# What is the secret to getting information in front of CEO's of corporations



## mynoblebear (Nov 22, 2009)

What is the secret to getting sales information in front of CEO's of corporations.

The best that I have been able to do is get the correspondence department and I am sure that they promptly file my post cards under G.


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## CharlieM1958 (Nov 7, 2006)

Have photos of him and his secretary?


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## mynoblebear (Nov 22, 2009)

I will have to work on that chalie


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## cabinetmaster (Aug 28, 2008)

GOOD LUCK…..................... almost next to impossible.


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## TopamaxSurvivor (May 2, 2008)

GEt elected to Congress and they will be at your door with money in hand.


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## GaryC (Dec 31, 2008)

http://www.gethuman.com/extended.html
Try this??


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## SteveMI (May 19, 2009)

Corporate managements set up very secure firewalls between "ideas" and "inventions" from outside the company for some simple reasons. Three that I am aware of that pertain to ideas, inventions and product ideas are;

First, they don't want a claim later on over a new product line that someone claims is based on their intellectual property (idea) when the company had been working something similar to the outsiders idea. Casual meeting of CEO with you could trigger that without the CEO keeping extensive and complete notes on what he did or didn't do with your suggestion. CEO wouldn't be able to tell you what they are working on provided they did know all the skunk works in the company.

Second, they don't want to get into a spat between lawyers on how much value the idea is worth. Internal to most all companies and part of the employment contract is that all patents in your name during you employment are assigned to the company, meaning you may only get a token one time payment.

Lastly, if they pursued the idea and then decided it wasn't really marketable in that form there is a potential lawsuit over why they didn't. Their investment could easily go over half million dollars if any tooling was involved, even for prototypes, and you probably wouldn't want to buy them out of that.

Steve.


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## daltxguy (Sep 7, 2007)

You don't want to reach the CEO, you want to reach the purchasing decision makers.
You need to find out who that is and reach them.
You also want to create your 2 min speech which will inspire them to do business with you.
You must be clear about 
a) who you are
b) what you are offering and why it's the best
c) how it helps them ( what problem are you solving?)
d) why you are the best person to offer this product/service

(Btw, you do NOT want to send them sales information - think of what *you *do with sales information that comes to your door). Sales information comes later. First you need to inspire, intrigue, create interest and trust.

Remember, until we change the model, companies are in business for 1 reason only, profit.
If you can improve their profit, you will be given an ear. However, keep in mind that humans still run companies and make purchasing decisions. So you must connect on a human level first.


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## mynoblebear (Nov 22, 2009)

Thank you for all of the helpful information.

As it is I should present an opportunity for the corp to look good in the public eye by helping me in the form of a furniture purchase such as conference room chairs. As a result of helping me the corp will produce positive public relations and as a result there sales will grow and they will all receive huge bonuses. I should make my presentation to the purchasing decision makers and perhaps they will include the public relations department and the advertising departments in on the possibility of this purchasing public relations decision.

In essence they want to say to the public we are a good wonderful corporation helping a struggling American artist in these hard times by giving him a commission on our new conference room chairs and as a result of this his business will thrive and grow as this remarkable country rises from this financial crises that we are all currently in.

Americans helping Americans is how we will all thrive as a country once again.


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## jockmike2 (Oct 10, 2006)

I don't know bear, but I complained on here once about the new Bostich Pancake Compressor and the Director of Corporate Developement of Stanley Bostich emailed me asking what he could do to make things right with me and apologized up and down for the problems I had with the compressor explaining they had a run of bad parts and a few bad compressors got out. Anyway long story short, I got a new compressor with new nailer not even on the market yet fed exed to my house within two weeks from the phone call, and a follow up call from the Director himself to make sure I was satisfied. He had given me his home phone, his work phone, his cell phone and his email address so I could reach him anytime. mike


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## mynoblebear (Nov 22, 2009)

Thank you for the input Mike perhaps someone that is sitting in a corporate desk will read this topic and contact me. I welcome all the help that I can get.


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## jockmike2 (Oct 10, 2006)

That was just happenstance. My point was they are reading this stuff and if they want to they will contact you. Sometimes it's the sqeaky wheel that gets the grease, you just never know. In my case it was one of his employees that read my gripe and told the Director, but hey who cares, he heard the squeak.


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## mynoblebear (Nov 22, 2009)

Point well taken Mike. Three cheers for squeaky weals. Grape vines do work in mysterious ways.


