How To Engage With Execs by Katy-Jo Close

Notoriously difficult to get hold of, but oh-so-often critical to your success...this article is all about how you should maximise time with those critical senior stakeholders, once you have time on their calendar. What do I mean when I say critical to success?

Two key things:

1. As decision makers and budget holders, awareness and buy-in to the value of your product will go a long way to smoothing your renewal process.

2. Their insight into strategic direction and priorities will help you laser in on what you should focus on to deliver further value

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail

Knowing what the exec wants from the meeting

Before you dive into populating a templated deck for your next exec meeting, ask yourself if you truly know what your exec stakeholder wants out of the session. If you do, great!

If you don’t, consider a quick phone call to the exec a week or so before the call. This motion is common practice in sales, and if anything it should be easier to get a customer on the phone when you’re working post-sales. If a famously time-poor executive has 30 minutes or more in their diary for a call with you, 9 times out of 10 they’re happy to invest 5 minutes ahead of that call to make sure they’ll get value from it. Try this:

“Hey [insert exec name], it’s KJ from Hook, I wanted to catch you for no more than 5 minutes ahead of our call next week to make sure I’m preparing in a way that makes the best use of your time. Is there anything in particular you want to get out of the call? I was planning to achieve [list 2 key outcomes] - is this aligned with what you’d find the most valuable to cover?”

If you can’t get a hold of them on the phone, the above can easily be turned into an email - or you can ask your champion to give you some coaching on what the exec would expect.

Knowing what YOU want from the meeting

Your time is also precious - and don’t forget it! Before you even open PowerPoint, spending just 10 minutes writing down what you’d like to get from the call and why, can be the difference between a good call and a great one. Not only will it help you keep a clear focus during the call, but it ensures you know what you’d consider a success after the call is done. I’d always recommend having a clear, outcome-focused goal.

Goals (examples):

Dig into strategic goals and org/department strategy

Get an introduction to a specific stakeholder

Align on the paper process for the upcoming renewal

Assess appetite for a new module to upsell

Nail down your content

I’d go as far as to say 80% of the prep should be in the thinking, and just 20% doing. If you have a really clear idea on what the exec in the room wants, and what you want - everything else is a bonus! Whilst I concede to the fact we live in a world where visual aids can be helpful to facilitate a conversation, I have seen time and again where rinse and repeating templated documents means you can’t truly impress the exec.

Templates should always be adapted to help you achieve the exec and your own objectives. Five key things to consider:

1. Less is always more - how many times have you managed to get through a 20 slide deck, or even a 10 slide deck for that matter? You can always send a more thorough presentation as a follow-up.

2. Prepare your questions - think back to what you want from the session, what questions will you ask, when in order to achieve your objective?

3. Know what messages will best land depending on the person - one way I think about this is considering their thinking style - do they like big picture thinking? Are they a numbers and facts? Do they want to know the plan and the actions? Or does storytelling work best?

4. Think about the key takeaways - what are the 2-3 quotes/tidbits that you would like the exec to take away and share internally? Weave these into your conversation.

5. Review your customer dashboard to make sure you’re aware of the key datapoints relating to the account, so you can be prepared if an exec asks a pointed question (which they often do!)

Run a great meeting

Build rapport

First and foremost, we’re all human! There can be a tendency to get nervous when speaking with execs, but there’s an untold amount of value in spending just a few minutes at the start of your call actually talking to your customers - use this time to find some common ground and build rapport.

My ex-colleague and pal Mac says it best in this short clip, and here are some ideas of what you can bring to the conversation (because we’re all bored of talking about the weather):

Something you’ve seen in the news about the org recently - i.e. how an acquisition is going

Something you know about them personally, maybe they’re just back from holiday or have shared a recent personal achievement to LinkedIn

Something you want them to know about your org - maybe an upcoming event or a great resource you’ve created

Start strong

Once you get to business, you want to start strong and with control. The best way to do this is with a tried and tested three step approach.

1. Confidently and concisely outline the agenda - not to labour the point but it’s much easier to feel confident here if you already know it’s in line with what your exec is looking for!

2. Re-confirm that this is the right agenda to add value to the audience

TOP TIP: language matters here, rather than: “is this agenda ok with you?” try “are these the most important things for us to cover today?” or “if we can only get one thing out of the call today, what would you prefer we focus on?”

3. Be prepared to pivot - things move fast in the world of tech, and so sometimes the answer to the question you ask in point 2 will be ‘no, actually I’d like to talk about something else you aren’t as prepared for’ - and that is ok. It is infinitely better to have a more fluid, less structured conversation about something you’re not fully prepared for than for you to continue on the path of your prepared content that isn’t what the exec cares about - remember, you are the SME of your product!

Finally…don’t forget your follow up

It doesn’t end with the meeting. Always send a concise follow up within a day of the meeting covering: what you discussed, the key action items were and if you can, deliver some immediate value.

TOP TIP: Make sure the email can be quickly read on a phone screen!

Example:

Hi [insert exec name] - it was a pleasure to speak with you today and nail down our next steps for getting Hook in the hands of your sales team.

Regarding your question on how to best lobby for better cross-functional collaboration internally, I thought you may find this insight from our recent market report of interest - we found that 49% of CS leaders felt cross-functional collaboration was critical for continued retention success.

Key next steps:

Sophie to intro Hook team to VP Sales via email

Hook team to send proposed roll-out plan for your review ahead of meeting VP Sales

Thanks for reading

I joined Hook because, as a previous CSM and manager of CSMs the problem Hook solves resonated with me deeply, with a thousand competing priorities and an abundance of data - Hook helps narrow a CSMs focus on what really matters by turning data into actionable insight. I work with customers to help mature their CS functions, using Hook and I’m fortunate to work with a team that means I get to have a lot of fun whilst doing it. If you’d like to learn more about Hook or connect to further discuss how best to engage with execs, feel free to connect with me via LinkedIn!