"What does my team think?"
Often executives and leaders do sign the contracts, but they want their team's validation before making a purchase
Many Founders forget that as they launch their businesses with CEO titles, executives and leaders become their peers in every situation and engagement. Founders with extensive prior experience in the fields they are now building companies in will find it even easier to secure meetings with VPs and C-level executives through their networks and investor introductions. This is beneficial and I’m here to say you should leverage this every single time, but you likely need to use these introductions differently than you have been.
We often hear Founders and their salespeople say, 'we’ve met the signer and it’s the CTO.' While it's great that you now have an executive touchpoint, the signer often isn't the person who will be using the product, nor do they care about many of its features. It's rare for software to be evaluated or decided upon through a top-down initiative unless you're offering a solution specifically for leadership, like Salesforce, Workday, etc. One failure mode we see a lot is “we had a relationship with the CTO and they were ready to buy but a disgruntled engineer thinks they can build it themselves.” This very well may be true, but how much time did you spend with the person who would be implementing the software? If it isn’t “a lot,” then you’ll most likely get stalled in most evaluations. When buying software, good executives will always ask “what does my team think?”
Executives love to be advisors and sherpas, so use them as such. Rather than running aggressive discovery, leverage them as a peer to get their guidance on how to best sell into their organization assuming your product solves a real pain after an evaluation.
Aim to have the first call 1:1 and start by introducing and explaining your goal for the call: “My goal of this call is to better understand how [their company] may benefit from the problem we solve, which is: [your problem]. Our solution is typically leveraged by [specific end users or departments at companies like X], so what I’m hoping to do is show you what we’re doing for your feedback, better understand from your POV how I should best position my solution for companies like yours, and who is best from your team and company that could potentially benefit from what we’re doing. Does that sound good?”
This is a disarming way of starting to align at the executive level, building a relationship and leveraging their tangible feedback on how to sell your solution to their organization. By the end of the call, you want to identify and accomplish:
Who are the right people to work with, and why? You’re looking for the person whose opinions are most valued in making important decisions
What is the best way to meet with these people
What is the best way to collaborate with their organization (slack, calls, async, etc.)
Get an introduction (don’t press too hard, but always make the ask. Don’t ask, don’t get!)
Ask for their guidance along the way – rather than forcing them to stay in the entire sales process, keep them informed on progress and re-leverage them later in the buying process as you need to secure a contract
When you get users hooked on the product, you can start to prioritize getting the Technical Win, enrolling executives and other folks within the organization to start multi-threading your opportunity, and leverage your Mutual Action Plan without it being awkward or a homework assignment for your prospects/design partners.
Let us know how this works for you!