From One Executive to Another

by Graham Denton

Several years ago, two of the major U.S. aerospace manufacturers were competing for a half billion dollar contract from Qantas, the Australian national airline. The company that won it, Boeing, had sent its chief executive officer personally out to Canberra to negotiate terms with the Australian decision makers, among them government officials (including the prime minister) whose approvals were needed before any agreement could go through. Managers at the losing competitor (who we'll allow to remain nameless) had approached their CEO with the same idea, and he had responded cavalierly: "That's what I have salespeople for."

Half a billion dollars is a heavy price to pay for the luxury of believing that top managers should remain above the fray. In fact, in the best managed, which is to say the most sales-conscious, companies, top executives are routinely out on the line, showing up on sales calls from Canberra to Chicago. Here are a few examples:

• At Coca-Cola, senior executives are active members of all major account teams.
• For one of its key accounts, Kimberly-Clark has established an executive exchange program. Senior people from the two companies confer twice a year, to address the ongoing business and any potential problems.
• At Hewlett Packard, executives at the vice-presidential level have traditionally made it a point to call every quarter on key customers. It has also long been an H-P policy that the CEO calls personally at least once a month on a major account.

At these and other intensely sales-driven enterprises, the corporate culture accepts a fact that the losing aerospace competitor obviously forgot: If the role of senior management is to secure organizational prosperity, getting out there and selling is one way to do it.

Savvy managers are increasingly getting this message, and salespeople should too. And getting it should be a prelude to reassessing your relationship with your company's senior management. If you're having trouble getting through to your customers' top decision-makers, you should consider asking your own executives to join your team, that is, to call on the customer or to accompany you on a joint call. If you can demonstrate that the revenue you're looking at is important to your company, they'll be willing to go. Many executives are. They just haven't been asked.

Why specifically should you involve your executives in making sales calls? For one thing, they speak the same language as the executives that you're calling on (or, if you're intimadated, not calling on); they understand the management problems that your customers may be experiencing, and they can help you relate your solution to concerns at that level. In addition to that, there's a personal relations plus every time you put two executives together. It impresses and flatters a customer when you think enough of her business to bring in your company's heavy hitters to confer with them.

Last, but certainly not least, it establishes a model for an ongoing business relationship. If you can broker an executive-to-executive meeting between your two companies, you're obviously interested in more than the individual order. You're conducting yourself like a member of the management team-which of course in this case is exactly what you are. That's an excellent message to send your customer and your own management.