C-Suite Selling Strategies
The Art of the Meeting
There’s nothing more frustrating than getting a meeting with a C-Suite Executive only to have something go wrong. Sometimes you know what that “something” is, and other times you watch things fall apart with little to no understanding about what happened. In both situations, you end up walking away with nothing to show for your time and effort. This is what happens to most companies. It’s not because their product or service is bad, it’s simply because there was a misalignment between the buyer’s problem and the way you presented your solution.
Human beings are wired to pursue what they want. There are very few exceptions to this rule. So if you’re feeling pullback, resistance or it seems like there is confusion, that is a clue. It is a clue that you are not making it clear to your prospective buyer how your product or service can lead them to getting what they want. The bad news is that this prevents more deals than anything else. The good news is that this is largely within your control to change. The secret is to understand the view of the situation from the eyes of your buyer and craft your entire approach to fully align with the goals they want to achieve and their specific definition of “success.”
Whether or not you do this well is what will be revealed during your meeting with the decision-makers. If you are prepared, there’s a good chance your sale will go to the next step. In my experience, the scope of your work can even expand instantly if you perform well with executives empowered to make real decisions.
Reframing the Purpose of the Meeting
One of the biggest mistakes companies make when selling to healthcare is to develop “tunnel vision.” This is when all they can see are the priorities they have for themselves instead of navigating from the perspective of the buyer.
Remember THIS - selling to healthcare is not about you, your goals, your projections, your desire to achieve real success. Selling to healthcare is about serving your buyer in a way that no one else can. That’s why you will get the sale. Because you made a case and demonstrated why choosing you would provide a benefit to the buyer they cannot get from any other source. It’s about them.
What does this shift in perspective mean when it comes to preparing for a successful meeting with your prospective buyer? It means that the entire purpose of the interaction has completely shifted. Most companies get the meeting to sell their products and services. Selling to healthcare requires a different approach.
The purpose of the meeting is not to pitch. The purpose of the meeting is to solve. To show that your company can solve the real problems of the buyer. No buyer in any company in healthcare wakes up in the morning and asks to spend the day listening to sales presentations. They are looking for solutions to problems. That’s what they want.
That’s what your presentation needs to be about. Yes, you are creating trust. Yes, you are talking about your product or service. But all of those create the support structure for your true goal, which is to prove that you know how to solve the problems that are keeping your prospective customer from getting where he wants to go.
This perspective shift serves as a pressure valve for the person doing the presenting. You’re not showing up in front of executives to do a “song and dance” and hope they like it. You’re showing up to demonstrate an authentic desire to serve and to show that you understand how to move the organization forward towards its goals in a way that no one else can.
Creating an Advantage No One Can Duplicate
Success does not happen by chance. It is the result of preparation. Most companies selling to healthcare treat the sales presentation as a rather static event. They have information they need to convey to the prospective buyer, and the presentation will do much of the “heavy lifting” to move that buyer towards the sale. It will communicate the primary features and benefits of the product or service and explain exactly how it will add value to the buyer’s organization.
This might be a valid strategy selling to small businesses, but at this level, inside of large organizations, with large deals hanging in the balance, the bar for success is much higher. If you walk in and offer a presentation like most companies I’ve witnessed over my decades in healthcare, you will blend in with all of the other “noise.” The chances are good you will never hear from your prospective buyer again. Communication will go dark. You will be forced to “follow-up” and “check-in” until you decide to quit.
The success of your sales presentation is not actually determined by the presentation alone, it is determined by the quality of the preparation that goes into creating the presentation. Preparation, done well, done strategically, will lead to a sales presentation unlike anything your buyer has probably seen before. It will instantly set you apart from the long list of “features and benefits” slide decks that put buyers to sleep.
The sales presentation is not about you. It is not about your company. It is not about making a strong argument for how great your product or service is, how capable, agile or experienced your team is, or anything else about you. The sales presentation is about your buyer. It is about their needs. It is about their dreams. It is about showing them that your product or service can serve as the vehicle to move them towards their goals.
This understanding leads to a completely different approach to building a sales presentation that will create impact. When your goals are aligned with the goals of your prospective buyer, everything will change.
Laying the Foundation For the Sale
When you understand that the purpose of the sales presentation is to demonstrate you know how to solve the problems of your buyer, everything changes about the focus of your preparation.
The spotlight shifts from you and your company to the buyer and his problems. Before we get into the details of how and what to prepare for your meeting, understand that the foundation for a successful outcome is built on your understanding of the product or service you sell.