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## gerrym526 (Dec 22, 2007)

Bear,
I've been selling software for over 20years to companies who think it's too expensive, doesn't work, and think the sales rep is old and ugly-LOL!
Here's a technique that will often (not always) work to get you in front of the CEO. Start with his/her administrative assistant (in most cases a women-don't take offense ladies, I say it with great respect)-who is the gatekeeper of Mr. Big's time. 
Hone your approach (much like you laid out in your speech about a corp wanting to show its appreciation of fine art), and send or leave the admin asst something to show him.
Afterwards, send her an FTD vase of flowers (doesn't have to be expensive) and a thank you note.
Gerry


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## BillWhite (Jul 23, 2007)

Bear, ya gotta keep the sentences readable if you're putting anything in writing. 62 words in one sentence makes comprehension pretty tough. I see too much of this type communication (?) coming across my desk, and I still don't k now what you're selling.
Bill


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## mynoblebear (Nov 22, 2009)

Thank you for the input Garry. I will give it a try. When you have nothing you have nothing to loose.


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## DerekL (Aug 18, 2008)

As it is I should present an opportunity for the corp to look good in the public eye by helping me in the form of a furniture purchase such as conference room chairs. Etc..

I can't think of a faster way to get them to tune you out during your presentation and forget you utterly .00000001 seconds after your hand touches the doorknob on the way out.

Seriously, companies know darn well these kinds of things produce almost no publicity and have essentially no impact on public relations. Not to mention that if they are a company of any size, they get a dozen of these 'sob stories' on a daily basis.


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## mynoblebear (Nov 22, 2009)

Thank you for the positive criticism Bill. I will try to be short and precise. I am still patting myself on the back for learning how to type. Getting the message across is another skill altogether. And then there is spelling.


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## hObOmOnk (Feb 6, 2007)

What kinds of CEO's for what kinds of organizations?
There is no such thing as a standard CEO.


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## mynoblebear (Nov 22, 2009)

Question for Derk Beermerton

I was sitting in front of the TV one evening and the local news showed that City cards is in the middle of remodeling an entire floor for their executives at their corporate headquarters.

The news station showed that they had eight conference rooms several lunch rooms exercise rooms Etc. They are going to spend a huge chunk of money on furniture.

The question is who gets the contract for the furniture. Should they give it to china or to american companies. I can not seem to cut through the barriers that are in place to talk to a single person.

What should the proper approach be. Stating what does not work does not help. What does work?


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## DerekL (Aug 18, 2008)

Short answer: nobody no for certain what works. There is no guarantee.

Longer answer: What does work, or at least go a long way? Being a shop capable of handling that level of work in a reasonable timeframe and having a reputation for doing that kind of work - and being the lowest bidder. Your own stated approach (on your home page) is the very antithesis of those things.

As to 'stating what does not work does not help', that's complete bull********************. Knowing what doesn't work, and why, is every bit as important in sales as in designing a jig. It means you don't have to try that and know what pitfalls to avoid.


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## NathanAllen (Oct 16, 2009)

Grease the skids, not in the form of cash in brown bags but more in the shape of how can you make the purchasing manager's life easier.

What are you fighting against? Cost isn't it, let's face it purchasing office furniture is always an expensive endeavor, custom or off the rack. Most companies buy theirs from a book, the same book they buy their paperclips and pens and candy for the front desk.

Now, many large and small companies have a book they like to give to the Purchasing Manager, so many that they call and email and fax and ship promotional material and call yet again to get a chunk of that book business. Purchasing Managers get very good at avoiding taking those calls, because if they spend all their time dealing with people who want to be vendors they won't get any of their actual business done.

The right company isn't going to buy office furniture from a book. My last job was working at a company where our Purchasing Manager took care of the paperclips and the Marketing department (me included) spent a good portion of our time making sure the office didn't look like it was bought out of a book.

The one rule we had to follow? Uniformity.

You see one reason so many people buy out of a book is that this person at this level should have identical furniture to that person at that level. Once you get into custom pieces you end up with resentment. No matter how nice two unique desks look one will be judged better, and the other person will waste countless hours scheming how to get an equally nice desk.

That's your first benefit to a Purchasing Manager: Uniformity, you have no problem producing a million identical pieces, at least as long as they adhere to the same high quality standard.

