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.

Ever heard that old cliche “leading is like being a conductor of an orchestra?”  Well, I’m hear to tell you it it is.  How do I know?  On Monday night this week I was fortunate enough to sit next to Internationally renowned conductor – Sir Mark Elder CBE.

Elder (64), musical director at the Halle Orchestra in Manchester, candidly answered some questions I had about the old adage of comparing a conductor to a leader of a business.  Elder is really charasmatic, intense, highly articulate and one of those people you wish you got sat next to over dinner, luckily I did!

He was able to draw so many parallels to business, he really ought to get on the speaking circuit!  However, this man is about “personal and artistic chemistry” and striving for new levels of excellence from the orchestra he leads and in his own ability to conduct music.  There was so much to capture, I didn’t get everything, however here are some of the nuggets that I managed to scribble down: -

• His first big leadership challenge came in 1979 when he had to wrestle an orchestra to his way of thinking.  At the time he was a new fledging conductor and respect had to be earned.  He was home grown within the orchestra and quickly begain to tackle the key issues of underperforming players.  He faced the brutal truth quickly that to be excellent, he needed excellence from everyone.  After a long period of working with resistant individuals he had his “if you can’t change the people, change the people” moment, he summarily issued notice to those underperforming players.  For this step, Private Eye magazine described him as “Mark the knife.”  Years later, that tough decision paid him a huge dividend as he was able to replace them with high performing players.
  
• He learns the name of all the major players in the orchestra before conducting them.  Even if hosting an orchestra for one night, he ensures that he knows who the key people are and addressed them by name.  This ensures that he wins the orchestra over quickly to work with him, realising that the performance relies on “feeling, hearing and understanding.”  A connected orchestra, with mutual respect, play better.
  
• He describes himself as a “stayer”.   In all his conducting positions over the years, he has always had a big picture in his head and articulated that vision to the orchestra.  Communication of that vision ensures that the orchestra never remains stale and continues to pursue the big picture, not just the one off performance.
• Orchestras conventions can be different from country to country.   Conducting an orchestra in America, is different to Italy, is different to Japan, is different to the UK.  Elder recognised he has to “flex” his style for each orchestra to get the most out of them, the same way leaders in business should do with their teams.
• A chain of command is important to get the right results.  The orchestra is broken down into sections, each section leader is responsible for it and the players within it.  Elder communicates with those section leaders if he needs improvement, they then get the performance from their players.  This chain of command ensures clarity of communication and feedback.
  
• The importance of courage.  Elder came back to this word time and time again.  He needed courage to dismiss the underperforming players at the start of his career, courage to take on new pieces of music and cites courage of your convictions.  Leadership is exactly the same, it takes courage to make big decisions, sometimes in the face of adversity.
• Accepting responsibility for your own errors.  I asked Elder whether someone pulls him up when he makes a mistake?  He was quick to answer, “If I know I’ve made a mistake, I immediately accept responsibility for it.”  The hallmark of any great leaders is to have humility, apologising and admitting your mistakes builds empathy with others.  Leadership isn’t about being perfect, it’s about being you, with all your vulnerabilities displayed.
• Leading the orchestra isn’t about being a robotic conductor, it’s about “the balance between brain and heart.”  Elder has real panache.  You could tell that when he talked, always choosing words carefully and answering questions with a real honesty.  You warmed to him immediately as he articulately re-told humourous stories, kept eye contact – like a tractor beam and articulated his vision for the Halle orchestra, which he leads.  There’s an important lesson there, which is to be the real you in your life.  To show compassion, care and empathy in the workplace alongside all the other excellent technical capabilities you have.

I could have talked to Sir Mark Elder all night, he’s such an interesting character.  Witty, charming, super-intelligent and statesmanlike.  Back to my earlier point, he’s make a fantastic conference speaker as I’m sure he’d conduct a room with the same passion and results that he conducts an orchestra.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery or so the saying goes.  This gave me a few laughs on a short break to Tenerife this weekend when I came across the following: -

1. A Michael Buble tribute act called “Michael Bubble”
2. A restaurant called “Gordon Ramsey’s” offering a three course dinner for €8,95 – their logo was exactly the same as the famous chef – “Gordon Ramsay.”  I did look twice thinking I was about to have the cheapest fine dining meal ever!
3. A Ghanaian looky looky seller (fake watches etc) wearing a Tesco “Here to Help” T-Shirt and badge – he even had Tesco carrier bags if a customer made a purchase!

