How to Adapt Your Pitch for Your C-Suite Executive Targets
Otherwise, you lose sales even before you start
Do not mistake the perfect pitch for the well-rehearsed (read: memorized) presentation. The cookie-cutter pitch presentation kills your sales pipeline before you actually have one.
I have sat through many product pitches made to my company. For me, the first 10 minutes is crucial. I use it to decide if there is value for me to continue to listen, or very simply, flip open my laptop to do my work.
From there, I take my experience and design it into my product presentation deck. My team members call it the Pitch Perfect experience.
“When we are selling our ideas, the audience must first buy us.”
― Peter Coughter, The Art of the Pitch: Persuasion and Presentation Skills that Win Business
Pitching is pre-selling. We pre-sell our ideas before our audience decides to buy our products and services. Therefore, we must understand their roles and the business language they speak.
The Starting Point — The Foundation of the Pitch Deck
Our audience’s attention span is limited. Treasure it when it is given to you.
“In most cases a normal attention span for adults is approximately 15 to 20 minutes, though a lot depends on factors like subject matter, nature of the activity, and time of day.”
- What Is Considered a Normal Attention Span?
I will not bet my life on 15–20 minutes. Stick to 18 minutes if you are a proven charismatic TED TALK speaker. Otherwise, my recommendation is to plan for 10 minutes.
This is how I think about my presentation deck if 10 minutes is all I have.
- Include these: Vision, Mission, Why We Are Here, The Problems We Want to Solve, Clients Who Have Implemented Our Solution (pluses and pitfalls), Questions & Answers.
- Trash it out: List of Client Logos, Company History (Elaborated), Company Organization Structure, Pricing Tier and Structure, Key Product Differentiators.
Author’s Note: You may disagree with what I include and trash out. That is okay. Identify and focus on the slides that add value to your pitch. Strip off the rest.Based on my experience, 5–6 slides are ideal for a 10-minute pitch. We will get creative and shoot random messages from our hips. Buffer for that.
Next, we focus on speaking the audience’s language.
Pitching to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) + Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
I see them as real-life Siamese Twins. They move together, think alike, and speak the same language. There are many times where I mistook the CFO for the CEO. Though embarrassing, it taught me how to recognize them as a pair in the boardroom.
If your ideal client profile is the CEO and CFO, pay attention to the following.
- Their focus: Growing the company, increasing sales revenue, increasing operational profits, market share penetration, opening new markets.
- Their language: Revenue, capital expenditure, active investing for the next decade, Get-to-Market, contribution margin per product (or service), workforce empowerment.
- Where to find information on their thoughts: Annual Reports (if listed), public interviews.
In short, to get their attention, you must demonstrate that you can work with them to grow the company.
Pitching to the Chief Information Officer (CIO) + Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
You will not encounter these 2 roles unless you pitch to a full-fledged technology-based company or mature operations.
I was confused by these 2 roles when I first encountered them. It cost me hundreds of thousands in unrealized revenue because I kept addressing the issues to the wrong person.
By and large, CIOs focus on data, transactions, and applications. CTOs focus on enterprise infrastructure, cybersecurity, and systems integration. There will be differences from company to company. Make sure you do your homework.
If your ideal client profile is the CIO and CTO, pay attention to the following.
- Their focus: Digital transformation, enterprise enablement, technical literacy.
- Their language: Project management, software-as-a-service, agility and mobility, future-proofing the organization, user experience.
- Where to find information on their thoughts: Annual reports (if listed), professional bodies such as Project Management Institute.
Pitching to the Chief Operating Officer (COO)
You want to be (really) prepared if you are pitching to the COO.
Due to the operational nature of work, they do not want to waste time listening to another pitching session. Standing in front of them is like charging into the enemy’s line of defense.
Once, I was standing in front of Caleb the COO. I was performing the standard consultant pitch. This is my company, it has a global presence, we have deep expertise, and this and that.
Caleb stopped me 3 minutes into my introduction. Go straight to your solution proposal, the industry experts, and commercial arrangements spat out from his mouth without visible lip movement. Coldly.
COOs like Caleb are snipers of fluff. They worship deep expertise. They want to know how to get things done better, faster, cheaper, and proven with past experience.
Let them know why you are professionally qualified to stand behind the lectern. Pitch past experiences, and how they work out, good or bad. Experience is your best communication scaffold to the COOs.
If your ideal client profile is the COO, pay attention to the following.
- Their focus: How to support the organization to scale the business operations.
- Their language: Operational efficiency, effectiveness, how-to-scale, task and process automation.
- Where to find information on their thoughts: Annual reports (if listed), walk their office, and observe how people work.
Author’s Note: Find your target audience and speak to them. If you are fortunate enough to have the entire board listening, default your speech to the CEO and CFO. They are the gatekeepers of the company’s budget and investment decisions.Summary
“If you want to create messages that resonate with your audience, you need to know what they care about.”
The perfect pitch is not about our product, services, and company. It is about the customer. Where their organization is and how they think matter.
When designing the perfect pitch, prepare information with an ideal client profile overlay.
Pitch your product(s), service(s), and company to your ideal client profile in their language. That way, you expedite the buy-in with your Pitch Perfect presentation.
