Who is VITO? Read this from Jill Konrath:
Are you selling to the very important top officers? Should you be?
Recently I had a chance to interview one of my highly-respected colleagues, Tony Parinello. He's the author of Selling to VITO, a sales classic since 1994. He's also the co-author along with David Mattson of the newly released book, Five Minutes with VITO. Both books are excellent companions to Selling to Big Companies. Click here to download a PDF of the interview now. .
Jill: Let's start out with a quick definition Tony. Who is this “VITO” that you want salespeople to call on?
Tony: First of all, selling to VITO has got nothing to do with trying to convince an Italian to do something that they maybe don’t want to do, nor is it about selling to the mob. But it has everything to do with reaching out to the VITO - Very Important Top Officer, or the person with the ultimate veto power.
It's reaching out to the people that salespeople typically and generally don’t reach out to. It's especially important today because of the business climate we are in. All decisions are rolling up to these VITOs who have the last nod on your sale, the last yes or no. What VITO wants, VITO gets. They have the ultimate veto – or should I say, VITO power.
Jill: That is a very clever use of language! What positions or job titles do these VITOs hold? I don't see that title on any organization chart.
Tony: VITOs usually have titles like president, CEO, owner, chairman of the board. VITO is the person at the very very top of the org chart who owns the responsibility for the revenue, for controlling and containing, making things run smoothly and ensuring compliance. They're the person at the end of the day that most everything rolls up to. They have to report to the shareholders, the analysts or the person who at the top of the telephone pole. That's the VITO.
Jill: Do you think that every seller should be selling or calling on the VITOs?
Tony: This has always been a question from way back when I wrote the first VITO book in 1994. Jeez, you know, people worry about if VITO will take their call, if he or she is actually going to speak to a salesperson and what they're going to say to VITO.
But let me give you an example.
Let's take a copier – you know they're calling them multi-functional devices these days because a copier does more than just copy, but lets just say you sell copiers, okay.
Well, it is pretty clear to me that a CEO, president or owner of any size company is probably not going to want to talk to you about copiers or multifunctional devices. So this is what I want you to do if you sell copiers – or anything actually – before you even think about calling a VITO or not.
Picture your very best account – ones who love you. Now think about what would happen if something mysterious happened tonight that caused every multifunctional device or whatever you've sold this account to disappear. So tomorrow morning everyone shows up for work and there aren't any copiers there.
Here's the question you need to think about: What's going to happen to the company’s top, middle or bottom line as a direct result of not having the product, service or solution that you sold to them?
If you can answer that question and you can roll it up to top, middle and bottom line performance results – then you have the topics that VITOs love to talk about. So, that is the easiest way to see if it makes sense to reach out to a VITO.
Jill: So if VITO would have a conniption if every copy machine were gone because they couldn't …
Tony: Put out sales literature. Or print out stuff for the manufacturing product development meeting. The important thing to understand is if it rolls up to top line performance, revenue generation and the efficiencies and the effectiveness of revenue-generating employees and mission-critical employees. Start to think like a VITO when it comes to the disappearing act and you'll come up with a host – an absolute host of ideas – and dialoging to have with the VITO.
Jill: So you're saying that really I am selling all the things that would happen if that copier disappeared.
Tony: It's like thinking of every salesperson in the world as an insurance salesperson, because basically we sell insurance or assurance. We assure the VITO that the production lines will continue to run so they can satisfy the demand that the economy has put on them, so they can continue to be competitive in the marketplace, and so they contain expenses.
At they end of the day, remember that VITO – more than anyone – must win. When the scoreboard shows the score, the VITO, the very important top officer, the person who is sitting at the top of the organization, wants to keep his or her job and grow the company. So, they have to win. Preoccupy yourself with the question, "How can I help VITO win?"
Jill: Then that gives you the messaging you need to contact VITO.
Tony: Well you know the messaging is an interesting thing, Jill. I want you to think for a moment about the language you use when you reach out to your prospects and customers in the course of a typical day. Are you typically calling on people who stand on linoleum?
I call that Linoleum Ville when you're talking to a character that I choose to call Seymour, the person who always wants to see more. They always want to see more presentations and demonstrations and analysis and regurgitation of analysis.