There is so much talk about innovation today, that it’s easy to forget that imitating or copying a product and trying to improve it is also a tried and tested way of starting a business.

Now, I’m not suggesting that you rip off a major brand owners trademark – you’ll get into serious trouble for that – however significant markets exist for commodity products, where operationally efficient businesses can drum up significant revenues just by doing something better or introducing a complementary product into an existing customer base.

It’s widely acknowledged that in the seventies and eighties that many of the Japanese consumer electronic brands, took existing technology and bettered it.  They reverse engineered products, found ways to either improve them of their manufacturing processes and then launched them in the market, often with another 100 flashing LED lights for full effect!

Many of those brands are now household names – Sony being a great example of a brand that did it well and then went on to bigger and better things, like the Sony Walkman.

So if you’re thinking to try and find ways to expand your business, it doesn’t need to always come as a result of an innovation.  Five ways to further increase revenues could be: -

1. Pick a feature that is the current big thing in the market and see how you could better or improve it (subject to patent).
2. Establish other products that your customers might already sell, that you may be able to supply (always a good one if your customer wants supplier consolidation).
3. Consider how technology you might have developed could be used for other things.  Dyson do this really well, think how they have introduced hand-dryers and vacuum cleaners using their powerful motor technology.
4. See how your competitors might be deriving revenues from complimentary goods and services that you might be able to offer as up-sells or cross-sells.  Classic example for TV’s would be HD cables and cabinets.
5. Consider adjacent marketplaces to your current offering and see if you could move sideways into an adjacent market, rather than trying to do something brand new in a market you may not have expertise in.

Innovation doesn’t always have to be the next big thing, the most radical idea or a game changer.  Small improvements plus complementary products can also increase your capacity to do more business.

This week saw me click over three years as a user on the Twitter platform,  how time flies.  It’s become part of my everyday business life and an essential part of my personal growth and network development.

This blogpost is not going to be one of those “reasons to be on Twitter” blogs, hopefully the world is over that one.  I do however want to share some outcomes, experiences and learnings that have come to bear over the last three years to encourage others: -

Early Days (Followers 0).

• A bit random  Not really knowing how best to use the platform.
• Not having a genre.  Tweeting all sorts, business and personal.
• Following anyone that would follow me back.  No particular selection process.
• Bit too focused on numbers of followers and how to acquire more.  A zero sum game.
• Used the basic web interface.  Found it frustrating and missed so much good content.
• Exchanged messages with a lot of people that I knew who had early adopted it – it meant I got to know a few people better.
• Sent too many Tweets.  Didn’t realise that if you “machine gun” tweets out, it adds nothing.

Mid Term (Followers around 1,500)

• Switched to Tweetdeck –  it all made a lot more sense.
• Set up search columns.  Realised the tool is much more powerful than just following people/follow backs and could be used as a live “google search” on the terms I wanted.
• Saw the potential for personal learning (following great people and their insights), following journalists (trends) to see what is new in technology.
• Realised that it’s better to create a genre for my account.  Business, Leadership, Innovation, Environment, Sales, Marketing, Trends,  Social Media.  Keep it focused on those elements, less about me, more about them.
• Accepted that followers is about engagement and influence.  People will come and go as there tastes/jobs/lives change.  Follower numbers are fluid, as I follow/unfollow, people will follow/unfollow me.
• Realised it could be used to effectively drive traffic to websites and blogs –  providing the content has been filtered, is of good quality and enriches your audience.  My blogposts are my own unique thoughts, not content from others.  The more people see it and agree with it, the more likely it is they’ll stick with you.
• Started unfollowing people.  Realised that there is no benefit to having Twitter followers if you have nothing in common with them or  never interact with them.  Otherwise, they are just meaningless numbers.  Actively began to disengage with some followers, happy that my follower numbers may reduce – they didn’t, they’ve continued to grow.

