In previous Tips we have talked about the strategy of using your team to help you to overcome some procurement-driven challenges. In October, 2009, Use your Team, Part 1 reviewed the strategy of utilizing various members of the team to reach out and do research with their contacts. In November, 2009, Use your Team Part 2 presented the idea of leveraging your procurement team to help develop and execute a successful strategy.

Now we want to revisit a time-tested strategy - using your senior executives to reach out above procurement to their senior executive counterparts in the customer organization. This can be effective for a number of reasons, including:


They have every right to assess how their own organization is spending their resources
They have the ability to bring in the right resources based on the situation and may need to qualify the situation for themselves
They may not be bound by the same procurement rules you are
They don't have to face the gatekeeper or procurement contact on a daily basis
They have the ability to make decisions and concessions if the opportunity merits
They can take advantage of the professional courtesy that exists between many senior executives


The beauty of this strategy is twofold. First, it's very effective. Second, we are not to blame for going around procurement and the procurement process. It's not our fault that our executives feel the way they do, and we certainly cannot control their actions.

If we are going to use this strategy, we need to consider how we prepare our executives to make the call to schedule the meeting. If we assume that they know what to say, we put them at a big disadvantage and set them up to fail. Instead, we can prepare a brief overview of the situation and the request we want them to make:


what is the opportunity?
what are the customer's objectives, strategies and issues?
who is the executive we are calling and what is the specific request we are making?
what are some of the elements of the fit that they can use to compel the executive?


By preparing this brief overview, we improve our odds of getting this key meeting scheduled.