When was the last time you involved executive leadership in your sales process?If it’s something that feels daunting, nerve-wracking, or like too much work, this episode is for you. When leveraged correctly, you set your executive team up to come into the sales process swinging (and they’ll probably knock down that sale if you get our analogy). So why aren’t more people doing it?Toby Carrington, Chief Business Officer at Seismic, brings his invaluable insight into the critical yet nuanced art of engaging executives early in the sales cycle to build relationships, trust, and, ultimately, better business outcomes.Here are the key takeaways from our conversation with Toby:Engage executives early for meaningful impact: Involve senior executives early in the sales process to build relationships and trust rather than as a last-minute effort. The unique value senior leaders add, like domain expertise, peer-to-peer insights, and best practice sharing, enables genuine conversations focused on the prospective customer and outcomes rather than the product alone.Prioritize personalization and careful outreach: When reaching out to executives, personalization, authenticity, and relevance hold extreme importance. A strategic and well-briefed approach that ensures communication is tailored to the executive's preferences and context avoids BDRs and SDRs misusing their executive team’s time.Focus on strategic long-term relationships: Building longer-term strategic relationships, not just selling, involves understanding the context and background of the person, aligning interactions with the sales cycle, and maintaining genuine and human connections.Jump into the conversation:[03:18] The value of leveraging senior executives [06:11] Navigating timing within the sales cycle[08:22] Managing the fine line between relationship-building and sales objectives[14:49] Setting schedule boundaries [18:44] Understanding the role of authentic connections [24:10] Strategies for building engagement[29:02] Common pitfalls made when engaging executives in the sales cycle[31:25] Heather and Steve’s main takeaways Continue the conversation with these resources:Connect with Toby Carrington to keep this conversation going.Learn more about Go-to-Market Magic and tune into past episodes at gotomarket-magic.com.