Next reason PMs buy out of that book is "replaceability." If someone decides to spill coffee all over their office chair the reaction of the PM depends on that person's level. Coordinators/Assistants get to sit on a smelly chair, Directors and VPs will need a new chair delivered before the coffee would dry naturally. This is an area where you can counter, why worry about "replaceability" when you can have actual and real durability.

If you sell them on durability then the only obstacle with replacing "replaceability" will be with turnaround time. How long will it take you to replace a broken piece, or to manufacture furniture for a new area/hire?

So your second benefit is durability with rapid turnaround, throw in price matching and you'll have a nibble

I have this great bookcase, part of the reason I got into woodworking is that I'd love to be able to reproduce it, mainly because the model was retired and I have zero chance of purchasing a second one to turn it into something less of an odd man out shelf.

To cut to the chase you're third benefit is longevity. Your furniture can be reproduced and you'll spend the rest of your life at the beck and call of that company, at least that's what you want them to believe.

Finally you have professionalism. Not only should you have a logo and a website but they should be designed by a Graphic Designer. They work cheaply, especially junior designers and especially people just workign on freelancing. If you get lucky you'll find one who also dabbles in photography so you can build a product portfolio. Being able to demonstrate that you're serious is how you'll cross the line from BS artist trying to scam the company to high-end office products supplier.

Uniformity, Durability, Rapid Turnaround, Longevity and Professionalism.

You'll need a website (even if just an online display gallery), a portfolio, a dedicated mobile number (don't have your wife or kids pick up the phone), a plan, a well thought out introduction/sales pitch, business cards, client referrals/references and as always in business that doesn't come knocking on your door a lot of luck.


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## TraumaJacques (Oct 25, 2008)

Interesting thread… I am curious to how many chairs can you produce in let say a week? You said 8 board rooms and if my corporate experience is correct you can usually sit 12-16 per board table. So let's say 128 chairs. When can you deliver them? Because once they agreed on a price they will want them "now" unlike the private buyers who will give you time to craft a truly fine woodworking piece. Are you willing to sacrifice quality for quantity?
I think your idea is great good luck.


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## mynoblebear (Nov 22, 2009)

I stand corrected Dirk and I realized that after I posted that response. What does not work is just as important as what does work. You are correct knowing what does not work tells you what not to try and not to wast your time. Knowing what does not work allows you to focus on what does work and or at least try something new and find out the hard way.


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## mynoblebear (Nov 22, 2009)

The answer for Jacques is that if the money is there hiring people for a production run can normally fix the delivery time within what they are requesting. My Job becomes managing work flow and quality control Etc.


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## DerekL (Aug 18, 2008)

Only if you are lucky enough to be able to hire enough qualified people in a short enough time frame, and have sufficient tools, jigs, and materials for them to work with, and a shop big enough for them to work in, and financing to cover your costs between starting work and final payment…

Hence the preference by buyers to purchase from those with a given track record. There's a lot of pitfalls and roadblocks between a one man shop and small scale industrial production.


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## OhValleyWoodandWool (Nov 9, 2009)

I've been in sales for over 25 years. Unless your trying to reach the CEO of a Fortune 1000 companay then you ALWAYS want to present to the CEO and NOBODY else. The CEO has the ultimate ability to say yes. Everybody else only has the authority to say no which they exercise with remarkable zeal. It takes determination, patience, determination, guts, networking and lots of determination to present to the right people. The only secret is determination.

Remember the first two rules of sales:
1) Some Will, Some Won't, So What, Who Cares. (just another way of saying stay determined)
2)If everybody else is doing something STOP! IMMEDIATELY!!!!

Doug


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## sikrap (Mar 15, 2009)

I spent 30 years in Purchasing. You should contact the Purchasing Dept. of the company you want to sell to and show them how your furniture is a better value than what they are already buying. Assuming you can get in to see them , you should follow up a couple of weeks later to see if there's any interest. It is highly doubtful that PR will have any effect, unless you are a disabled veteran, minority-owned business, or woman-owned business. The vendors that I tried to help were the ones that showed me how their product was going to help us. It is also a good idea to stop in and see them every so often. Phone calls will do absolutely nothing. Good Luck!!


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## mynoblebear (Nov 22, 2009)

Thank all of you for the continued effort to solve the dilemma of how to get your product in front of the person in a corporation that has the authority to make a purchasing decision.

The question poses several obstacles to overcome and the one that I still have trouble with is when you present your product to the purchasing department for instance and you are offering a chair for $4,500.00 and the chair in the book or catalog that they normally purchase from is $500.00 how do you stop that person in the purchasing department from tossing your product in the trash or presenting it to someone that can make the decision to purchase your product.

