international client base. The company has helped tens of thousands of salespeople and professionals in dozens of countries increase their sales significantly with their RAIN Selling methodology. RAIN Group helps organizations:

Enhance sales skills and improve sales results Increase cross and up-selling success Recruit, hire, and retain the best sales talent Greatly reduce the learning curve for new hires Increase success of new product launches

RAIN Group is a leader in sales research and publishing, including The Wall Street Journal bestseller Rainmaking Conversations, How Clients Buy, Lead Generation Benchmark Report, and many others. Learn more at www.raingroup.com.

RAIN Group is a sales performance consulting


http://www.amazon.com/Power-Questions-Relationships-Business-Influence/dp/1118119630/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327097287&sr=8-1-spell

http://www.amazon.com/All-One-Strategies-Building-Partnerships/dp/0470380284/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1327097562&sr=1-1-catcorr

http://www.amazon.com/Making-Rain-Secrets-Building-Lifelong/dp/0471264598/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1327097613&sr=1-1-catcorr

http://www.amazon.com/Clients-Life-Expert-Hire-Extraordinary/dp/0684870304

http://andrewsobel.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Rainmaking-Conversations-Influence-Persuade-Situation/dp/0470922230/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1349728920&sr=1-1&keywords=rainmaking+conversations

http://www.rainsalestraining.com/

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The Relationship Strategy Program is a collaboration between Andrew Sobel, author of Clients for Life and Power Questions and President of Andrew Sobel Advisors Inc. and John Doerr and Mike Schultz, authors of Rainmaking Conversations and leaders of RAIN Group.

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