Oil and Gas decision makers, how do you get in front of them? When I got my start 25 years ago in this industry, they were oil and gas decision makers. They were individuals that had a budget, that could write a PO or check and buy from you. And so, your goal back then was to get to know them, form a relationship, show value and show how you could help them solve problems. And eventually they would buy from you.
Decision Making Teams are the Norm
Well, the oil and gas companies realized rather quickly that having single decision makers wasn’t good for their business. Just because Frank plays golf with a sales guy doesn’t mean Frank should be buying from the sales guy. And so now they have decision making teams, both formal and informal. That formal decision-making team is what you run into when you go to do a demo, or if you get called in for an RFP or for sales meeting, the people in that room are the official decision-making team, but there’s also an unofficial or informal part of that.
There are other people in the organization that these people depend upon to make the right buying decisions. Well, how do you get to know who’s the formal decision makers, and the informal decision-making team? It’s easy. You ask. So, when you get pulled in, the first thing you do is ask if you can meet the decision-making team, the reason you want to meet them is to interview them, to make sure you understand all components, all aspects of a problem they’re trying to solve. Nobody will ever tell you no to that.
As far as the informal decision-making team goes, that’s simple as well. You ask the decision-making team who in their organization helps them make the buying decisions, and they will introduce you to the informal decision-making team. It’s a lot to manage. It’s a lot of work, but this way you get to understand all aspects of the problem who are the players, who has the budget, and that’s how you close the deal.
Oil and Gas Decision Makers. Getting in front of Executives
Now let’s go back to getting in front of oil and gas executives. That’s really hard in 2021. It’s never been easy, but because everything had been through past couple of years, it’s hard. Executives are busy, they’re running short of staff, their time is super valuable, and they don’t have time to goof off with salespeople. Like they used to, they don’t have time to play golf, go to the shooting range, go out to dinner, all that sort of stuff.
So how do you get in front of oil and gas decision makers? Well, there’s a couple of ways. One is fine out what’s going on in their organization and volunteer. And once again, I’m not trying to have you be salesy and sleazy, this needs to be honest and legit, when you feel you’re doing the right thing. But if you go volunteer for these companies, with the charities that they support, you will naturally meet oil and gas executives, and your work and your time goes back to help the planet, right? 
Great Way to Meet Oil and Gas Decision Makers
So that’s a fantastic way to meet executives. The other way is using social media and you can do targeted campaigns, especially on LinkedIn. And if you do your job right, and you provide value up front, you can form online relationships with executives. It takes some time. Now there’s a third way that we use at modalpoint that we think works really well. It’s called an executive round table.
So, imagine that you have some technology product you’re trying to sell, and you’d like to talk to every CIO in the oil and gas industry at one time. That sounds impossible, right? No, it’s not that hard. What do you have to do is figure out exactly the role or title, in this case we’re talking CIO that you want in that room. You want to invite 8 to 12 maxes of them to an intimate event.
Sales Just Naturally Follow
Typically, it’s a genuinely nice dinner. And then you, as a salesperson, bring your team in. And instead of trying to pitch yourself, now you educate these Oil and Gas Decision makers. You literally spend your time and money not selling anything but talking about the problem that they have. Talk about the solutions, how people solved it in the past, how people are solving it right now, including your competitors and how your company helps solve this problem.
The way you market this is you reach out to these executives, once you identify the title, and tell them you have an educational event that is exclusive, only a handful of people will be invited. You’re one of them and it’s free. They will sign up. Now, if you need help with that, modalpoint does this all the time. It’s great. When we get a small group of the right people in a room with our client’s sales team, sales just naturally follow. So hopefully this helped. We will see you next time.