Kevin Price Host of the Price of Business on Business Talk 1110 AM KTEK (on Bloomberg’s home in Houston) recently interviewed Sanjay Sathe, CEO, RiseSmart – Mr. Sanjay Sathe is the Founder of RiseSmart, Inc. and serves as its Chief Executive Officer and President. Mr. Sathe served as the President of E-Commerce & International Marketing and Senior Vice President of Brierley& Partners. Mr. Sathe has led successful sales and marketing organizations both domestically and internationally. His management background encompasses product marketing, CRM, loyalty programs, branding, marketing communications, public relations and strategic alliance initiatives across the telecommunications, banking, airline and technology sectors.
Tell me about your firm
RiseSmart is a dynamic, fast-paced Silicon Valley venture-backed HR technology company that provides next-gen outplacement solutions. The company leverages a semantic job search technology platform, proven methodologies, and one-on-one support to help employers with their workforce strategy, and displaced employees with their career strategy. Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, it works with a variety of major enterprise and consumer-facing companies that span a vast cross-section of industries.
Tell us your story about reaching C-Level executives to do business?
It is always a combination of things…different strokes for different folks… the main thing is “relentless pursuit”…things that have worked for me include:
· Don’t underestimate the power of a 45-cent postage stamp… sometimes, snail-mail works better than email…I remember sending an email to the top executives of 50 companies and I got a call on my direct line in two weeks…it was the SVP of HR himself, saying he read my letter and was intrigued with the offering and wanted to know more. Of course, for the first couple of minutes I thought it was someone in my company pulling a fast one on me.
· Another tactic that has worked is Fed-Exing a letter/offering…it skips just about everyone and lands at the deck of the target customer. That has worked well for me.
· Calling before 8 AM and after 6 PM has also worked, as you skip the executive assistant then.
· Connecting with senior leaders at conferences helps.
· I have been successful in catching keynote speakers outside the conference rooms…as most of them go after the keynotes within the room.
· As for the standard approach of emails….sending the email on Sunday night works well, as they read it first thing Monday. But the “subject line” is very important…it has to be really catchy or intriguing.
Contact information
http://www.RiseSmart.com