Four Ways to Sell To a CEO

A reader writes:

I am the founder and president of a company that conducts the hiring process for other companies. We have always catered to SMBs and have been very successful locally, regionally and nationally. Over the past year we have served a few larger corporate organizations and discovered that we want to pursue more of this business. We are most successful when we sell to the CEO/CFO level. However, we find it challenging to get through to them unless we have a previous contact or introduction. Any ideas on how to sell to this level?

1. Your offering must be appropriate. That's apparently true in your case, but I've seen cases where sales managers have asked their sales reps to sell high when the product was a commodity that's typically handled by a purchasing drone. If it's not something that's going to be on a top CEO's radar, calling high is wasted effort.
2. You must be a social equal to the CEO. You either need to be the kind of person who could be the CEO or the type of person who can mix socially with a CEO. In other words, fresh-out-of-college newbies can't effectively call high, unless they're the children of the CEO's friends. Don't laugh; it's been done.

Assuming that you've satisfied the preconditions, there are (exactly) four ways to get a sales appointment with a CEO:

1. Laddering. This is the process of building contacts inside the organization leading towards a personal introduction to the CEO. The trick here is not to try to close the deal with the lower-level folk, but to think of them as potential referrers who will get a career benefit if they call the CEO's attention to you and your offering. I discuss this process in my previous post: "How to Reach the CEO."
2. Cold Calling. This is the process of breaking through the layers of protection that keep the CEO from answering his or her own phone. If you follow this path, you'd better be a truly fabulous cold-caller, because you're only going to get one shot at it. However, I do know that it can work because most CEOs, once you get into their inner circle, are easy to sell. I explain how to get the CEO on the line in my previous post "How to Reach the CEO...Directly"
3. Networking. This is the process of building contacts outside the organization, otherwise known as "referral selling." This entails researching the life of the CEO and then building a network of contacts that gradually lead you towards a personal introduction. This is an extremely productive sales tactic that I've discussed in several blog entries, most notably: "How to Generate Your Own Leads" and "Five Rules for Great Referrals".
4. Socializing. This is similar to the networking concept, but leads towards an "accidental" meeting between the sales rep and the CEO. You research the CEO's life and interests to discover any public or semi-public event where it would be possible to meet the CEO socially. Possibilities include executive conferences, local golf courses, stockholder meetings, and charity balls. I haven't written previously about this method, so I'll explain exactly how to do it in tomorrow's post. Stay tuned.