Let’s face it, when you are selling another company software or mechanical equipment, you are not going to generally be dealing with the leading executive, especially in a company of over 500 employees. Mark Kuta’s book, "Think Like a CEO" gives you a good idea how to deal with a C-Level Executive from the standpoint of the strategy of the entire company, as if you knew what the CEO was thinking. As described in the book there is a lot of material out on the information highway on what companies are doing. If you want to eat steak and not bologna, you better be able to study this material and apply it to your sales practice.

. First let’s look at how fast a company that you are trying to sell to is turning over its inventory. The most accurate way to find the answer for inventory turns is to add the inventory values from the last four quarters, divide by four, and use this as your inventory number. You would then divide the inventory into the COGS, the Cost of Goods Sold. That gives you an idea of how much inventory passed through versus the cost of the goods. Next, let’s look at the fast five balance sheet metrics, asset structure, net working capital, long term debt, goodwill and intangible assets and the company’s leverage factor.

The asset structure tells us what assets the business needs – or is using – to operate. Working capital is the “grease that keeps the wheels of the organization turning.”
Long-term debt will show us how the company is utilizing long-term debt to finance its objectives, and give us an idea about the risk profile of its CEO. An industry that requires heavy investment in fixed assets to generate sales will have a greater need for long-term debt. The amount of goodwill and intangible assets will show what growth strategies the company is following. If the goodwill account does not show much growth year over, and the company is growing sales, then we can draw some conclusions that the company is meeting its internal growth quotas, or it is acquiring companies that are valuable. The leverage factor is another way to check financial risk. This tells you how much of the company is owned by the shareholders versus the creditors. Too much long-term debt can be dangerous, while too little may indicate that little or any investment is going on in the company. In today’s acquisition happy world, some large companies are too busy accumulating trophies and companies, to invest in their production.

Always make note of revenue per employee; gross margin; and asset turn over. If you know these, you can then quickly compare your prospects efficiency to their competitors, and draw conclusions as to industry metrics. You can use this knowledge with private companies, or as a line of questioning on a sales call. The more you know about the companies that you sell to, the more chance you have of "Think Like a CEO", and making the sale. In effect, you are helping the C-level executive that you are talking to think like a CEO too.