Selling communications to the CEO

They receive pitches on improving strategic planning processes, financing, changing company-wide systems and culture, account management sales programmes, quality systems, slick marketing strategy solicitations, and brand revitalisation strategies.

Communication strategies and campaigns are often one of the hardest sells because they mostly deal with intangibles, unlike complex product sales and systems where CEOs can see beforehand what they are buying. Complicating matters, it is rare for demand to already exist or be clearly specified as communications needs may not have been uncovered. Executives may not be aware of the pain they face in their organisations. That's your job.

Professional communicators who wish to sell to the top need to have already established their credentials with clients and find ways to fast track their building of trust because at this level trust is everything. That's why the best way to access an executive is through another executive, trusted colleague, industry network contacts, previous clients, professional associations and third-party channel partners. Just make sure that those who you seek to sponsor your introduction to key players are credible in the eyes of whom you wish to influence.

Preparation is crucial to selling to the top. Executives want partners and solutions that help them run their companies better. This means you have to do your homework. You need to be strategically literate, researching and learning about the client's business as well as they know it themselves or, preferably, better. You can't just be a communications expert. You must know not only the client company but also the industry. To be effective, you need to know the client's and their competitor's competitive positioning inside out.

Part of your preparation is knowing the senior executive's personality, likes and dislikes, and any other information that can help you build a multi-dimensional profile of the person you are about to meet. In-house professionals are expected to know a lot more from the inside - the political players and the CEO's favourites right down to the best day of the week and time in the day when she/he will be more receptive to your proposals or ideas.

In most cases you won't have much time to present so your presentations or ideas need to be well rehearsed, or the meeting may be cut short and you have only a few minutes to present your solution. Ethan Rasiel, a former Mckinsey consultant, offers the Elevator Test as a technique to ensure you get your message across in the time it takes to ride down a lift. "Know your solution (or your product or business) so thoroughly that you can explain it clearly and precisely to your client (or customer or investor) in 30 seconds. If you can do that, then you understand what you're doing well enough to sell your solution."

Be prepared with relevant questions because with limited executive time your questions, even while being of necessity open-ended to draw out information, need to have a laser focus rather than being like some blunt chisel to chop away until you stumble on nuggets of critical strategic information. The CEO may be so distracted by then that you've lost him or her.

It may sound basic and obvious but you need to anticipate objections to your proposed solution. Consult beforehand with people who are in the best position to know the strengths and possible weaknesses of your proposed solution.

Is there really a way to make your presentation or ideas compelling enough to get the CEO interested? There's hardly ever any one way or silver bullet approach but here are some ideas that have proved effective in practice. Firstly, try to forget about the features and benefits of your brilliant campaign. That's product selling. Instead do everything you can to find out the CEO's needs or pain in the organisation, whether it comes from outside or inside. You may have already discovered some issues in your preliminary research.

Next, link your solution to reducing pain and increasing gain for the CEO and her/his company. Linkage is critical. So too are the issues that are important to executives. Rick Page, founder of The Complex Sale company, offers these key executive issues: strategic, political (internal and external), financial, and cultural (including competitiveness, communication, co-operation and consensus). If you can show CEOs and other senior executives how your solution can solve their business problems, you will stand a much better chance of selling your communication programmes to the top decision-maker. (Should you wish to find out more, buy a copy of Rick's book, "Hope is not a strategy - The 6 ways to winning the Complex Sale.)

Remember that when there are other key executives or functional heads such as finance and HR in the same meeting room, you will need to link your solution to their key strategic issues as well.

Persuading at the C-level takes more than the process that has been outlined in this column - simplified so that you can quickly grasp the essentials. Personal consultation on selling to executives or attending a workshop will equip you even better. But hopefully this column has made you more aware of the need for preparation, strategic literacy and linking your proposal, ideas or programme to executive issues. All of which will help you to be more successful in getting your communications proposals sold at the very highest levels in companies.