18 May Like nailing jello to a wall: The psychology of getting c-suite executives to sales meetings
Getting a c-suite exec pinned down to a meeting can be like trying to nail jello to a wall. They just keep slipping away.
They’re busy, A-type personalities. They get bombarded with pitches constantly. Getting their attention for long enough to make them aware who you are, let alone for them to express an interest is incredibly tough.
Let’s say you do manage it though, maybe through a webinar or a carefully personalized, cold email. You’ll then need to nurture that lead through to setting a meeting, which probably means using your account development reps (SDRs).
SDRs are like a personal assistant with ninja skills and they’re much better at getting a lead into a meeting than regular sales people.
To the prospect, SDRs are invisible in the sales process, but act to facilitate an executive’s authority. Often they are ghost writing emails to the client as though they are the CEO of the company they’re trying to book meetings for. They’re relentless with their follow up and leverage powerful tech to do it, because they understand exec psychology.
Ultimately, they’re essential to any successful B2B pipeline, because sending leads directly to sales people can lead to a very broad range of outcomes – not all of them good. Sales people are just like CEOs in many ways – busy and with little patience for followup, so SDRs can be great for getting around that.
They’ll take the temperature of leads and skillfully steer them in the right direction. A well managed SDR team is also responsive within hours and understands their job is not to sell, just facilitate.
Aaron Ross, the legendary author and keynote speaker, covered this in his book – Predictable Revenue. If you haven’t already looked at it, you really should. He came to the market and opened up an entirely new approach to managing sales with the use of SDRs.
Be careful though. He’s great, if you’re selling a tactical solution to a non-executive, especially because the price point of the product is likely lower. But, if you’re not in the volume game and you’re in the high ticket c-suite game, don’t be hoodwinked into that model.