Each office also has its unique culture. Showing up in a suit to a startup might get you jeered at and booted out, while showing up in a Hawaiian shirt might get you the order!

We all hear the term “KYC” (know your customer). To truly get to know your customers, you must meet with different segments or divisions of the business and “ride-along” as they carry out their daily tasks. Sit with marketing, sit with sales, sit with customer service, sit with finance, sit with HR, and sit with IT if they’ll let you. Know their roles and pain points so well that when you meet with the executive team later that day, they’ll be inclined to offer you a job with them.

Bringing an outside perspective to the day-to-day operations of your customer’s business can lead to refreshing and valuable insights. Often, a meeting in which you come ready to share what you’ve gleaned from firsthand interactions with front-line employees will result in amazing and lively dialogue with senior management. This is how you provide real value to an executive and earn a seat at the table.

Just as you’re focused on keeping your customers happy, so too are your customers worried about keeping their customers satisfied. As a salesperson, you’ll gain valuable insights by reaching out to your customers’ customers to learn how that company is perceived, how it interfaces with its own customers, and where potential pain points might be.

Working with a magazine company? Purchase a subscription and be genuinely curious and interested in why a certain issue features certain stories. If you’re working with a consumer tech company, download and use their app so you can ask pointed questions around its functionality and offer some tangible consumer feedback. (Almost everyone can use some free focus-group advice.)

As a part of aligning and getting a seat at the table with the C-level, anytime I visit a CEO, I always bring a copy of Marc Benioff’s Behind the Cloud with a handwritten note indicating why I think they would enjoy reading the book, and how Salesforce once went through the same startup pains they are experiencing. This is always a huge rapport -builder. Find the thing that’s meaningful for you. It makes a difference.

In summary, the key to selling to small businesses is to become an informed and trusted partner, not an assumptive vendor. Offer tangible value to a customer, and in turn, you will earn the right to do business with them.

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