"We Hold These Truths to be Self Evident"

Start at the Top

Identify the senior leader (C-Level Executive / Owner) and use a multi-touch approach to gain an initial meeting. (Selling to VITO). Once you get executive sponsorship, you can begin having meetings with the underlings.

This is commonly accepted as gospel in the sales world. All sales training organizations preach this. While this certainly sounds logical and reasonable, I have found this almost never to be true in the real world. I did a review one time of all my company accounts that did over a million dollars in business with us. There were over 20 in all. In none of these accounts did we even sniff the C-Suite (not for lack of trying).

Land & Expand

The opposite approach is to start small, and use your initial success to gain more contacts and identify more opportunities. This was the tactic that worked for us in the vast majority of cases. In the 20+ million dollar accounts I referenced earlier, the average initial order was about $15,000.

In other words, 90% of the time, we won the big accounts by Landing & Expanding. The other 10% by starting at the top. Which approach works best? Both of them.

One Last Example

Anchor a High Price and Work Down

Every study of behavioral science proves without question that humans are irrational when it comes to evaluating pricing. We are easily manipulated by powerful psychological forces that are rooted in our subconscious mind. We think we are logical and rational, but we are not, to a surprising degree.

I demonstrate this to live audiences all the time. I'll ask people to estimate the value of some random object. I'll get 1/2 the room to estimate way low and the other 1/2 to estimate way high, just based on how I describe the object. One side is usually 200% - 300% higher than the other. That's the "Lizard Brain" at work.

Start Low & Nickel & Dime Your Way Up

Hotels and airlines use this opposite tactic to great success. On a recent trip to Las Vegas, my $200 per night hotel room ended up running $320 per night once all the resort fees, taxes, and surcharges were added in. The $350 flight ended up costing hundreds more once things like seat assignments, bag fees, and taxes were added.