In this episode, Susan Tatum sits down with Kathleen Burke, a seasoned expert in executive engagement and relationship building, to discuss strategies for effectively working with C-level executives. Kathleen shares insights from her 16 years at Salesforce and offers advice on building trust, facilitating high-value connections, and positioning yourself as a strategic advisor rather than just a service provider.
Notes from the Show
1. Build Trust Through Transparency: Executives appreciate honesty and clear communication. Be direct with your ask, and provide context for decisions.
2. Engage Executives as Humans: Executives are under immense pressure but want meaningful connections. Approach them with empathy and clarity.
3. The Power of Context and Options: When presenting information or asking for a decision, ensure you provide context and multiple options to facilitate a quicker and more informed response.
4. Small Gestures Matter: Build relationships with the executive team, including assistants and Chiefs of Staff, to gain access and foster long-term connections.
5. Host High-Value Events: Connecting executives through carefully curated events fosters deeper relationships and can lead to significant business opportunities.
What’s Inside:
How to deal with high-level executives.
Building trust as an independent consultant working with the C-suite.
Keys to success for building connections with executives.
Unique opportunities for executive clients.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Transcribed by AI Susan Tatum 0:37
Hi everyone. Welcome back. I'm so happy that you were able to join us. And I'm also happy that my guest, Kathleen Burke, is here today. Kathleen is Kathleen spent 16 years with Salesforce as the vice president of global executive engagement and World Economic Forum, which is a very fancy title. But what I would say about this is that in all the people that I've talked to and met, I don't know of anybody that knows more than Kathleen about working with executives and engaging with them, and that's the topic we're going to talk about today. And so welcome, Kathleen. I'm happy to have you here.
Kathleen Burke 1:15
Thank you, Susan. I'm happy to be here
Susan Tatum 1:18
before we dive into this topic, which I think is really going to be of great interest, because so many of our listeners are dealing with executives, or need to be dealing with executives to be able to sell their services. What tell us just a little bit though about you and how you got in this position, and just a little bit about your background.
Kathleen Burke 1:41
Thank you. Well, I have a background. I was an English major. First of all, shout out to all the English majors in the world. I think we are thriving because we are good at communication and we understand people connection. But I got my start in PR and then moved into marketing communications. But it was at Salesforce that I landed in this world, and I had the great good fortune to be part of the beginning of the creation of this group at Salesforce, because we, Salesforce, at the time, 16 years ago, did not really have the ear of Chief Information Officers. Those are CIOs, and they were critical customer to get on board with what it was that we were doing in order for them to invest in what was, at the time, kind of a new concept, this cloud. And so I fell into the most amazing work of my life, and I have really had so much fun in working with executives, specifically because they just like the rest of us, are a little nervous walking into a room, and it turns out, I'm really good at reassuring them and creating an environment where they're going to have a super productive conversation and create connection with each other and just kind of have fun, kind of like a great dinner party, you know. And you walk in, maybe don't know anybody else at the table, but you sit down and you have share a glass of wine and have a great conversation, and then you have a new friend. But at the end of the day, that's what this is that we did at Salesforce, and then I'm going to continue to be doing out on my own.
Susan Tatum 3:16
I did forget to mention that part about you just have recently, have founded your own independent consulting firm, KB strategy. And I think that's, I think that's great that you're now, you're going to bring all of that expertise and talent out to where people that are not don't have the resources of Salesforce, perhaps can take advantage of your ability to connect people at these high levels. So I have a few questions about, How do you deal with executives, and how are they as different from other people as we might think they are? And what I think I think consultants, high level consultants, should be focusing on creating a strategic advisor, relationship with these executives, and not be pandering to them, or just being a yes person and just implementing whatever it is they tell you. They don't need those people. They've got any of those people. You can tell by listening to me that I probably not good talking to a higher voice
Kathleen Burke 4:19
or maybe you would be great.
Susan Tatum 4:21
So just go on that a little bit. Kathleen, like, what's the world like out there?
