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Involving C suite early in your deals speeds up sales cycles by 9x.

This is a fascinating stat from a recent report by Ebsta & Pavilion.

Here are 6 tactics to involve C suite earlier in your deals:

1) Help your champion navigate bureaucracy and ask them:

✅ “Typically when looking to solve Y challenge, these C level personas are involved"

(e.g. “typically for sales enablement initiatives, CMOs are involved for playbooks, and CROs for training & coaching.”

Sometimes champions haven’t bought similar solutions before, so this gives them context before asking:

✅ “Who will you need to speak to from your senior team about this?"

2) Understand each persona by asking your champion questions like:

✅ "You mentioned the CFO is involved in all purchases over $20k. What metrics matter most to them?"

✅ "You mentioned your CEO is heavily involved in sales. Do they align with you on the challenges we’ve discussed or do they have different priorities?"

Or it can be as simple as:

✅ “You mentioned your CTO Stacey. What matters most to them?"

3) Research each C level stakeholder online

✅ Go through their LinkedIn profiles & recent posts

✅ Google their name and look for them in podcasts, youtube videos, press releases and/or articles

✅ Give ChatGPT the prompt - "tell me more about X name at Y company and what they’ve done in last 3 months"

4) Connect with each of them on LinkedIn

But DON'T hard-sell them as this will annoy them and your champion.

Instead, just keep them up to date, and send this note with no call to action:

✅ "Stacey, been chatting to your colleague Jeff Bridges about the Monday agenda of your sales kick off. Be great to connect here."

5) Ask your champion if they can involve the C suite in your next call

As we say in the UK, "if you don't ask, you don't get."

If they can't make that happen, ask them:

✅ “I'd love to help you make a business case for your conversations with Stacey. Other CTOs like her have liked our case study with Y and particularly slide 13 in the proposal. What do you think will resonate most with them?”

6) Ask to meet the C suite in person

I love remote work and have been doing it since 2016 BUT nothing beats looking someone in the eye to build trust. The effort of a train journey or a flight to see a customer is always appreciated.

✅ The biggest deal I closed in my career happened after I took a transatlantic flight to a small US city to meet a CEO with 2 weeks notice.

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