Truman Company recently completed a series of conversations with CMOs on this question in partnership with Pete Krainik at the CMO Club.

Pete posted the results on his weekly Business Week blog, Brand New Day.  The key findings were that CMOs need to do three things to earn their seat at the table:

1. Think like a CFO
2. Speak business, not marketing
3. Be the voice of their customer

In essence, CMOs need to go beyond branding and lead generation and help the business make decisions that create customer value.  The full blog post has more on each of the practices with some great quotes from the interviewed CMOs.

For those of you marketing and selling to executives, the issue of Seat at the Table is critical to success.

Every senior executive these days is focused on how to maintain or get their Seat at the Table, especially those with cost centers such as Chief Information Officers, Chief Marketing Officers, and Chief Human Resource Officers. 

If you are marketing or selling to a senior executive, you can create enormous value by helping that executive get their seat at the table.   This means helping them make their business case, create alignment and support for their agenda, and improve performance across the business.   It's just common sense.  We help those who help us succeed.

It's also a good platform to talk about Microsoft's role and how our technology can bring people together to make good business decisions across the different parts of a company.

One of the top requests of our IT customers is that they want Microsoft to educate them about what's happening in technology and business. We do a lot of that through traditional means such as publishing white papers and case studies about how a certain company used Microsoft software to reach a certain business outcome. But this show brings the white paper to life. It's like a white paper with a pulse.

1. The first step in marketing to the C-Suite is acclimating to the higher altitude - in other words, adjusting to the unique ways in which executives work and think. 
2. Second is planning your route to the top, which involves thinking about not only who you want to have conversations with, but also who your buyer will need to talk to about you, your ideas, and your product. 
3. Third is getting the right gear -- using the strategies and tactics appropriate to an executive audience.

The conversation highlighted some interesting issues that will be addressed next month as part of a CMO Club series on executive engagement  These include the use of social media by and for executives, how to get the most from advisory councils, the role of influencers, and the challenge of connecting thought leadership to product sales. 

Thanks to Pete Krainik of the CMO Club for giving me the opportunity and thanks to the CMO Club members for such an engaging session. 

This post is an attempt to step back from the pieces -- the tactics and channels -- in an effort to see the overall picture.  With your input, I'll refine this framework and issue new "releases" in the coming months.

Version 1.0:

Executives are engaged by five types of opportunities:

• Access – To otherwise hard-to-obtain experiences, relationships, or information
• Contribution - To a goal or cause that matters to them
• Insight – About their industry, organization, or profession
• Relationships - With peers, based on trust, reciprocity, and shared experience 
• Reputation – To enhance their position in their organization and industry

Thoughts?

In this month's Harvard Business Review, Geoffrey Moore (known best for his work on "Crossing the Chasm") and his colleagues at TCG-Ventures outline an approach they call "Provocation-based selling."

Provocation-based selling goes beyond the conventional consultative or solution-selling approach, whereby the vendor’s sales team seeks out current concerns in a question-and-answer dialogue with customer managers. And it differs dramatically from the most common approach still in use—product-based selling, which pushes features, functionality, and benefits, usually in a generic manner. Provocation-based selling helps customers see their competitive challenges in a new light that makes addressing specific painful problems unmistakably urgent.

They argue that provocation-based selling is particularly important in a downturn, when discretionary budgets disappear and decision-making moves higher in the organization.

They outline three steps to the approach:

To begin a provocation-based sale, you must do three things well:

• identify a problem that will resonate with a line executive in the target organization;
• develop a provocative point of view about that problem (one that links, naturally, to what your company has to offer);
• and lodge that provocation with a decision maker who can take the implied action.

Provocation-based selling is a good example of how thought leadership and sales enablement come together for what we've been calling conversation enablement. 

I do wonder if the term "provocation-based selling" is a bit risky.  It's a good headline for a Harvard Business Review article, but it could be misinterpreted by the sales team.  After all, the first meaning of provoke in the dictionary is "to incite to anger or resentment."  A bit like how the desire to become a  "trusted advisor" made companies think they had to always be giving prospects advice.

Whatever you call it, we agree on one thing.  The way to get the attention of a senior executive is to have something meaningful to say that gives them fresh insight, to engage in a conversation that shows how that insight can apply to their business, and to connect that insight to one's own product or service.  That is conversational selling at its best.

(Thanks to Margaret Malloy at Gerson Lehrman Group for making the connection to the article.)

Consider executive events as an example.  For a senior executive, it is not the out-of-pocket cost of the conference that makes the difference, even in this economy.  What matters is the time cost.

So what makes an event worth an executive's time?

According to a recent survey by the IT Services Marketing Association (ITSMA), executives are not interested in the traditional boondoggles.  Julie Schwartz writes that executives want learning and networking with peers.

Senior client executives want to learn about new ideas and new approaches to tackling different problems they are facing, and they want to be in the room with peers and subject matter experts. The specific topics chosen are important draws.

In addition, "senior executives want the opportunity to influence the strategy and direction of their providers," resulting in high ratings for advisory councils.   

Overall, the ITSMA survey reinforced the cardinal rule of executive engagement.  "The one thing senior executives don’t want is a sales pitch."