Kathleen Burke 4:25
Well, it's they are just people, and they are under incredible stress. And if you think you're busy, they're probably 10 times as busy, right? The demands that are put to them. So I am always thoughtful when I engage with them, but I am focused and directed so very tactically, things like keep the email short, put your ask right up front. If you need to put all this justification in, put it down below the line. But it's also speaking up and being collaborative with them, because they need to know the context of anything. That you're bringing to them. So you can't just say deadlines tomorrow. We need a decision. We need option A, B and C. Our current deadline is this, for this decision, and if we don't do this, our other options are we either don't do the thing, or we push the thing, or, you know, we get a different speaker, or whatever the options are, but I found the most success in giving people options and context and being clear and to the point. And of course, we try to solve as many things as we can before we actually get to them. But you can't take it all on yourself. As the consultant to solve all the problems without their information like they you have to be willing to ask all your questions.
Susan Tatum 5:44
I think that's it. That is a key thing, no matter who you're dealing with, you know, if they're if they're already clients where you're just trying to build a relationship with them, if you don't stop and listen and ask the right questions, then you can easily alienate someone because they think she didn't even listen to me. You know, how does she know what I'm going to do?
Kathleen Burke 6:04
I mean, I have a example of we wanted to do a particular event, and it was coming up extremely quickly. There was a celebrity chef requirement involved. There was really only one chef available that was caliber that we wanted on that day. And so we asked the leader if this person was acceptable, or somebody asked, and they kind of made a face that was interpreted as No, but we hadn't given them enough context like this, really, is it? If we want this, if we want a celebrity chef of a certain caliber, this is the person. And when we went back and gave them that context in the you know, the importance of getting the invitation out to the customers ASAP, they said, Well, of course, that makes perfect sense, and let's move forward. So it's sort of pushing hard enough to get a decision, but giving them the context so that they can decide, yes, we should do this, or no, in fact, maybe we shouldn't. I mean, we should just scrap the lunch, or maybe we shouldn't have a chef, or whatever the decision was.
Susan Tatum 7:09
So I think that's a point well taken. It's like you can't just ask them for to make a decision without telling them really what the choices are and why. So you had when you were at Salesforce, you were in an executive position yourself. Yes, what did you like or dislike about the way folks might have tried to build relationships with you?
Kathleen Burke 7:29
I always appreciated when they understood what it was my current goal and objective was, and would figure out how to support that. I mean, I think that's true for all human beings across the planet, right? We're all very, I don't know, self focused at the end of the day, how can, how can you help me? Or how can we help each other? And that's the beauty of the world. When people find each other, who who resonate, and who get, kind of get each other, then you start to build that trust. And when you build the trust, that's when the magic happens. So you know, don't just come to me with an ask, come with come to me with an idea, with a way to partner, and then let's try that, and then we can kind of prove to each other that we both do what we say we're going to do, and we both mean what we say. And then the trust starts to build, and from there, and that's what happened at Salesforce, with my little team, you know, you get a very high performing team that trusts each other, that moves very quickly and is willing to take chances, because they know that the their partners have their backs, basically. And so that's the, I would say that's the key, right? Like you, you want to be you want to be relevant, you want to be helpful. You want to be one of my favorite words is kind, and I do just mean that like you just need to, there's no reason to not be kind. Always show up with kindness.
Susan Tatum 8:57
Does that ever get interpreted by some people as kindness is a sign of weakness
Kathleen Burke 9:02
people that don't understand humanity. Yes, yeah. I don't mean when I say kind I mean people will tell you like, I remember one time I heard somebody say, Oh, watch out. KB, coming in hot. And I'm like, I never come in hot. What are you talking about? And they're like, No, you when you feel something strongly. It is clear. And, you know, we know not to, yeah, we know what that you mean it. But people will also tell you, I've never been unkind to and Salesforce is a very large organization, so you know, there's a lot of personalities there, and sometimes it's a little challenging to, you know, interact with some folks, but you just got to be kind, you just got to be fair, you got to be consistent, you got to be clear. I think clarity is underrated.
Susan Tatum 9:52
Oh yeah, I got, you see that everywhere where I and I, you know, and I think that probably some of the big consulting firms got big based on making things as complicated as they possibly could.
Kathleen Burke 10:02
So I was like, Where can you put that on one page? Wires, yeah, 20, 40, 60, slide deck.
