Lack of executive engagement at onboarding

Numrah_Irfan

The onboarding agenda is strategic (goal setting, optimization, business planning) however we have trouble getting Exec level to our onboarding meetings. Director level attends, and VP level tends to opt out at the last minute. Any thoughts or ideas on how to get them to the table?

Russell Bourne

@Numrah Irfan time is often the biggest ask you can make of anyone, especially at the executive level.  A huge part of them being effective at their job is delegation.

With that in mind, one of the best ways to gain executive engagement is to make it easy for them to say no.  If they think engaging with you is going to be time consuming, they probably won't do it.

When a VP sends a Director in their place, you can always ask the VP permission to re-engage with them afterward to share results.  They'll almost always say yes to that.  Then, when you email them your meeting notes, keep it high-level, in context of larger goals, and separate from the main operator thread.  Be explicit that there's no action required of them, but share the time of the next scheduled meeting and that they can attend if they want.  

Since this is about onboarding, can you share what kind of exec engagement your sales team has?  Can they help you by sharing what company goals these executives care about?  That will help your messaging greatly.