I look at those failed attempts and begin to think it would be easier to sell Executives crack.

Lets look at the top 5 things you can do to have a better success rate with the C-Level crowd.

1. Cardinal rule, call early in the morning or late in the afternoon. Such a basic thing to know as an account manager but how often do I see someone trying to reach an Executive at 6:45am or 6:30pm? Not often enough! You all know this rule but you become to impatient and call right after lunch. It could take you 30 days of trying on off hours but sooner or later you will have your chance. Wake up early or slide that call in from your cell phone while your kids are at soccer, just make sure you do it!

2. Do your research. Integrate things you learned about the business or individual into the call, this will make the prospect pay attention to what your saying. No one wants to listen someone that doesn’t know what their talking about.

3. Make sure your product or service can do them some good before you even waste a call. Take an issue they have and convey it so whatever it is your selling will have some value to them. The more it effects the person your calling the better chance you have of succeeding.

4. Don’t rush off the phone. Do not believe that just because you cold called them it means they want to get you off the phone. I equate it to when I was learning to snowboard, my body always wanted to fall even though I didn’t need to. It was the mind making me weak as it already was planning my failure. I had many chatty Executives go on and on so keep them on the line and talking about relevant information until you have accomplished your goal.

5. Be bold. I rarely meet a C-Level individual that is really shy. These are high powered people that will eat your lunch in a heartbeat. Now I am not talking about being cocky, arrogant or slick, just tell it like it is without all the slimy talk. Be strong and powerful with your statements and you will not only gain respect but you will have someone listening. Meek people do not well in sales.

Do you have some other tips? Post up a comment.

Save the time and the hope that someone is going to call you back. If you have someone on your list you are trying to reach then call until you get them live on the phone and make something happen. I see way to many people getting lazy or doing feel good work by leaving voicemails and 1% of the time something comes from it.

My best policy is you do not leave a voicemail unless it is an information call that someone requested such as ” we will meet tomorrow at 2pm” type of information. Other then that you need to call until you get a live body because before you know it you have left 2-3 voicemails and the person is already tired of you.

I always look at it like this, my goal is to get a yes or a no out of someone. Not having a real discussion with them is not an option so if you do not want to do business with me you are going to have to tell me no.

During one startup, we had a national audience whom we wanted to sell our service to. With the founding partners still working their full time jobs at the time we found ourselves making calls on the way to work, on lunch breaks and on the way home. Living in EST, often when we were calling was when people were out to lunch, not in yet and luckily the best part of the day was at the end since people were usually at their desk.

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Instead of focusing on our local area, we realized that we can market nationally so why not use the time zones to our advantage. If we took lunch at 11am, we cold called Chicago and would catch people before lunch since it was 10am. We were able to call into western time zones and catch the early crowd before their day got busy and at the end of our day at 5pm it still left us up to 4 hours of calling time on the west coast since many decision makers still camp out until 6pm.

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This is the kind of creativity that helps a startup survive. This is the kind of business hacking I am talking about. You’re sitting around, lying in bed, driving or soaking in the shower trying to find a hack to give your self and your company a boost. Always keep looking at ALL the angles so you can squeeze as many ideas as you can for your business.