Selling to Banks Blog

Do Executive Profiles Result In High Quality Leads? - Part 5

In Part 3, we found out that 80% of senior executives get involved in the buying cycle very early in the process. We also found out they focus on ways to solve business problems they are facing. The terms they use to do Web searches are focused around business problems, they do not consider specific software products at this stage.

If there was a way to reach senior executives at this point, you would have a unique  opportunity to engage her/him on issues they care most about and begin building a relationship. The problem is: how can you know enough about that executive to know what business issues are of most concern to them?

Various forms of sales intelligence can help in this regard:

- Triggers that tell you about an upcoming acquisition or merger

- News releases that tell you about a promotion of the executive to a new position

- Announcement of a competitor releasing a new product line

These help point you in the right direction. But what has this executive explicitly said about any of these events or other business issues? When and where has she/he laid out their vision for moving their company forward? What is unique about this executive? What are their opinions on important issues?

This is where you can separate yourself from other salespeople that may also use sales intelligence. The deeper your knowledge of an executive, the more likely you are to reach them at the right time in their buying cycle.

Senior executives spend a good amount of their time giving speeches, interviews, presentations, keynote addresses at conferences, meeting with analysts, media, and many more activities. This is when you can gain insight into their thought process and what they view as pressing business problems and opportunities they may have. The clues are there, you just have to dig deep enough to find them.

When you learn to leverage the special "golden nuggets" of information buried in these sources, you raise your odds of being the first one to engage the executive at the right time with the right issues.

This is the essence of an in-depth Executive Profile. It provides this type of actionable information in an easy-to-understand format for the salesperson. You then have the foundation to begin relationship selling. 

If used wisely, executive profiles can result in high quality leads.