I know the fast answer to this is you do not stand a chance and 100% of the time they will through your product in the trash. However I know that I have seen several conference rooms in corporations that have chars in the $15,000.00 dollar range. Without question the answer is that it is possible.

Perhaps it is as simple as reputation and the word of mouth. An example would be that several executives in the building had purchased a given craftsman's work. The executives had lunch and brought the craftsman to the attention of the decision maker. The decision maker was thinking of up grading there conference room and an introduction to the craftsman's work was made.

If it takes until I am seventy years old for the decision makers in these corporations to hear that I exist. I will not be interested in their business. When you know that a given corp is in the progress of making those decisions. Finding the name of the decision maker and the method of getting your information in front of that person is still the challenge.

If you do not try you will not succeed.


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## DerekL (Aug 18, 2008)

You're confusing apples and oranges to some extent bear… Comparing companies which by $500 chairs with companies that buy $15,000 chairs is just silly. Sure, the latter exist, but they are in no way evidence that the former can be induced to buy your chairs, doubly so since they are nearly ten times the cost they are accustomed to paying.

If your chairs cost $4500, then your market is the guys used to paying $4000+ for a chair, the guys paying $500 are irrelevant.

And yeah, if you want to sell a chair for $4500, you'd better have a helluva reputation.


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## pknight (Oct 4, 2009)

Bear, 
I agree with bently. There is probably a designer out there with serious heartburn because the committee overseeing the redo keeps changing their mind!
The interior design could be wrapped up in the contract with the General contractor… who has hired a decorator. The only thing that the CEO is going to see is a short list of two to four options that fit within the scope of work that the decorator was given.

In my opinion, I think that you have to try to get on that short list of options that will be presented to the exec, as well as trying to get infront of him. Remember, when selling, they have to percieve that there is a problem that needs to be fixed in order for them to open their wallets.

check with your county court house. A notice of commencement should have been filed as part of the permiting process…. heck, see if you can get to the permit box at the job site. The contractors name is on that form!

best of luck


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## TopamaxSurvivor (May 2, 2008)

Peter has some good points. In the electrical business, the CEO is the lst person in the world I would want to see. All the processes, procedures and products are well defined when thye make the decision to spend the long Yankee Green ) I would suppose it is the same in decorating and furniture. WE never know waht is going in during the build, then there are a bunchh of change order to fit the occupants ) seems like a big waste of money to me. But tha tis the way it has been for 40 yrs and getting worse, not better.


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## a1Jim (Aug 9, 2008)

I had a problem at Coldwell Banker years ago and tried and tried to contact the CEO but had no successes.
It was very important I contact him. My wife had found the CEO's name out of a listing in a book so she said I'll
get a letter to him (long before the Internet) She Mailed it off and in three days I had a call form the CEO
and resolved the problem. When he called he said he had to call because off our creativity, I said thanks not having a clue what he was talking about. After the his phone call I called my wife at home and said we had our problem worked out and that he had called. She said I thought that might work and I said what? She had address the letter to My johnny Smith(I think his name was Jonathan don't really remember his last name) and marked it very very private, with just a very faint mist of perfume.


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## bench_dogg (Oct 23, 2009)

From what I have seen at companies I worked for, there are 2 classes of furniture-what the workers sit on and what they use for customer areas. The last company I worked for had reasonable furniture for engineers, mostly stuff from the big catalog though. We had to get some new chairs at one point and were pretty much capped at $500/chair. I think it would be hard to justify more than 1k on a chair here.

The company also had a super tricked out conference room which they used to give presentations to customers. The furniture in this area was of a different caliber than what was used in the rest of the building. I think all of the chairs were the chromed out Aeron variety, the conference table had flip up panels to access ethernet and power and enough room to stash the power brick on your laptop. The room was packed with computing power but all of it was hidden from view. Projectors and screens magically appeared when you needed them and then went back into the ceiling when you were finished. I think if you are going after the high end office market, it would be necessary to build this type of stuff and establish a reputation around it.

-bd


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## mynoblebear (Nov 22, 2009)

This thread has presented a vast amount of valuable information that I hope will help people that art trying to achieve the near impossible as I am doing. Selling anything over a thousand dollars is not like going to the flea market setting up a card table and placing your product on it. "If you think what you've always thought, you'll do what you've always done. And if you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got". If you do not try you will not succeed.


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