The “CEO Card……”

I’ve been reading a number of articles about how win rates skyrocket when you get a very senior exec or founder involved in a sales opportunity. Sometimes opening a deal, sometimes in the final stages of a deal.

These experts expound on how to get these exalted people involved in deals to drive executives involved in opening and closing deals for reps, all quoting increases in win rates (one cited a 408% increase which makes me wonder how bad the team really was!)

And I get it. Executives just because of their titles can get much higher levels of engagement more easily than the sellers. Founders have such deep knowledge and passion, that can have an impact with the customer. All of these may have deeper experience than the seller, so they can make more progress, or because of their title, the customer feels they are dealing with “the right person.”

It’s a basic intelligence test, if I had to choose who I wanted to talk to, a seller or the CEO, I’d choose the CEO 100% of the time.

The only conclusion one can get from this insight about leveraging the “CEO card” is, “Well dugghhh……”

In one of my past roles, I had a very clever VP covering the Far East. He said, “Dave, I need you to come to this very important call we are having with this Chinese prospect…” It was a huge opportunity and Yuegang needed me, the CEO to lend authority to the meeting. I flew to Shanghai, the evening before, I asked, “What do you want me to accomplish…….” Then I said, “None of them speak English, how will I communicate with them?”

Yuegang is very good. He said, “Dave, all I needed is someone with a CEO business card and an airplane ticket. You can say ‘Mary had a little lamb….,’ I know what I want to say so I’ll say that in Mandarin and they will think I’m translating your wisdom….” And that’s what I talked about in the meeting, and Yuegang won the deal. It had nothing to do with me, just my title and position in the company.

Hopefully, most senior executives will add some value to these conversations. But this cannot be a core principle in our sales strategies!

Think about how it plays out, if we need execs to open or close every deal, when do they have the time to do their real jobs?

If this is a cornerstone of our strategy, there is a severe limitation to our ability to grow and pursue more deals! When we run out of “exec availability,” we can’t grow.

More importantly, how do we develop the capability of our sales people to manage these meetings themselves? How do we get them to engage, in more impactful ways, with the decision makers in the deal?

Yes, execs can help us open, move, and close deals. But this needs to be the exception, not the core part of our strategy!

Afterword: Below is an AI generated discussion of this article. In reviewing this, my initial reaction was, “They don’t get it, they are hallucinating….” But it’s interesting how they finally get to the right point at the end of their conversation. They went down a path I never would have imagined.