How to Speak to Executives

If deals stall at the top, messaging is often the issue. Here's how to adjust...

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If you prefer to read - here is the transcript:

So we talk a lot about building coalitions inside organizations and communities and making sure that you talk to multiple decision makers or multiple stakeholders. And ultimately, that means that many of you have to talk to executives. So what happens when you talk to executives? What do you talk about? And do you get asked come for follow up meetings?

Often times I hear while the executive doesn't want to talk to us or the executive doesn't meet with us. And you know, the number one reason why that's happening is we're not talking the executive language.

Executives don't want to have a feature dump. They don't want to know how you do what you do. They want to know about the results. And they want to know about those results in relation to how other customers are experiencing them.

We need to learn to talk in terms of value and ROI. And we need to do so in the frame of another customer.

So, for example, rather than saying I do x and y, you need to say our customers find that x and y bring a 12% increase in... or a 15% decrease in... or this customer if you can, or customers like yours or what I found by working in your industry is other CEOs have benefited from... And then we add value. Use as much information as you can or from your customer base to provide numbers and percentages and tangible value to those executives, and you will always get invited back to the table.

Don't talk to executives about features. Talk to them about benefits and insights.