Let's be honest – most B2B marketing is frustrating. Horrible LinkedIn articles, clearly AI-generated, regurgitate basic ideas. There's a lot of talk about empathy and B2H approaches, but they often feel patronizing or too general to be useful.
It’s a pain point that we hear a lot about from our own B2B clients and something we fight against in our work. At Xpedition, one of our company's values is to reach for impact. It's a promise “not to create noise, but amplify above it to inspire action." This is why we wanted to share insights from our partnerships with some of the world’s largest tech companies and how we’ve helped them build meaningful B2B relationships with their customers.
Understanding the Moat
A recent Foundry.IO study found that senior executives are spending less time directly with vendors due to the increasing demands of their roles. More importantly, many executives are surrounded by a protective layer of team members whose job is to shield them from external distractions. This "moat" creates a barrier, making it difficult for sellers to gain direct access to decision-makers beyond a transactional relationship.
This isn’t a bad thing. The structure exists to do a job and do it well. The fact that you manage to jump over that moat to get a call doesn’t actually mean you’ve been successful. More often than not, it means the moat has failed, and rather than rewarding you, they will use your experience to tighten it up.
So, you need to rethink how you cross that divide in a meaningful way.
Find Their Downtime
We aren’t talking about tracking them down on their weekends here. Instead, find the moments when executives are not focused on delivering results and have the opportunity to absorb new information. If there is a relationship between your business and that moment, then even better.
For example, we recently worked with one of the world’s largest computer companies to help them identify new ways to target CIOs—a group notoriously difficult to engage. Our research revealed that one of their most valued moments was flying to and from our large-scale events. These flights provide them with a rare opportunity to catch up on tasks and relax without the expectation of being reachable.
Instead of interrupting this valuable downtime, we enhanced it. We worked with them and their team to identify the key problems they faced and arranged for experts who could help solve these issues to sit next to them on the flight. This non-formal interaction allowed for meaningful conversations and valuable insights.
Obviously, this is a high-cost approach, but by the time they landed, their relationship with our team was tightened, and they brought down the drawbridge proactively to let us into the business for meaningful chats.
Create Space for Non-Competitive Sharing
The pace of change has accelerated dramatically in recent years, causing anxiety among senior executives about maintaining their competence levels in their narrow and category sectors. To stay informed, many executives over-index on platforms like LinkedIn, pulling in information and tracking the outputs and the relative optics of their peers. Our research shows that they are also often monitoring colleagues in competing departments to replicate decisions and stay competitive.
Exploring this topic further, we heard that our senior tech exec audience are looking for more inspiration and benchmarks, whilst being very careful who they engage, feeding the classic scenario faced by execs in all sectors: feeling isolated.
To address this reality, we organized a series of intimate dinners hosted by world-renowned chefs. The nights were based around the chefs speaking about their experiences leading high-performing teams in an industry obsessed with new trends. However, what the event truly created was a Chatham House Rules space where CIOs could speak candidly about what they needed in order to be successful. These dinners facilitated deep, wide-ranging conversations, providing attendees with valuable perspectives and fostering a sense of community. Every participant left feeling that it far surpassed the value provided by traditional networking dinners.
Remember What ‘Special’ Looks Like for Them
A tried-and-true approach is the classic sports or entertainment invite for this audience. It’s a great way to get closer to your prospects in an environment where the excitement of the event will help break down barriers. It’s also something that most large brands are doing—which doesn’t mean you should stop. Just that we have found that it becomes less impactful.So, what can you do to differentiate? First, remember these are high net worth people who can afford most experiences themselves. Time, and not ticket-price is the most valuable commodity so consider creating an experience they couldn’t organize or facilitate themselves. This may mean creating ‘money-can’t buy experiences’, but it also might mean creating ‘time-can’t buy experiences’. If you are going to be leveraging the assets you have as a rights-holder, consider how you can respect the reality that your customer might be leaving their family to join you. Open the invitation to their partners and children and organize on-site childcare, or encourage them to bring a friend or valued colleague. Expanding the support you provide will show that you understand the real value of their time and that the effort you make to support them goes far beyond the transactional.
Conclusion
In a world where senior executives are increasingly difficult to reach, finding innovative ways to engage with them is crucial. By understanding their downtime and creating non-competitive spaces for sharing, we can build authentic connections, treating them like humans and not a $ sales target.
This approach not only helps in broaching the moat but also in establishing lasting, meaningful relationships with top decision-makers.