Reaching the most senior executives in a big company can take the skills of a big game hunter.
Before asking for an appointment, I design an Executive Briefing to help open doors:
1. Get permission from the administrator to send an executive briefing in advance of a meeting. This document situates your service at senior level concerns rather than day-to-day operations.
2. The Executive Briefing includes business cases which demonstrate company-wide impact of your work
3. Illustrate how the business challenges of one industry are relevant to another. Pre-empt the “What do you know about our industry?” question.
How do you get the Executive Briefing into their hands?
1. Before asking for an appointment, ask the assistant’s permission. You might say something like this:
“We haven’t spoken before, so I’d be happy to send along a bit of background on the work we do in…(your 2-word tag line).
2. Your tag line should address a company-wide concern rather than an operating area if you want to avoid being sent elsewhere.
(Finance, IT and customer service are operating areas of the company)
International expansion, shareholder value and customer experience have company-wide implications.
3. What words resonate with executives?
“Risk, earnings, shareholders, customers, expansion, strategy, partners, innovation”
A non-functional tag line which will keep you at the executive level may sound like this:
“Corporate Philanthropy”
“Customer Experience”
“Managed Growth”
“Resource Optimization”
