Engaging Executives

In this economy, access to the C-Suite has become more important than ever. Budget decisions that a were made by a Director or VP a year ago are now getting made by the C-Suite.

A couple ideas on how to tune up your marketing strategy for the C-Suite.

Test your value propositions and messaging with an executive audience. Sit down with your own CIO, CFO, COO, or CEO and ask them how they would respond to what you are bringing to market. If you have an executive advisory council, now is the time to be using them. If not, find your executive advocates and ask them (you know who they are: the customers you can talk to without feeling like you owe them a favor).

Double your focus on sales enablement. Your sales teams need all the help they can get these days. Chances are they aren't accustomed to selling to the C-Suite, so they need to know how to talk less about product and more about value. They also need conversation starters, either interesting data about trends in the industry or stories about how other customers are weathering the storm. Remind them that the ABC's of selling (Always Be Closing) don't work in the executive suite. Instead, it's Always Be Creating (Value).

By the way, if you are in the Boston area on Thursday, June 11, there will be a breakfast salon on the topic of Marketing to the C-Suite with Karla Bousquet, Director of Client Executive Marketing at IBM. It will be a great conversation on how to build executive marketing programs. Please let me know if you would like to attend.