Learn How to Pitch to the CEO of a Company

Learn How to Pitch to the CEO of a Company Learn How to Pitch to the CEO of a Company Many salespeople dream of selling their product straight to the top of the food chain. Selling to the CEO helps you to cut through all the red tape that normally goes along with selling to a medium or large company, and you dont have to worry about being overruled by his boss! Impressing a C-suite decision maker requires a little extra work on your part. Research Once you get the appointment, your first step is to start doing research. CEOs will expect you to know the basics about their company and themselves. Fortunately, most of the information you need will be easily available on the Internet. Look for details like the companys size (e.g. annual revenue), how long its been in business, whether its publicly or privately owned, what products or services it offers, and what industry its in. Dig a little deeper to uncover details about the nature of the competition, whether the company has had recent successes or failures, any new legislation that might affect it, and what the companys biggest challenges are likely to be. Dont forget to look at the CEOs background as well- at a minimum, you should know how long hes been in his current position, where he held his previous position, and who he replaced (and why). If you can, also look for details on his style of doing business and for the approaches he advocates for the company. The details you dig up in your research will help you in two ways. First, you can mention important  bits and pieces during your meeting and thus show the CEO that youve done your homework. Second, some of this background information can be extremely helpful in tuning your pitch. For example, if you discover that your prospect company recently hired the current CEO because the company has fallen behind in market share, thats a pretty powerful motivator that you can tie into your presentation. The Meeting An effective sales meeting with a CEO or other C-suite member has four specific parts: Introduce yourself, mentioning any sponsors who helped you get this meeting. Then state your goal for the meeting and get the CEOs buy-in on it. The goal you choose should express a benefit for both yourself and your prospect. For example, your goal might be to strategize with your prospect on ways that your company can help his comply with recent legislation. The whole introduction should be brief, taking up perhaps 10 minutes of an hour-long meeting.Its time to start asking some smart questions. This is your chance to show off your newly-acquired knowledge of the prospects company and to dig for deeper insights. Some salespeople are afraid to ask C-suite prospects a lot of questions because they think theyll come off as ignorant, but if youve taken the time to learn the basic details youre more likely to impress the CEO with your willingness to learn more. Ask open-ended questions and take notes on the answers. Plan on taking roughly half the meeting just to ask questions and gathe r information. Bring out your sales pitch. Keep your focus on solutions rather than products; the goal here is to show that youre taking the information the CEO just gave you regarding his needs and using it to work with him on possible fixes. Ideally, you should express your solutions in terms of how they will help both the company as a whole and the CEO personally. Keep your pitch brief (10 to 15 minutes for an hour-long meeting) by trimming out all the slides about your company and your products. The focus should remain on the prospect, not on you.? Wrap up the meeting by determining the next steps. In the best case, the next step would be starting the purchase process. If your prospect isnt ready to make the leap, then get his approval on what you will do next. For example, you might set a date for a follow-up meeting to which you will bring an expert from your company who can further explore possible solutions.