Now (Followers around 3,600)

• No focus on followers – just on good content to share.  Review everyone that follows me to see if I can learn anything from them.  I don’t target followers, have a number in my head or see it as any kind of popularity KPI.
• Still a big focus on personal learning -  Seeing what’s hot, new, changing.  Using that to develop insight for personal development or company direction.
• Supporting Corporate and Personal Reputation.  Being accessible as a business leader within a large multi-national brings opportunities to our door first.  Great outcome as you can have first refusal on exciting initiatives.
• Filtering.  Using search columns and interesting people to see great stuff and share it.  I don’t send anything out unless I have personally read it and see it of value.
• Network Development.  Twitter is my trawler net of contacts to meet in person, then add to my Linkedin network.  My ratio of Twitter followers to Linkedin network is around 6:1 and continues to grow.  That’s where I can distinguish who is an “associate” relationship, rather than someone I consider to be of longer-term value.
• To develop insight around individuals or businesses.  To start/develop conversations with people to assist in the development of intelligence for business development purposes or opportunity engineering.
• To stay in contact with people in my wider network and underpin relationships.  A chance meeting becomes much more meaningful when you can refer to something that has recently happended to the third party.  I use filter columns in Tweetdeck to track important people, like a “live” electronic little black book.
• Housekeeping.  It’s important to regularly review who has gone inactive, what your last 10 Tweets say about you if someone looks at your feed (delete stuff if you think it stepped outside your genre), thank people for RT’s and mentions, review the profiles of people that follow you to ensure that they fit your desired  intention for your Twitter feed and – more importantly – keep the feed going with some regularity and frequency.

Business relies upon ideas.  Creativity leads to innovation, innovation leads to new products and services, new products and services lead to temporary monopolies, temporary monopolies lead to market demand and ultimately profits.  However, time pressures mean we are spending less time thinking and more time doing in today’s “must make every moment count by doing something” world.  Here is a short presentation outlining some reasons why you should spend some more time thinking, five frameworks for creative thinking or problem solving and some tips to get you going.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been increasing the frequency of public speaking that I do as part of our overall brand reputation strategy.  Being seen as a person of influence in your sector, provides substantial benefits to your brand and puts you significantly higher up the consideration chain of your target audience.  It reaches out further and deeper than any advert you can ever place.

This week I hosted the annual Shared Services Forum UK conference in Harrogate.  Bringing together around forty really large private and public sector organisations to share examples of excellence, the names of businesses attending was like a who’s who of top flight companies.  There was a brilliant line up of keynote speakers during the day, including Molly Harvey, Adrian Webster and David Yeoman , each delivering different takes on leadership, motivating others and personal development. I was able to spend time with each of them during the prior evening dinner and during the day to talk about what makes them tick.

The one common characteristic of the three speakers is that they all continue to develop themselves, in order to develop others.  They sat in on the keynotes of the other speakers, observing, taking notes and learning.  They all possess a hunger to raise their game, refine, test, learn and be their best.

It was fascinating to see the contrast in styles and engagement between the three speakers.  Harvey, with a soft Irish accent, delivered some powerful content which had the audience listening intently. Webster, turning energy up and down in explosive stage fits of a sparky performance and Glaswegian Yeoman, engaging the audience and challenging people with his forthright views on use of words and behaviour.  He managed to get everyone up and spontaneously clapping to the Gypsy Kings, cleverly anchoring a moment where we had all just let go of tension by blowing our negative thoughts into a balloon.

Observing the audience, it’s amazing how people love to be inspired by others and catch the wind of enthusiasm of clever thoughts, connectedness and potential for change.  Molly Harvey made a great point during her keynote about “watch who you spend your time with.”  What she meant was, you have to spend your time with people who have the mindset that you aspire to, have or are developing in order for you to be challenged and grow.  If you have a think about the five people you spend the bulk of your time with, what does that say about how you are influenced?

That’s why it’s important to get out of the office, meet new people, discuss, debate and network.  To listen to others, grow, share and challenge yourself.  I learned a huge amount just being in the presence of others, I’d encourage you too.  Consider it an investment, not a cost.  Invest in a day, don’t justify a day.  Excellent people do.

  I posted back in February about something called Cognitive Distortions.  Basically, those pre-programmed reactions formed from previous experiences, which drive our future reactions to situations.  If you’re aware of them, you can do something about them, by re-framing the way you see/digest or internalise things.

