An AE shares how discovery calls with lower-level contacts can reach CEOs. After learning one CEO's goal to raise NPS to 60 by 2022, they sent an InMail referencing that exact target and got an immediate response that led to a Qualtrics evaluation.
A mistake I made early in my career was thinking that initial sales conversations were only valuable if they converted into an opportunity. And I think a lot of AES fall into this binary trap of good call or bad call. And honestly, it's completely the fault of sales leaders because we track conversion rates across everything. The reality is your first conversation with an account is probably not with your eventual buyer. You if you're only worried about converting the opportunity closer to a sale with that individual, you're likely going to leave the call not any closer to that end goal. I experienced something early on as an AE that helped me understand this approach. I had been trying to get into a account for months and I tried the executive level, I tried the director level, and I just couldn't get a response from anybody. It was one of my better accounts. And so I wanted to try anything I could. And so I finally set a meeting with the wrong person. Like wrong title, wrong level. There was no way that they were going to be somebody to pull the deal, to push the deal forward. I still had the conversation and I learned a couple of really valuable nuggets that I hadn't known about the account. I learned that the CEO had a goal to increase their NPS to to 60 by the year 2022. And I learned a few of the systems they were currently using and some of the frustrations the individual had at their level using those systems. So the call ended. There were no next steps. There was no opportunity. If you're looking at our dashboard, it was a failure of a call. However, I was able to take the insight they shared with me and draft InMail to the CEO. My subject line was NPS to 60 by 2022, question mark. Then the body of the email was I learned this was a goal for you. I've put together a quick business case for how I believe Qualtrics could help you accomplish that goal, keeping in mind some of the systems that are currently in place today. This email got or this inmail got an immediate response. The CEO connects me with their team and we were able to kick off the evaluation of our solution to go help them solve this, that big company problem, that strategic initiative of improving the customer experience as measured by NPS 260 and so when you're thinking about working your accounts, stop thinking just about, hey, is this the right person? Is this the decision maker? Think more about how can I learn more about this account? How can I learn more about the executive goals, the VP goals, the director goals? How can I learn more about current processes in place. As you're taking this approach, you're going to learn valuable nuggets that you can then use to improve your outreach to go land meetings with people that may actually become the ultimate decision maker and even the economic buyer. I hope this is a helpful approach. If you like it, please subscribe to my YouTube channel and you can also find my best frameworks@salesintroverts.com.
