Great, you have managed to secure a meeting with the CEO of your potential first customer. You have already briefly told him/her what your company does in e-mail or in a short phone conversation. He/she is extremely busy but you have been granted 20 mins of facetime to pitch your offering.
This is a great opportunity for you but now what? How should you approach this?
Step one: If you already have a generic corporate presentation of your company put together - bin it for now. This meeting requires careful thought and a tailored communication strategy.
Step two: If available download and read the financial report of your potential customer. For publicly traded companies this will be available on their website and contain very valuable information on the company's financial performance, where they have done well and not so well, and finally their strategic focus areas for the coming year(s). Also consider news reports and press releases from the company to make sure you have as complete a view and understanding as possible of your potential customer. CEOs are normally (at least the ones I have met) very friendly. However they have a lot of things on their mind, most importantly running a business and meeting company targets. They have a stressful job but they will always look at ways to address any challenges which they may have. And hey, the CEO has already agreed to give you some valuable facetime, there are most likely some challenges that need to be addressed or things that his/her company can improve.
Step three: Link your offering to any of the challenges that the customer may have based on your work from step 2.
The meeting:
Have no more than one or two people from your organisation attend this meeting. You want to make it as personal and informal as possible.
Dress smart, if you are a guy wear a suit and consider wearing a tie (depending on the business culture in the country where you are meeting). Yes this somehow contradicts the previous statement about being informal but you should make sure that you are never underdressed compared to the person you are meeting, especially the CEO. You need to come across as being professional.
Introduce yourself and chit chat for 1-2 minutes when you first meet with the CEO but be very careful you dont waste your valuable minutes. You have a job to do, use your time wisely. You are looking to get two things out of this meeting and two things only.
1. Buy-in from the CEO that you can offer something of value to him/her and their company.
2. An introduction from the CEO to someone that he/she trusts in their organisation who you can continue your engagement with.
If you get the first thing done you should be able to achieve the second.
Prepare questions and ask your questions. Never be afraid to ask the customer questions, including a CEO. Listen very carefully when they respond - take proper notes. If you ask a question and they dont want to answer then they will let you know. If you dont ask you will never find out.
DO NOT PRESENT A BUNCH OF SLIDES, 4-6 slides at most (no slides at all may even be better if you are a good communicator, perhaps meet over a coffee if you can). If you do present slides do not overload them with information. Don't create overly colourful slides, or use too much generic marketing speak with fancy words (you want to stand out from the crowd), but rather get to the point of the message you want to give your audience. How can you help this CEO! Focus less on the technical details and more on why your solution is different in the market and on the business benefits for your client..
Make sure that you come across as having a good understanding of your customer's company. Highlight in the meeting some of their challenges that you are aware of. Dont give the impression that you are meeting 5 CEOs per week and that you are telling all of these the same story. Demonstrate that you have done your homework and that you come prepared.
Make sure you save a few minutes of allocated time for the last part of your meeting. After you have communicated how you believe you can help the CEO and his/her company, ask for a follow up meeting or an introduction to a trusted member in the CEOs organisation. If you get his/hers commitment to this then you have done well and the meeting has been a success.
If the CEO asks you to send on the slides and tells you that he/she will look at them - then you have probably failed.
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