I was reminded of how diferently we all see the world just recently whilst doing some reviews.  Taking a look back at some personality profiles that I’d had done on some key individuals showed how differently people communicate, process information and think.  Just because I can think and talk at the same time, it doesn’t mean somebody else can.  It makes them no better or worse than me, we just do things differently.

A great example of this can be seen in brainstorming sessions.  If you put a roomful of people together, don’t be surprised if some people look they are generating far more ideas than some others, it’s just how they’re wired.  Other people in the room can generate those same valid ideas, but may need a little longer, or pre-notice, or a couple additional days after to process and think.  Until you start to appreciate such matters, you may not get the full potential of your team, assuming that one communication style fits all – it doesn’t.

We use the Meyers-Briggs profiling system, of which there are sixteen characteristic profile types.  What’s amazing when you ask your team to do it, is that you get that “aha” moment, when you begin to understand why some people are highly organised, some disorganised.  Some introvert, some extrovert, some ideas people, some reflectors.  The bottom line is that there is a huge variety of personalities out there, some more common than others, and all subject to change based upon personal circumstances (personal pressure etc).

The lesson is this, you can’t to use the same style with everyone to get the same outcomes.  If you can adapt your style, by having a deeper understanding of your own personal style and the style of others, it can lead to really meaningful interactions across your team.  If you want to understand more about how you can use profiling to enhance performance, give Impact Consulting Psychologists a shout, I’ve worked with them for years and would thoroughly recommend their approach.

Last week I sat on a panel in Manchester, aimed at SME’s discussing technology.  Representing the views not only of a hardware manufacturer, but also as a Director of a large business who uses technology to gain competitive advantage.  Any conference examining tech needs to cover the advantages of cloud computing.

The main triggers for IT upgrades in SME’s tend to be the following: -

1. They are moving.
2. They are a new business.
3. They are growing.
4. They have an urgent need to repair something that is broken (what we call a “distressed purchase”).

In my view, businesses that are new or moving (1 or 2) are much more likely to adopt a higher level of cloud services into their business than those that are growing or repairing (3 or 4).  Once a business is established, in a premises and focussed on growing, it becomes all about adding or growing to the existing IT set-up – evolution, rather than revolution.

One of the primary reasons that large enterprises, who have the resources to look at such things, are considering cloud computing is business agility and competitive advantage.  It means less people plumbing technology, less software development, server maintenance and support – in fact there’s a lot to be said for it.

The number one consideration continues to be security, closely followed by available network speed for access.  It’s a big job to move away from a network infrastructure, however many large enterprises are developing plans towards virtual private clouds.

A new start can doesn’t need a server, applications,  e-mail server, CRM system or finance system, they can rent all these services in the cloud.  They can benefit from the latest software developments, don’t have to worry about capital expenditure for hardware and can focus on what matters most for their new business – sales, marketing and growing like crazy.

They, potentially may benefit from competitive advantage over more established SME’s who may stick with what they’ve got, preferring to not change for reasons of business continuity.  Those that continually refine what they use, how they use it and how they can review their working practices will continually benefit from these new services.

They may well come down to earth with a bump as the future is predicted to be smartphone/tablet based and the concept of “BYOD” (bring your own device) is already being investigated by major CIO’s as part of their future technology policies.

The lesson is this.  It’s worth reviewing what you do and how you do it regularly.  Some major advancements are right here and right now, you could be benefitting from them.  Read up a bit, see what others are doing, go to a conference, invite a supplier, check out a few blogs – the possibilities are endless.

“My greatest regret, turning down a stake in Manchester United Football club for £250,000.”    A lifelong fan of the club, Fred Done, of bookmaking giant Betfred confessed to this during an interesting one to one interview with Insider NW Editor – Michael Taylor – in Manchester on Monday night.  The Leaders dinner, an annual affair which brings together around one hundred and fifty leaders of regional businesses, is an event I enjoy each year.  Informal with a great audience of CEO level attendees.

Done, looking much younger than his age (mid sixties), spoke of the growth of the Betfred empire, which now has a turnover of £3.5bn+ via its network of 1350 sites.  He’s been in the betting game over fifty years, starting when he was just fifteen and now sitting on an enormous betting empire, including the recent acquisition of the Tote.

