In a today’s tough market, more decisions are being made by senior officers than ever before. Use your time wisely by selling to the top when you can.
I can’t emphasize this enough! If in doubt, call the top. It’s very tempting to make a “safe” phone call to someone way down in a company who you may have a relationship with or (minimally) know won’t flat out reject what you want to talk about. The problem is that when you make that type of call, you’re wasting your time. Whenever budgets get tight, decisions always become more centralized at the top. If you want to receive a piece of that money, then you have to go to the top. This doesn’t mean you can’t make phone calls to people lower down in an organization, but you should only do so to obtain information. Don’t make them part of your sales pitch.
