Pitching to a CEO takes a certain approach and so many people still get it wrong.  Particularly if you haven’t met the individual, you need to take a structured approach, as they may be one of a number of different personality styles.

Remember an executive generally has competing demands on their time, a short attention span (haven’t we all), a passion for their people,  a brain full of ideas and competing priorities, a desire to make a difference.

Here’s 10 top tips to enhance your chances of success and impact when presenting to a CEO in a business pitch.

1. Send as much information beforehand.  Establish credentials before hand to save time in the meeting and a management summary of the key outcomes you need for the meeting.
2. Look them up on Linkedin.  Find out a little about them and see what you can learn about their history.  If they’ve come through a twenty year career at IBM, then approach them in a highly structured way.
3. Get to the point quickly.  CEO’s have a million and one things on their mind and they hate waffle.
4. Work to an agenda.  It gateposts where you are and keeps things firmly on track.
5. Ask for commitments to action.  CEO’s are often action driven and want to make intervention, don’t be afraid to ask when you need something done, they have the power and resources.
6. Follow up quickly.  Don’t leave it.  Get followed up and stay front of mind.  If things might take a little longer for known reasons, ensure that you still drop a regular note with progress.
7. Remember that the direct reports to the CEO will not want to be shown up.  Do a pre-briefing with them as to your approach and ask for any pitfalls/commentary in advance.
8. No surprises.  If you have a “drop the bomb” moment in your presentation, then that can he high risk and de-rail your meeting.  Grease the skids with any key issues to allow the CEO to gather all the information they need pre-meeting.
9. Get to know their assistant.  Be courteous to the person who works most closely with them.  If you have an assistant, get them to connect peer to peer with their opposite number on Linkedin.  It’s amazing what you can achieve that others may not be able to by having an assistant on your side.
10. Be on the metrics and know what strategic objectives the CEO is working to.  If it’s not relevant and aligned, well costed and with clear outcomes, you wont be impactful.

I recently completed a short interview for Sales website, Salestarget.co.uk, which you can read here (note that I’ve been photographed in Starbucks – those that know me won’t be surprised).

You forget just how much you’ve done sometimes, the experiences you’ve had, the tips and tricks you’ve picked up, people that have passed through the business, how it all started.

Starting out, twenty odd years ago, selling was a different game.  For me, it was a Vauxhall Cavalier, a bag of 10ps, a wallet with the business cards of all my key customers in and a lot of miles listening to the radio.  Relationships really mattered and much more was done by phone and visits, than e-mails and long arm support.

I’ve previously blogged about something I call “Real-actionships” which is how business still does ultimately rely on relationships, human to human contact.  Social media channels allow you to stay front of mind more, no doubt about that, but to win business, relationships still matter.  See this blogpost about Social2facial too.

At a few talks recently, I’ve found myself using the term “grid” or “matrix” selling more and more.  As organisations become flatter and more democratic rather than autocratic, it isn’t always easy to identify the key decision maker anymore (used to be known as “the man”).  Selling business to business, this means that you have to work harder to cover the bases or influence people who may be involved in the decision making process.

I use the term “matrix” selling to describe the process I feel you need to go through to win business.  That is to always consider colleagues one up, one below and on either side of the person you are trying to influence.  The workplace can be so political, it’s very important that you understand if their is a disturbance in your matrix (nicked that from the very excellent 1999 film of the same title), so to speak.  Of course, this can differ culture by culture, however for a UK audience, this is becoming more and more of a feature of business life. 

When you identify people within the matrix, it’s then critical that you ask the right questions of them, I recently wrote a blogpost on a similar issue here.   The main point is that you are trying to gather as much intelligence about the potential purchase to ensure that you can overcome all potential objections.  This also means you retain the integrity of your matrix and it should hold firm, even if there is one person within it that may not agree with your potential route (although this should have been overcome in the objection handling phase, but not everyone is always won over).

Selling is about people, solutions and business cases.  By covering your bases properly, you should be able to satisfy any buyer that you’ve done your due diligence on their business to make you the only choice for them.

I haven’t taken a pill which has made me think of 1970′s TV shows, I’m talking about how you create opportunity for yourself.  So many people let opportunities pass them by, if only they could be a bit more attentive or a bit braver or ask more questions, wonderful things might happen.

It isn’t always obvious, nor can it be spotted on your first meeting with someone, however the more people you do connect with and make an effort with, the more doors can open for you.  The trick to generating opportunities is to ask good questions, listen attentively to the answers and then ask more questions and listen again.  Questions I like are: -

1. What is the biggest issue or challenge facing your business and industry right now?
2. What is the biggest problem on your desk right now?
3. Tell me about the stepping stones you need to take to reach your goals?

As you can see, not clever or difficult. All open questions, all with an ability for you to quickly hear the pain points of the individual you’re talking with and all with an ability to ask further questions dependent on the responses.  The quality of your further questions, depends on how hard you listen.  It’s surprising how many people don’t “actively listen”, I did a short blog post on this which you can see here.

Ultimately, the brightness of your entrepreneurial fire will depend on how many embers you have glowing at any particular time (that one’s for you Moneeb).  Opportunity comes if you are alert, out, meeting people, thinking and curious of others.  If you are stuck in your office, don’t go anywhere, stand in a room with a half-empty glass or just collect business cards at events, then opportunity won’t knock as hard or as often for you, as some others.  Be the COE (Chief Opportunity Engineer) of your business, not the CEO, change your mindset and turbo-charge your efforts.