There’s a lot to appreciate about the Done brothers.  They started with nothing and have gone on to own multiple successful businesses in differing sectors.  Fred, is a really ordinary guy.  He spoke very plainly about his business, raising finance, the Tote acquisition and lessons learned.  There was no corporate speak, citing “top hats vs. flat caps” as one of his observations of the political nature of the Tote acquisition.  Here are some bullets I took from the interview: -

• The brand Betfred came out of a brainstorming session.  They got an employee to design the logo.  He compared that to the £5M the Tote spent on branding with an agency.
• Fred has “no plans” to retire.
• Bet365 is a business who he admires and feels is the industry benchmark for on-line gaming.
• Their on-line gambling business is growing at 80%+ CAGR.  Staff are based in Gibraltar due to taxation.  He said he would move the staff to the UK tomorrow if the tax environment for a global on-line gaming business were right.
• Money is out there for borrowing.  But you must prove your case.
• The journey to acquire the Tote took around 7 years from first idea to deal conclusion.  It took a huge amount of effort, advisory fees and political lobbying.
• Their initial valuation for the Tote was £150M.  Betfred eventually paid £265m.  He felt that profits could be increased by at least £25M per annum with liberated staff and more business focus, so was happy to pay the higher price.
• A lesson learned from earlier in his career was that he wasn’t aggressive enough and too parochial.  If he wasn’t sure, he walked away from a deal.  Now he says “If in doubt, do it!”
• He feels as ambitious now, as he did as a 21 year old and success for him in the next phase of his career is to make the Tote ” a business that I’m proud of.”

The Done brothers are highly influential in the region.  Fred is passionate about young new start businesses and has backed many, aswell as investing group spend in the region wherever possible.  His brother Peter, who runs an employment law and health and safety business called Peninsula, is very much part of the business too.  They are busy building a conglomerate of businesses.

If I were a betting man, I think that would be “odds-on” bet for great success.  Excellent fellow, excellent business, excellent evening

At Brother, we have a philosophy we call 141%.  It was derived from a campaign we ran promoting our A3 range of printers.   In short, if you put a piece of paper onto a photo-copier and enlarge it to A3, the enlargement ratio used is 141%.

As the campaign was targeted at small businesses, entrepreneurs and start-ups we began to think about what it takes to be successful.  Long hours, guts, risk-taking, doing extraordinary things, ambition, drive, energy.  Our “light on” moment was recognising that these people give more than 100% to be a success , they give it 141%.

We’ve taken this essence and used it to sponsor people that do extra-ordinary things.  One of those people is Paralympic cyclist Simon Richardson MBE, who fought back from an horrific road accident to go and win two gold medals at the Beijing 2008 Paralympic games.  

He was awarded the MBE in 2009 and has shown extraordinary mental strength and courage.  Today, he is recovering from another major accident which left him critically injured and showing that same gritty determination in his recovery.  We’re backing him all the way to get back to his pre-collision condition.

A forthcoming 141% sponsorship is around one of Britains most successful ever athletes – James Cracknell.  Just read his biog here and you’ll immediately know why he is a 141% person.  He’ll be attempting to break no fewer than four major cycling records on a tandem with Jerone Walters in the near future.  They are: -

1. Fastest time from Lands End to John O Groats.
2. Furthest distance covered in 12hrs on a bike.
3. Furthest distance covered in 24hrs on a bike.
4. Fastest time to cover 1000m on a bike.

That’s inspiring stuff.  Following this attempt, Cycling Commentator David Harmon and Professional Cyclist Magnus Backstedt will attempt to break the 25M time trial record on the same tandem bike, called Rocket2, sponsored by Brother under our 141% theme.

This bike is the most technologically advanced tandem ever built, made here in the UK by master framebuilder – Terry Dolan.  That’s another great fit for us – technology, effort and innovation.

When you have a key proposition, sponsorship’s come easily, they are aligned to your business objectives.  We can easily select whether a sponsorship does or does not fit because it has to demonstrate something over and above – not run of the mill.  It has to be 141% and show the sort of commitment that our customers show in growing their businesses.

So, when you see the 141% logo out and about, you’ll know that something interesting is going on and that the individual who has the logo on their back is going above and beyond.

If you want to know a little more, please go to www.brother141.co.uk.