SPECIAL REPORT VARIABLE DATA PRINTING -- Do You Know VITO?
If your sales force is focused on selling to print buyers, they are aiming too low on the corporate totem pole. That is the basic message Anthony Parinello, of VITO Selling, will stress as keynote speaker at the PIA/GATF Personalization Conference November 7 in Phoenix.
Parinello started his selling career with Hewlett-Packard as a computer systems salesperson. During his time with HP, Parinello was the recipient of many sales awards. He was successful then by creating what he teaches today.
In 1995, Parinello coined the phrase VITO, for Very Important Top Officer, and wrote his first of six best-selling books, "Selling to VITO."
More than one million books later, San Diego-based Parinello has trained 1.5 million salespeople including employees at 65 of the Fortune 100 companies, and given close to 1,800 speeches. The focus? How to get appointments with and sell to difficult-to-reach company CEOs, presidents and owners—executives that he calls VITO (the Very Important Top Officer).
"I speak about the precise tactics necessary to initiate your sales process with the approver of your sale—which is not the decision maker—it's the VITO," Parinello explains.
What Parinello teaches is that there is a major difference between the approver and the decision maker. According to Parinello, the print buyer is not the decision maker or the approver. They are the recommender or influencer. The print buyer only makes a recommendation or gives an opinion to the decision maker who then must get VITO's approval.
"My gig is to help salespeople get away from the print buyer," Parinello declares. "You are wasting time with these people. And you are wasting time with the decision maker until you get to the approver and find out if they will do business with you."
So Parinello suggests picking up the phone or meeting with the president, CEO or owner of every company in your territory with which you want to do business. He explains how to do that in an appropriate way, admitting that it is a difficult—but not impossible—task.
"I am a tactician, not a strategist," Parinello notes. "So you are not going to hear all the reasons you may want to do this or, how important it is to sell to VITO. Everybody knows why you have to do it. You lose deals after you jump through all the hoops because you are talking to people who call themselves decision makers but, at the end of the day, they aren't deciding on anything."
So attendees can plan on learning the pure tactics—focusing on the top person no matter the size of the company. It does not matter if it is IBM or Joe's Heating & Air Conditioning, he councils.
"You can try to sell to a print buyer," Parinello dares. "They hate salespeople. Our nature and approach can and will irritate print buyers."
To prove this fact, Parinello suggests looking at the business card that a salesperson is carrying around. Typically, it does not say salesperson, he promises. It says something along the lines of account executive.
About 85 percent of VITOs were once salespeople, Parinello estimates, while the other 15 percent know the importance of salespersons.
"So, when you meet VITO, don't hide the fact that you're a salesperson," he suggests.
In his session, Parinello will teach salespeople to show up on a VITO's doorstep being themselves.
"But you don't show up on a print buyer's doorstep being yourself because, if you did, they would call you a slimeball sales rep and kick you out the door," he says with a laugh. "So our job as VITO sellers is to get to VITO and articulate to that person—in a way they can understand—ideas that will help them to over achieve one or more of their strategic initiatives."
So, if printers coming to this conference are spending too much time trying to sell to people who don't make the final buying decisions, then Parinello's session is a "must see."
—Chris Bauer