If you're spending most of your time yapping with the Seymours of the world down in Linoleum Ville, you're going to have to do a little research in the VITOpedia to come up with words and phrases that VITOs care about. It's a different language. So if you show up on VITO’s doorstep speaking that Seymour language, they're going to hang up on you. They are going to shunt you down to Linoleum Ville quicker than you can blink your eye.
Jill: That's right. They don’t care about copies per minute or first copy out time, or the variable reduction capabilities.
Tony: Jill, that is exactly right. Not only don’t they care about it, but they don’t understand it. Now picture this: The president of a Fortune 1000 company or the owner of a medium-sized company. This person has a couple of real fears when it comes to dealing with salespeople.
The first fear they have is that the salesperson is going to waste their time. The second fear is that the salesperson is going to try to engage them in a conversation that they don’t know anything about. And that challenges their ego, power, control and authority. You don’t want to go there with a VITO.
So you know we do this. We get a VITO on the phone and we think, "Oh my god, today is my lucky day. VITO picked up the phone unprotected." That happens more often than you can imagine. But if I start my conversation off by saying, "Are you interested in a multi functional device that prints this and staples that and sorts this?" they say, "Come on. I don’t have time for this!"
If you do this, you've triggered both of their fears – wasting time and wanting to talk about topics and subjects and stuff that VITO just doesn’t understand or doesn’t care about. The game is over.
Jill: So what do you do?
Tony: We need to change our vocabulary. That is the first thing we need to do and that is what we spend a lot of time in the Five Minutes with VITO book and every VITO book I have created since 1994. It's getting salespeople to realize that VITOs don’t understand the techno babble, industry jargon and buzz that salespeople spew out of their mouths most of the time.
It just amazes me as many years as I have been doing this, that it always seems to be the year of VITO. You know the year of getting to VITO is now so important with what's happening in the economy.
Well, guess what – VITOs haven’t changed much over the years. They all have similar concerns and similar problems. There are only four results that VITOs look for everyday when they go to work. If you can dial into any one of them, you win.
Jill: And the four results that VITOs are looking for are …?
Tony: Here is the first one. Think about it now before you pick up the phone to call a VITO or write a letter to a VITO or send an email to a VITO or show up in their lobby. Think about how VITO’s organization creates revenue.
Do they develop their own products? Do they purchase products and put their label on it to ship it out the door and make a margin? Or, are they value added resellers? Do they have a direct sales force, or an indirect sales force?
When you know how VITOs in this industry create revenue, then you have to ask yourself how your product, service or solution can help VITO increase the margin or increase the revenue? If the answer is no, then lets go to the second result.
The second result that every VITO in the world wants to create is greater efficiency and effectiveness of their revenue-generating employees, their mission-critical employees and their mission critical processes. So before you reach out to a VITO, ask yourself: Can what I sell can it help VITO do any of these?
So let's look at a hospital for example. So who is a revenue-generating employee at a hospital?
Jill: A doctor.
Tony: Exactly. So do I have something in my bag of tricks here that will help doctors work smarter rather than harder or diagnose faster rather than slower? That's the kind of questions you need to be asking. That's the second result – increased efficiencies and effectiveness,
The third result is reduction or containment of expenses. Can the product that you sell help VITO contain or reduce expenses? Or can it help them move from a variable unpredictable cost environment to a very predictable cost environment?
And finally, result number four is to do the first three and help VITO stay out of jail. Or be compliant - you know if they are industry compliance or regulations.
Now here's the secret: It's taking two or more of the results that you can deliver and balancing the equation. All that means is that if I have an idea – either proven or suspected – that I can increase VITO’s revenue stream AND I also have an idea on how to cut some expenses at the same time, then I'm a magician.
Jill: That's a double whammy!
Tony: Absolutely. If you could increase revenue while you cut expenses, guess what happens: VITO’s margins go up and you have made VITO a hero by the end of the quarter. So, time is always important to VITO.
Having a balanced gain equation says you take one or more of the results that you either suspect you can deliver or you know you can deliver, then put the common elements of time in it and there is your messaging right there.
Keep the techno babble totally out of it. That's poison to a VITO. Those are features and functions of what you sell and I always tell salespeople – don’t use f words with a VITO.
Jill: F words?
Tony: F words, features, functions, those are f words. If you use one of them, the conversation is done.
Tomorrow, Jill shares the rest as part of our sales training.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment