May 26th, 2009 @ 5:30 am
CEOs are strange and wondrous creatures. While sometimes you may end up selling to a CEO directly (see “Sell to the CEO! Can You Win the Game?“), in most cases, the most you’ll need to do is to get them on board with a deal that you’ve cut with lower level folks. Therefore, I thought t’would be useful to provide a guide to the commonest varieties of CEO, along with a hint about how to get the executive stamp of approval.
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Ian P
Geoffrey
Are you a sexist at heart?
I know, around 300 UK and European CEO's of which 25 or so are female, including my daughter who heads up a smallish Co. The women are just as cranky, devious, vain, difficult and obtuse as men - and just as simple or difficult to deal with.
A professional, direct and honest approach establishes a long term game plan regardless of their basic characters. Understanding their weaknesses is, however, always useful when squeezing the last few pennies out of a deal.
Ian
sspence2
Geoff,
Ususally, your articles are high value reading and some worthy of distributing, as many of your basic observations are sagacious. T
This is the first real lame one I've seen. Most CEO's are, in fact, a blend of many characteristics and cannot be sterotyped this way to effectively sell to.
annen
Leaving women out of a CEO discussion...You sound like a real winner, Mr. James.
Geoffrey James, Sales Machine
Re: Notes 1 and 3:
I didn't leave women CEOs out. The simple truth is that I haven't met enough of them to uncover the archetypes. Also, since the CEO profiles aren't exactly complimentary, I'm not sure whether this is a bad thing.
Re: Note 2:
I think you may be taking the "field guide" concept a little too seriously.
Geoffrey James, Sales Machine
Just a quick note about female CEOs.
According to Catalyst, a non-profit women's research organization, as of 2009, only 12 Fortune 500 companies and 25 Fortune 1000 companies have women CEOs or presidents.
In my fifteen years as a business journalist, I've interviewed exactly one of them: Meg Whitman. And she's not even a CEO any longer.
Getting on MY case because there aren't many female CEOs is a classic case of shooting the messenger.
Barracuda6369
Interesting article. I've worked with many male CEOs as well as other executives that fall into various combinations of the traits that your article describes. I have yet to work for or with a female CEO. However I have worked with high level, high powered executives that happen to be women. The "plummage" may be different but motives are similar.
Ian P
Re note 5
Forget fortune 500, talk to some of your fellow contributors -
Leila for one - or get along to your local business forum and see how many start-ups are being led by women.
Unfortunately most of the girl led start-ups won't get beyond a certain size, but this is no different from the male led failure rate.
Its just that the blokes are more likely to get right back in there and make sure they succeed second time round.
Ian
PS Comment #1 was intended to be just a little tongue in cheek.
rociofernandez
Interesting. I don't see any women "portrait" or should we just
substitute he for she? I don't think that's the case and women
are adding new profiles to the CEO position. I look forward to
see them reflected in your publication.
Geoffrey James, Sales Machine
Re: Note 7:
Uh... "girl led" I'm not entirely certain that's the best term to use...
Geoffrey James, Sales Machine
Oh, whatever. Changed the post so that it makes fun of women CEOs too. Now everyone will complain that I'm being sexist for doing that. Can't win.
bobchaif
As you are enjoying the humor.
Try reposting it as "The CEO Salesperson Field Identification Guide. Some slight deviations would apply.
Under How to get him on board: (Put Just ask)
I think we are all big enough to enjoy the joke.
Mcbsmith
The most interesting aspect of this is the reminder that all CEO's have their own agenda's and their own style. Ignore either at your peril. Before they were CEO's, they were CXO's. Look for similarities among CXO's and you might find some interesting fodder from which to form influencing strategies.
Geoffrey James
Geoffrey James has sold and written hundreds of features, articles and columns for national publications including Wired, Men's Health, Business 2.0, SellingPower, Brand World, Computer Gaming World, CIO, The New York Times and (of course) BNET. He is the author of seven books, including Business Wisdom of the Electronic Elite (translated into seven languages and selected by four book clubs), and The Tao of Programming (widely quoted on the Web as a "canonical book of... more »
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