Lead To Market

The Seven Steps to Landing a Meeting with a Top Executive

You probably would not expect “snail mail” (regular old postal service) to be an effective way of breaking through to the all important executive – but it works!
I know what you are thinking: “mail is so outdated and inefficient” or “no one uses regular mail anymore” and that is exactly the point. It is both unexpected and your competition is most likely not sending out regular mail. My seven steps are based on a book that many Sales Pros will recommend: “Selling to VITO” – VITO being the “Very Important Top Officer”.
You can find this technique in the older version of the book (which was last updated twelve years ago). That just goes to show how little this very effective technique is being used these days, which translates to less competition for you in the Executive’s mail stack.

Step I – You Need a Headline

Your target is going to decide within 4 seconds whether or not they are going to read the rest of your letter. Therefore the catchy headline is the most critical attribute.

Appeal to the executives’ self interest. which is typically tied to some sort of company performance bonus and popularity

Contain some hard numbers in it

Be credible as well as help improve your credibility

Basically, it needs to be based on actual events with measurable results from real customers, that include percentages and numbers from a specific time frame. All this in less than thirty words!
Show that you can raise revenue without raising payroll. Maybe tell a story about how you were able to help a customer release their product early, without sacrificing on quality. Something that your target CXO really cares about. Finally, make sure to use a larger italicized font for your headline when you write the letter.

Step II – The Action P.S.

Why is this the case? Think about what you would do if you received a letter which boldly stated that someone had a way of increasing your sales pipeline while decreasing marketing spending? You would go right to the end of the letter in order to figure out who on earth is making such a statement.

The Action P.S. looks like this (taken straight from “Selling to VITO”):

P.S. I’ll call your office at 9:00 a.m. on Thursday, September 6. If you will not be in, or if I’ve chosen an inconvenient time, please have [Assistant’s First Name] tell me when I should return the call.

Having the assistant’s name is a must here. Just think about it. That assistant is the first person who is going to see that letter and they will be the one deciding upon that letter’s fate!

If you do not have the assistant’s name, just call the company’s main number and say “My VP has a meeting next week with [Executive Prospect] at his office and I just wanted to confirm that the address is [Address]? By the way, what was his/her assistant’s name again?”

One final thing about the “Action P.S.” – Do make sure you call on time or early. If you are a few minutes late and the executive is actually expecting your call, forget about doing business with them.

Step III – The Tie-in Paragraph

In short: cut the BS and get right to business. This paragraph is meant to directly make the tie between your audacious headline and the three benefits you are about to list.

A good example of a tie-in paragraph that I liked from the Selling to VITO book is:

The above results are common achievements for our business partners. As much as 15 percent of revenues previously wasted on unintentional inefficiencies are now channeled directly into increased shareholder value, an annuity stream that continues to provide ongoing benefits for everyone, except the competition.

Most sales books will talk about building rapport before getting “down-to-business”.

Think about how many letters this executive has received which start with “I would like to introduce myself…”.