How to Get Access To Any Decision Maker

One of the consequences of the economic downturn, and the reductions in workforce over the last several years is a greater gap between executives with the authority and the people who are responsible for implementing and overseeing solutions.

When I work with salespeople, the most common challenge they have is getting access to authority.  To get the access you desire, the first, most important thing you must do is to have something worth talking about.

Here are the five steps to take to get the access you desire:

1. Be very clear who you want to speak with. 
2. Determine the critical results this person is responsible for. 
3. Next, use your experience to determine the most likely problems or issues this person is having in attaining these results.
4. Now to determine the consequences of not utilizing your solution.
5. Develop a well-defined­ resonating case to share with your targeted prospect.

For example, if I’m trying to reach out to a VP, Sales to begin conversations, I’d skip the focus on my features and benefits.  Instead, I’d share something like this:

Over the last 20 years, we’ve worked firsthand with more than 1,000 companies mid-market growth companies.  We’ve learned that these companies are getting, at best, only 50% of the results from their sales and marketing investments they should be getting.  We’re concerned that if you don’t identify the issues that are causing this problem, you’ll lose hundreds of thousands to millions in lost profit and equity value.  I’d like to share our findings with you, and share some tools with you so you can ensure this doesn’t happen to you.

The key to access is knowing your customer better than they know themselves.  To get a jumpstart, you can download my Understanding Your Customer Workbook.