Meeting and intercepting CEOs is HARD. According to statistics, 90% of them don’t return first time voicemails*. In addition, they get on average 100+ emails a day, open just 23%, and click on just 2% of them.** So how are you supposed to get to CEOs when they’re so hard to get to?

Have A Compelling Story

Even when you eventually do intercept and meet with a CEO, you have to be able to say something to them that will have traction. So the first step of that sticky messaging is to position your company as an expert in a pain point that the CEO you’re calling is experiencing. For example, is it turnover or slow technology or bad customer service? Make sure to do the strategic work to figure this out and apply it to your overall messaging and marketing. Also make sure that the pain point you’ve positioned your company on is unique and specific. For example, don’t just claim to solve the issue of high turnover.  Instead, claim to be a Change Management Expert who uses Resilience Training to reduce turnover (as one of my clients repositioned to). See the difference?

Create Something To Invite Them To

The next step is to design an event that gives more information around the solution that you’re an expert in. Events where you give this information could be Executive Roundtables (my faves), Power Breakfasts, Lunch and Learns or even simple one on one presentations. Then naturally, you invite your target CEO audience to these events. No more calling just to introduce your company and services. No more trying to engage in common-ground conversation like the sports scores last night. Now you have a reason to engage and just deliver pure value to your prospects.

Where Twitter Comes In

Now that you’ve got a unique proposition for your targeted decision makers, how do you reach them? Well in cases where after trying and failing with the phone or networking, my clients and I use Twitter. Here’s how my client Chip successfully used my technique of reaching out to a hard to reach (but active on social media) prospect. Chip sent this tweet and got the bottom tweets in response right away to a prospect he’d been chasing for a while and has since connected in person with her.

I myself have gotten almost instant messages back from decision makers on Twitter when I’ve reached out and told them I couldn’t reach them through the phone. Here’s an example of one  where I sent the tweet at 1:46pm and got a response at 2:34pm. Compare that to the days of dialling that I’d been doing to reach this guy.

 
So if you’re trying to reach hard to reach CEOS, as with anything, first get your positioning right. Then have a message and a relevant event around that position to invite them to. Then use Twitter or any other social media to quickly connect to your target. There’s no reason why you can’t be rocking it out there like we are!
Want to reposition your messaging to grow your leads? Follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook, watch me on YouTubeor connect with me on LinkedIn –and let’s talk
 
 
*Ringlead, **Tellwise