How to Get in Front of the C-Suite

If part of your marketing strategy relies on enterprise sales, or perhaps more accurately, leads from the C-Suite that turn into enterprise sales, then you know how difficult it can be to get the attention of senior decision makers.

A Harvard study once discovered that the C-Suite spends only 2% of their time with vendors each week. That’s not a lot of time, so how do we break through their busy schedules?

C-Suite Marketing is best accomplished with three elements – trust, value and independence. Use all three in the right way and you can get through to your target senior decision makers much more easily.

1: Trust

When NetSuite wanted to connect with senior decision makers in their target markets, they knew they would have to build face-to-face relationships using one contact throughout the entire funnel. Instead of a fragmented funnel, we used one contact throughout the entire process.

Trust with senior decision makers can also be built by challenging and testing their opinions. It’s lonely at the top, and the C-Suite need to connect with their peers. Creating an environment (see point 3) allowed them to do this, and generated a 6 figure sales pipeline for NetSuite.

2: Value

Not only should you challenge the received wisdom of the C-Suite, but you should also offer new content that helps build upon that. Ixonos, a creative technology agency, invited their target audience to come and learn more about digital monetisation and the “second screen revolution”.

Because this was a hot topic that the market was already talking about, and aligned perfectly with their value proposition, they managed to meet face-to-face with senior decision makers from the likes of Metro UK, The Economist, ITV and The Guardian.

3: Independence

When we helped NetSuite and Ixonos engage with their respective audiences, it would have been futile to approach them using their own brands. When talking to the C-Suite from the stance of a vendor, their guard is usually put up immediately.

Instead, we created independent brands in the form of clubs. Coming from an independent stance in this way allowed them to bypass the scepticism and position themselves as an entity with the sole purpose of delivering value.

Conclusion

When we work with our clients (like the two above) we usually use a dinner platform as the face-to-face environment that delivers the content and engages with their audience.

However, with a bit of creativity, you can use other channels and methods. As long as you follow the building blocks laid out above then you have a much higher chance of success.

Build trust and deliver content by bringing them face-to-face with their peers as well as your team and advocates. Then, wrap that up in an independent brand positioned in a way that delivers real value.

How to Get in Front of the C-Suite