Interestingly, sales isn't the only place that the "more listening" movement is picking up steam.  It turns out that market research is listening more too.

Acccording to AdAge, Joel Rubinson, the Chief Research Officer at the Advertising Research Foundation, is leading an effort to "plot a new course for market research less dependent on conventional surveys and more focused on creating strategic insights for marketers."

At a recent ARF panel, Kim Dedeker, VP of market research for Procter & Gamble, said that P&G is moving away from "feeding the metrics monster." 

"What we've lost, because of that focus [on evaluating product concepts], is the opportunity to listen more on the front end and co-create with consumers and to sense and respond on the other side."

Listen more.  Co-Create.  Sense and Respond.

Not what you would expect from market researchers.

Daniel Pink, in his book A Whole New Mind, argues that we are shifting from a left brain (logical and analytical) to a right brain (conceptual and creative) world.   The sources of differentiation are therefore based on a new set of senses or skills. 

1. Design - Going beyond function to sensory engagement 
2. Story - Going beyond argument to narrative 
3. Symphony - Seeing the big picture beyond the detail
4. Empathy - Engaging emotion and intuition, not just logic.
5. Play - Bringing humor and light-heartedness 
6. Meaning - Imbuing products with feelings and values

The ARF panel talked about new skills for market researchers, including story telling, ethnography, and online community.

If Pink is right, and market differentiation is a result of these "right brain" senses, then market researchers are going to have to follow suit.  Joel and the ARF seem to be on the right track.

"Who is a thought leader in that space?"

I actually haven't seen many thought leaders on real conversation enablement in sales situations.  There are a number of thought leaders on conversational marketing, but they don't really address what happens one-on-one with a buyer, nor how to enable conversations that a buyer has internally with stakeholders.  Some of the sales training companies like The Complex Sale or Executive Conversation cover the conversational dimension of selling, but they tend to focus on sales skills, not what needs to happen to enable the conversation.  Joe Pulizzi and New Barrett's work on content marketing is relevant, since you need good content to spark a good conversation.  John Aiello at SAVO is also good on the platforms that are required to deliver the content.

"Where can I find an approach for conversation enablement that works?"

Unfortunately, I don't think there is a systematic approach yet for conversation enablement.  Or at least I haven't found one.  I think one of our companies, Truman Company, knows as much about it as anyone, but it isn't yet systematized.  Perhaps we should start a stub on Wikipedia?

"Are we talking wikinomics and opening up of enterprise social networks to our customers to get the voice of the customer in our organization?"

I think this could be considered in a broader definition of conversation enablement.  In some sense, even the scripts used in call centers could be considered conversation enablement -- whatever helps employees hold productive conversations with customers and buyers.

"Or are we talking about our internal sales enablement application having more web2.0 components and providing the sales force with more food for thought for better conversations?"

This is where my interest has been:  in B2B settings, enabling better conversations among sales people about how to sell, enabling conversation among customers, and enabling better conversations by sales people with customers.

"Should the conversation with the customer happen online more often and face to face less often to leverage the collective conversation skills of more of my employees?"

It depends on the level of the customer in their organization.  As you move up into the managerial and executive ranks, you need to have a much greater focus on face-to-face.

"Or are we looking for more dynamic client presentations that can be generated customized by audience, industry vertical, type of meeting, country, etc...?"

This is necessary but not sufficient.  And it leads to my main point.  A conversation is not a presentation, no matter how customized it might be.  A presentation can help to provide context and be a catalyst for a conversation.  But it is not a conversation.  In a presentation, you know where you are going.  In a conversation, you don't.  Presentations are about delivery.  Conversations are about discovery.

We are having a conversation about conversation enablement because I don't know the answers.  If I did, I could just give a presentation.  But for now, we'll need to discover the answer together in the context of a conversation.

We usually think of advisory councils in a corporate setting, but they apply to public policy as well.

President Obama set up a group of advisory councils to advise the transition team on the policies that should be enacted when the President took office.

The goal of these Policy Working Groups was to "develop the priority policy proposals and plans from the Obama Campaign for action during the Obama-Biden Administration."

There were seven groups:

• Economy
• Education
• Energy & Environment
• Health Care
• Immigration
• National Security
• Technology, Innovation & Government Reform (TIGR)

Irving Wladawsky Berger wrote about his experience on the TIGR group:

"My team members represented a variety of experience in technology, public policy, business and all levels of government - federal, state and local. Some of us were external advisors, while others had taken leaves of absence from their day jobs and were working full time in the transition.

"We had frequent meetings, some physical, many virtual. We were constantly in touch with each other over e-mail.  We collaborated in writing quite a number of documents. We had excellent discussions on a variety of topics. After a while, our work focused on a specific set of initiatives and concrete recommendations.  These were used to put together an internal briefing book that will hopefully help the appropriate officials in the new administration get up and running quickly once they are appointed and take office."

There is also a good video about the work of the TIGR team produced by the transition team.

The policy working groups have a number of lessons.  First, the ability of advisory councils to engage senior leaders in productive collaboration.  Second, the applicability of advisory councils to public policy settins.   And third, a potential model for government relations and a way for corporations to raise their profile and influence the public agenda in an era of transparency and responsibility.