How to pitch a meeting to a senior exec
A few month ago I sat in a presentation where a Executive General Manager of a major bank told a group of IT people to ‘Be more seen’ and ‘Be famous for something’.
He said that ‘working hard is not enough. Working hard won’t separate you from everyone else. Everyone is flat out and working hard’.
With that EGM’s advice in mind, I suggest to my junior and senior clients that they carve out a dedicated 30 minutes every week for ‘Be more seen/Be famous for something’ planning time.
That is, that they make a weekly priority to plan and find people who they can learn from/can help them in their career – and then contact those people, in order to buy them a coffee, breakfast or lunch.
Here is a sample email template.
Subject line: “New contact/Your wisdom – my learning/20 minutes”
Message text:
“Karen,
We haven’t met before. As you are a top performer I feel you’d be an ideal person to help me grow as a business person. I work in Solution Delivery for WAC.
If you can spare 20 minutes (I’ll fit in with your schedule, including before or after hours) I’d love to buy you a coffee at a café near your city office – to tap your wisdom. Whatever time-frame works for you would be fine with me.
Please let me know if you would be open to arranging this meeting.
Thank you for your consideration.
Cheers,
michael kelly
0418 215 049”
Now this is just one template to use. You would want to adapt the language to your style. If you get the meeting, make sure you plan well for it. After the meeting make sure you thank the person. (Posting a greeting card to the person is one way I thank people).
I recently used the above template to arrange a meeting with a senior person I had worked with 20 years ago. I’ll be meeting with him later this month.
Your CALL to action/HOW to apply’ for this post: Begin scheduling a regular 30 minute ‘Be more seen/Be more famous’ time slot. Once you have identified people to meet. Contact them for a meeting. Don’t be put off or stop contacting people if you get rejected or get no response. If you persist, you will find people who will meet with you – you’re on your way to Being more seen/Be famous for something.
I used Eamonn O’Brien’s book How to Make A Powerful Speech. This is a great book for things like this, I did much better after reading this book so I recommend it. His site is threluctantspeakersclub.com. It could be a big help!