The knowledge and understanding you have of your product or service is not something you relay directly to the buyer. It serves as the raw material from which you draw to create the insights, perspectives and recommendations that will set you apart from everyone else competing for the sale.
Digging For Gold
This is the point in the process where you become a consultant to your buyer. Even if you’re selling. Even if getting the sale is your entire goal. This not only gives you a real advantage of substance with your buyer, but it also completely shifts your position in relation to the buyer and the other companies competing for their business. Instead of sitting across the table from your buyer, you end up sitting on the same side of the table as they are, seeing the world from their perspective.
A consultant understands the position of the buyer in an objective way. To develop this level of understanding, a consultant spends a fair amount of time gathering the information and other data required to firmly grasp how the organization functions and where the obstacles are that are limiting success.
A consultant can propose solutions to problems that are known and also highlight problems that others do not see. If you want to truly stand out to your buyer, identify serious problems they were not aware of and show how your product or service can solve those in addition to their core challenges.
The smart strategy is to go “digging for gold.” This means you are collecting the necessary data and information to see what others do not. You start by deepening your understanding of the problems your buyer is experiencing. This transforms the quality of your research and gives it a focused purpose. You are looking for things you might not have been told. You are looking for insights about how the organization is functioning, the obstacles it is experiencing and possible solutions for removing those obstacles. You can use publicly available information like earnings calls, press releases, or interviews to achieve this.
In the book The Challenger Sale, they call it “Commercial Insights.”
Commercial insights are the backbone of what makes a Challenger rep stand apart. Instead of echoing what buyers already know or chasing surface level needs, commercial insights reframe the customer’s reality. They reveal a problem, cost, or missed opportunity the buyer has not fully recognized, and they connect that insight directly to the unique strengths of the seller’s solution. The power of a commercial insight is that it disrupts the buyer’s current thinking in a way that is both surprising and undeniably relevant. It teaches the buyer something important about their business and creates constructive tension that pulls them toward change. When done well, commercial insights shift the conversation from price and features to value and impact, positioning the seller not as a vendor but as the only partner who truly understands what’s at stake and how to solve it.
Understand that this is the real work when it comes to selling to healthcare. Giving the presentation is not the work. That’s the byproduct of the work. From the C-Suite perspective, executives value meetings that are tightly organized and purpose-driven. They often have limited time, so every interaction needs to demonstrate value quickly. You can’t do that if all you know about is your product or service.
C-Suite executives appreciate when salespeople come prepared with a strong understanding of their specific challenges. This is why pre-meeting preparation is so crucial.
Structuring a Presentation They Won’t Forget
I have sat through countless bad presentations to healthcare executives. Presentations that had no purpose, no energy, no focus. Presentations that didn’t “solve,” only pitched. Presentations that were a conclusive demonstration that a seller had little to no understanding of the real problems their buyers were facing. If you want to create endless frustration when selling to healthcare, destroying all of your hard work with a single bad presentation is the way most companies do it.
Bad presentations make great potential buyers run away. They can tell, almost immediately, that you are not ready to perform at the level they require of a solution provider. That’s why they go silent after the meeting. That’s why they don’t respond to your follow-up, that’s why you can never really get an answer, often until months later, about the decision they made. You got the meeting because someone thought you might be a good choice. Your presentation proved to the executives that that you aren’t.
What makes a “bad” presentation?
Buzzwords without substance ruin a presentation. The more jargon you use, the further you move from addressing your buyer’s challenges.
Overly technical details also ruin a presentation. Unless your buyer specifically asks for a presentation like this, keep the technical information to a minimum. Even if your product or service is technical, it is simply serving as the vehicle to move your buyer towards his goals. The more tightly your presentation remains focused around that purpose, the better it will perform.
Overpromising is another activity that will poison your presentation and sabotage your relationship with your buyer. As one CEO mentioned to me in my interviews, “Nothing kills trust faster than saying you can do everything when it’s clear you can’t.”
Based on my experience, here is the presentation framework preferred by C-Suite executives:
Open with their priorities: Start by summarizing their known challenges or goals. You want to show them, right from the beginning, that you’ve “done your homework.”
Focus on outcomes: They don’t want to hear what you do, they want to know what they will get. Make the presentation about their results, not just your product or service.
Keep it visual and concise: Executives prefer clear, impactful visuals over dense slides of text. You get no awards for the volume of information you provide, you only win if it becomes clear to your buyer that you can solve their problems in a way no one else can.
