Sales training is good, but a business strategy focused on increasing a sales prospect's Margins and Revenues is better. Mr. Kuta outlines a Business Strategy focused to getting everyone in your organization that touches a prospective customer thinking like the CEO of that prospect company. What actually makes you a successful sales person to a company as opposed to a failure can often be difficult to define. The most important thing is to be attuned with what drives the CEO. That will drive strategy in his company, and if you can align your product or service with what Kuta refers to as ?Profit Strategies,? then that will also drive your sales.



?Think Like a CEO? gives you tools that you can use to understand these Profit Strategies. For example, one metric that Wall St. (and the company's bankers) watch carefully is the movement in Working Capital. When this is falling, it can be a matter of real concern. In order to get a better idea of what the real working capital is, instead of just using the textbook definition of assets minus liabilities, try also taking out cash. That leaves you with a working capital of assets minus liabilities minus cash. Of course how much cash a company has on hand is a financial decision. Also, you might think that fixed assets are in plant and equipment, but it can be any number of other things including health obligations and pensions. In our day and age, this is one of the things that Wall St. first wants to cut. So, you can have a company with long-term debt, but is it guns or butter?

One of the innovative ways that Kuta's book ?Think Like a C.E.O.? outlines is what he calls, ?sell through.? Since your prospective customer's C-Level executives are concerned about their suppliers, you can quickly and simply gather some information on them and use that information in your sales cycle. For example, if you are calling on a C- Level contact within McDATA you will gain a great deal of credibility and an edge in positioning if you discuss the Profit Strategies that EMC, IBM and Hitachi Data Systems - their customers - are pursuing.

Mr. Kuta's book can be particularly important if the sales team is not, well, a born salesperson. Listen to what a senior executive of a major engineering company, Brandon Engineering says about how these methods have worked.

?As an engineer,? says Brandon, Brandon Engineering's president, ?I thought a great product would sell itself. We built a better mousetrap, but the world still beat a path to our competitor. The strategy and sales concepts in Think Like a CEO allow us to make it clear why our prospects need our mousetrap.?

A company's business does not occur in isolation. Kuta addresses this in his book in the chapter on how to analyze the industry your prospective company is in. You have to look over their industry and how they relate to and compare to other companies in their industry. This will allow you to try to understand the possible challenges that the executive is facing. It is important to look beyond the current operating challenges and try to broaden the scope of what the executive could be facing. Try to envision what the strategies the CEO is taking. Once you have identified the specific industry, you want to understand the competitors that the division faces in that industry. The information that you can gather from publicly traded companies allows you to map several competitors to investigate. Get this book and ?Learn How to Think Like a CEO.?

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You finally got the word. The CEO's secretary called you and left a message on your voice mail giving you two dates and times when you can meet with him. You pitch has finally gotten you in the door, and now you have to produce. What comes next?

If your sales team is flipping slides in front of your prospects senior level managers, you are losing opportunities. Your competitors have someone working and focused on the C-Level in your accounts, and unless you can compete ? and differentiate ? you run the risk of losing market share. Mark Kuta's Wall St. Methodology? will transform the way your sales team approaches their sales, and when they are dealing with senior level executives, they'd better be able to align your product to the strategies that the CEO is pursuing. The CEOs know that a lot of their information is public in their EDGAR report, on the website of the SEC, sec.gov, and that Wall St. is looking at it. So, of course that is one the things you better look at, and know how to understand too. One of IBM's top sales executives interviewed for this article found this to be true.

Sales teams are always being told that that to sell to the CEO you have to become a trusted advisor,? says Justin Doster. ? gives you the roadmap to become that trusted advisor.?

Mark Kuta's book will really get you going to tackle your sales challenge. Let's say you are selling software that will help manufacturers perform better. With a few ?back of the napkin? points, you will be better prepared to sell. You might first look at how fast your prospect is turning over its inventory. Next, you might look at what Kuta calls the ?Fast Five? metrics: asset structure, net working capital, long term debt, goodwill assets and the company's leverage factor. From there the book will outline how to figure out the company's Profit Strategies, and then you can align your value proposition to them. That's the way the book breaks down sales thinking into do-able steps.

Let's face it; there will be times when you are not going to generally be dealing with the leading executive. addresses this too, as it will let you sell to a consistent message that everyone within your organization is hearing from their CEO. It's almost as if you were privy to the internal email updates that the CEO is sending out. Imagine if you had those emails in your tool bag!

Kuta's book also gives solid tools to salespeople who sell into smaller or privately held companies. He has some methods that he teaches that will allow you to talk to your prospect as an equal. So, how do you get the information on a private company? Well, as they say in the industry, you'll have to buy the book for that!

So, whether dealing with a C-Level Executive or someone else in his organization, you will be selling to that message that they have been hearing. If you can do this, you will be successful, and as Kuta says in his book, ??eat steak, not bologna.?