Secrets of Engaging High Level Executives

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>> Gerhardt Schwandtner: Hi. My name is Gerhardt Schwandtner and welcome Selling Power TV. Today we have the pleasure of meeting with Michael Scher. He's the founder and President of Frontline Selling. Welcome Michael.

>> Michael Scher: Nice to be here. Thank you.

>> Gerhardt Schwandtner: What is the secret for engaging very high level executives?

>> Michael Scher: The short answer is you just to need to ask them. We find that a lot of account executives, telemarketers, people who do prospecting, they just don't start at the right level. They don't ask the right people the right questions. That's number one. Number two is what do you ask them and how often do you ask them?

>> Gerhardt Schwandtner: Okay. Let's make an example.

>> Michael Scher: Sure.

>> Gerhardt Schwandtner: I want to talk to the CEO of Shering-Plough. His name is Fred Hassan. I know him, I've talked to him, but let's say you're a sales rep and you want to get through to him. What do you do?

>> Michael Scher: Well, you have to have some kind of message. But the message is not the only thing that's going to be compelling. What you really need to do is -- the first thing you need to do is pick up the phone and call him. And his name is Fred?

>> Gerhardt Schwandtner: Yeah.

>> Michael Scher: Yeah, so I can tell you that Fred may --

>> Gerhardt Schwandtner: He will never pick up his phone.

>> Michael Scher: Well that's right. He may never pick up his phone.

>> Gerhardt Schwandtner: Right.

>> Michael Scher: He may be one where he gives his administrative assistant a little more domain over his calendar --

>> Gerhardt Schwandtner: Absolutely, yeah.

>> Michael Scher: -- or acts as a filter.

>> Gerhardt Schwandtner: And his calendar is booked six or nine months in advance.

>> Michael Scher: It might be booked, yeah, in advance. And we can anticipate that.

>> Gerhardt Schwandtner: Right.

>> Michael Scher: He also may read email. He probably has a Blackberry.

>> Gerhardt Schwandtner: Right.

>> Michael Scher: If you can get an email to him, he'll get it twice. What you really need to do is understand that there's probably a number of people who are trying to call him and get his attention.

>> Gerhardt Schwandtner: Probably a few hundred.

>> Michael Scher: Probably a few hundred. And what you really need to do is touch him a number of different times a number of different ways. It could be via direct mail, it could be via email, certainly through his administrative assistant. And even if he is not the person, or his calendar is filled up, the one thing we do know, the higher you start, the higher you're going to end up. So if he does pass you off to somebody else, it's not going to be to a manager level or director level, it might be to another C-level, maybe the CFO or the COO.

>> Gerhardt Schwandtner: Michael, how about sending out just a simple letter?

>> Michael Scher: Perfect. There's nothing wrong with that. What we do know is that different people respond to different types of communication protocol.

>> Gerhardt Schwandtner: Mm-hmm, right.

>> Michael Scher: Just like in a business consumer environment. Some people watch TV, some people listen to the radio, some people read the newspapers, but McDonald's advertises through all three.

>> Gerhardt Schwandtner: So Michael, when you train people to make those high level calls, what is some of the resistance points that you encounter doing that training?

>> Michael Scher: One of the reasons we think they don't like to do it is because they think they know what to do, but they're not getting the results so nobody likes to do something that they fail at. So what we do is we come in and take a very different approach. We have three steps to our training program. The first one is to get all that conventional thought, the conventional wisdom, conventional bias out on the table. And then we start chopping down that conventional wisdom and to open up the minds of the participants to think differently. The second thing we do is we introduce chapter and verse, the color-by-numbers approach on, now that you're thinking differently about prospecting and the obstacles that are and are not there, here's an approach that makes sense.

>> Gerhardt Schwandtner: So there's a big difference between thinking I know it and the resolve to take action on that.

>> Michael Scher: Exactly. And so the third part of it is, is we -- and we can do this because we're not only a training company but an outsourcing company, we get somebody from our outsourcing part of the business. We get them on the phone and they make real live prospecting calls using the client's value proposition, calling their prospects, calling as them. And it is where the rubber meets the road, it's where the "Aha!" moment, where they say, "Hey, if they can do it, they don't know a whole lot about our value proposition, then I certainly can do that."

>> Gerhardt Schwandtner: So what you're saying is that if you bring this down to the reality level, seeing is believing, and people buy in and say, "If those people can do it, I can do it."

>> Michael Scher: Exactly, and that's the last part of our classes. Once they see that, there's no excuses. They can easily -- we hand them this very same call sketch, the very same email scripts and they go out and start making prospecting calls that very same day.

>> Gerhardt Schwandtner: Excellent. Thank you Michael and tomorrow we are going to continue our conversation. We explore how we can align sales and marketing to make this happen.

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==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====