“The most important thing is to be persistent because the perfect message sometimes doesn’t even get read.” – Ian Koniak in today’s Tip 1009
How do you book meetings with Senior Executives?
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Ian Koniak on LinkedIn
Ian Koniak on YouTube
Ian Koniak on Sales Success Stories Interview
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Ian Koniak. Ian just left Salesforce as one of their top performers to start his own coaching and training firm to help others achieve the same kinds of results. Here he is:
Ian Koniak: Good morning. It’s Ian Koniak. And today I’m going to share how I’m able to set meetings with C Suite executives or generally high-level decision-makers in new accounts, new logos, and my formula is really simple. It is a couple of things to remember.
Number one is you have to personalize your message to the individual, not to the account but to the individual. And number two, you have to be relevant. So those are the two things I want you to take away from today. So how do you do that?
So to personalize the note of the outreach, you need to start by doing your research. What I’ll do typically is I will just really stock them online. I’ll start with the LinkedIn profile. A lot of executives aren’t active on LinkedIn, but if they are, I’m going to look at what they posted. I’m going to look for anything they like or shared. I’m going to see how long they’ve been in the role. I’m going to see where our common connections are. I’m going to see if they came from another company, potentially that was a former customer of ours, and I’m going to look for intelligence in terms of their job description or what they do and what their responsibilities are in their role. Okay, that’s the first place.
Second thing I’m going to do is I’m going to go online and see if they’ve been interviewed. A lot of executives have been interviewed or they might have appeared at a conference where they gave a talk or they’ve been highlighted in some type of press release. So I’m just going to check them, Google their name along with their company. So the name of them the name of the company and then check the news, videos and just general search results.
From there, they’ll let me personalize my outreach to them. So the best way to personalize is if you see an article or an interview, take the time to watch it. A lot of times I’ll spend 30 minutes listening to a podcast or an interview with an executive, and what I’ll do is I’ll pull out a few things that they said or shared. I’ll take notes while I’m listening and pull out things they said that I can help with. Okay, that’s the second part of my message, which is be relevant.
The key to success in prospecting is that you establish what’s called linkage. You have to link what they care about, what they said to your product and service. And this is where a lot of people screw up. They’ll say I researched your 10k. I saw you have these goals, and here’s my product or service but there’s not very good linkage. So if you read about someone who’s trying to improve the customer experience, talk about how your company can help potentially them improve the company experience and make it relevant if they’re trying to grow revenue. Same thing. Talk about how you can help them with growing revenue.
Don’t give too much information. Just talk about at a high level. Our company helps revive our company, helps companies like yours achieve revenue. And based on what you share, I think it’d be a great opportunity to meet. Okay, and I’d love to see where we can help.
The last part of that is a call to action, and that’s when you actually request the meeting. I usually say, “Would you be open to a discussion? Let me know the best way to get in your calendar.” I’m not necessarily putting a link to book in the first outreach. Okay, this is for strategic executives. It’s personalized. They’re busy. A lot of them have executive assistance, so I want to just see if they’re open to a conversation.
The formula is really simple. It’s share your research, establish the linkage and do a call to action. That’s how I phrase my emails when I reach out. The last thing I’ll say is a lot of executives are going to open your email. Even with the best possible email, you still have to continue to reach out. I usually reach out, I’d say between five and eight times after my first outreach. Typically, when I do follow up, I’ll follow up with additional new information. Or I’m not just bumping it up, but I’m adding something of value that enhances the original value proposition that I sent. So you got to be persistent. Most AES give up after one or two and they won’t follow up. And that’s where I think I can distinguish myself is staying on top of it. And that’s really the most important thing is to be persistent because the perfect message sometimes doesn’t even get read. Hope this helps. Have a great day!
Scott Ingram: For more tips like this, check out Ian’s YouTube Channel. We’ll have a link for you at DailySales.Tips/1009
Once you’ve clicked over there, be sure to click back here for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!