Allow for interaction: They value conversations over monologues, so design your presentation to invite discussion.
The most important thing is to never lose sight of your strategic focus for the presentation. This will set you apart from every other choice you buyer has in a way that nothing else can. The strategy is simple: the goal of the presentation isn’t always to “close the deal” but to build alignment and set the foundation for a partnership. You are not just pitching a solution, you are co-creating one in cooperation with your buyer.
This means that the real goal is often trust-building. As one CFO I spoke with explained, “We’re looking for people who understand our world and can make our lives easier.”
To do this, you want to make sure that your presentation includes these important ingredients:
Proof of credibility: Success stories and/or metrics can provide proof that your solutions create results. As always, make sure you keep them relevant to the problems your buyer wants to solve.
Unique insights: Your goal is not to “please” them. Your goal is to lead them somewhere they aren’t able to get on their own. Executives don’t want generic ideas—they want you to challenge their thinking and address their specific problems.
Practical next steps: End your presentation with a clear, actionable roadmap that your buyer can easily align with. You know where they want to go. Show them how to make it possible. Layout what that journey can look like.
Your presentation should position you as someone who can guide your buyer towards the goals they want to achieve. If you act like a seller, you will be treated like one. If you act like an advisor and demonstrate that you are worthy of trust, you will be given access to a level of respect and attention few “salespeople” will ever see. The secret is to put your focus on the long-term success of your buyer. That’s a strategy that will set you apart from almost everyone.
What Comes After the Meeting
Selling to healthcare is part art and part science. It is a combination of strategy and street-smart intuition that you develop by truly understanding your buyer’s situation. Strategic preparation is an important part of this recipe, but understanding how to “read the room” is extremely important too.
C-Suite executives prefer meetings that end with clear next steps. You don’t want to leave them wondering what is supposed to happen. You are assuming the role of trusted advisor, so that means that guiding your buyer to what’s next is an important function you provide.
End your meeting by recapping key takeaways, clarifying any agreed-upon actions and setting expectations for follow-up. This is the plan. This is also the part of the process where the “street-smart intuition” is important. You must be prepared to read the room. Some executives might want to dictate next steps, others might expect you to take the lead.
How to Follow-Up
C-Suite executives appreciate thoughtful follow-up. Most companies have no idea what this looks like, how to do it or how to elevate this activity to a form of marketing that can increase attraction, strengthen differentiation and make traditional “selling” completely irrelevant.
Here is my “Golden Rule of Follow-Up,” which states: every interaction with your buyer must add value in some way. The important part isn’t to say this rule, it’s to understand what it means so you can put it into practice.
Emails or phone calls to “check-in,” “follow-up” or “see how things are going” break this rule. They add zero value to a C-Suite Executive. If you remember nothing else, remember never to create one of these communications. They push your buyer away by transforming you into a pest.
After you meeting, this is what works:
Send a summary within 24 hours: Highlight what was discussed, agreed upon, and next steps. Make it concise, make it clear. This serves as a reminder that your entire presentation focused on the needs of your buyer.
Deliver any promised materials: Whether it’s a case study, proposal, or other data, send it promptly. Trust is created by promises being made and promises being kept. Even the smallest promise made is an opportunity to strengthen the trust your buyer has in you and your company.
Stay visible: Executives appreciate periodic updates or insights that keep the conversation going without being pushy. This is where adding value becomes a necessity. How can you move your buyer forward towards solutions even before the sale is completed? That’s the question to constantly ask yourself.
Offer a proof-of-concept project. Putting real “skin in the game” is not the traditional behavior of salespeople. This is why you should do it. Not only will a proof-of-concept project allow you to demonstrate the quality and effectiveness of your proposed solution, but your willingness to go “above and beyond” in a way that adds real value to your buyer will instantly separate you from the crowd.
The real secret is to make every interaction with your potential buyer one that adds value. This strategy creates “empathy in action.” It shows you understand your buyer instead of just saying you do.
Selling to the C-Suite Workshop
If your organization sells into hospitals, the Selling to the C-Suite Workshop delivers an immersive experience that elevates how your team prepares, positions, and communicates with executive buyers.
It combines customized strategy, advanced training, and implementation support, giving your team the skills and insights required to sell effectively in healthcare’s complex environment and to succeed in what will matter most in 2026.
To bring this experiential and result-driven workshop to your company, contact lisa@lisatmiller.com
Schedule a Call on Lisa’s Calendar