Susan Tatum 10:10
Well, do you find that executives really appreciate that? Cut to the chase got me to make it simple because they don't have time to be
Kathleen Burke 10:19
they don't
Susan Tatum 10:20
do all this stuff.
Kathleen Burke 10:21
They don't it's interesting. One of, one of the ways we would brief our executives is we would have the sales leader who was on the account write up a little, you know, sort of summary of what state is the account in. Is, how are things going? And of course, they would write a very long summary, even though we would try to limit, we would say 500 words or less, and then it would be very long. So you know one thing, and this is where the English major comes in handy, right? You got to go in, and you got to edit that, and you add some bullets, and you pull out the themes, you pull it to the top of the dock. Here's the executive summary of everything, like, if you're sitting down with 12 customers at a round table. What are the risks? What are the rewards? Who's outspoken, who's kind of quiet, who's happy, who's maybe not so happy, like literally, it is just what you would want to know walking into your own dinner party.
Susan Tatum 11:15
Yeah? So you're just giving them a cheat sheet, and what is it they say there can only remember three things, yeah. So if that so don't bother to go any more, any more deeply. So, you know, I think one of the thing, one of the things that I hear consultants say is that at some point they may get ghosted or ignored, and they're hesitant to follow up because they're afraid that they're going to be too pushy, or they're going to bother them, or some them, or something like that. What are your thoughts on that?
Kathleen Burke 11:45
I say, speak up. It's critical that the client, executive or otherwise, understand what the risk is. If there is, in fact, a risk like if they're not getting back to you, then again, context is just so helpful, because you can tell them, if we don't make a decision on X by y, then these things will happen. And your guidance now, I'm always mindful that I have almost no idea of what's really going on in that executives day. I mean, I've been close enough to it long enough to know that there's some major stuff happening that I'm not aware of, so I'm very careful about say, you know, running it up the flagpole, that it really does require their attention, but I think this is true for any client, right? It's just they appreciate being part of your that you're perceiving yourself or acting as if you were part of their team, an extended part of their team, because the thing that always made me cranky, and I was self employed before I took the job at Salesforce, so I know that stuff tends to run downhill, right? Like there's just so much complexity happening internally at a big company, and then by the time it gets to the poor agency or consultant, or whoever you are, you know it's you've lost time. You've gotten some confusing direction. And so I was very intentional my entire time at Salesforce, with by vendors that they are were partners, and I told them as much as I could, as often as I could, like, hey, this person just left the company, and that's going to potentially affect our budgets, you know? So let's lock in whatever contracts we need to as quickly in the next week before this other thing happens. I mean, I would tell them that level of information in order to allow them to be successful in supporting my business. And the end result was we were two sides of the same coin, like we were both in this, in it together. They wanted me to succeed. I wanted them to succeed. And consequently, there was no ghosting going on. And if, God forbid, I got too busy and didn't get back to them, they felt comfortable enough to come back to me and say, Hey, we potentially have a problem that this doesn't happen in this time frame, which I appreciate. I don't want any problems.
Susan Tatum 14:06
So it's part of the consultant's job, and this is stating the obvious, is keeping things on track and getting and keeping up with the deadline, you know, whatever small or not, small, and forcing it forward
Kathleen Burke 14:19
I will say acknowledging the fact, and I think most people do this, but just acknowledging that you don't know what their day holds, but that you want to see them succeed, and that's why you're reaching out. That's helpful, because, and again, brevity is the key to success here, because I can tell you, anytime I saw an email that was more than two sentences, I was like, I don't know what this is. Why am I? Yeah, like, don't give me a problem. Help me solve a problem. Tell me what to do.
Susan Tatum 14:54
So you know when you also, I think earlier in this conversation, quickly alluded to a form for your communication, for with email, like putting the ask up front, like, what is it you want, and then the details behind it?
Kathleen Burke 15:08
Yeah, it's so funny, because I had the most amazing team at Salesforce and but they, often times, not always, would want to put all the justification, because they, you know, they felt bad, as we all do, but bothering somebody. And I was like, Okay, well, that's a beautiful email, but the ask is in paragraph three, and they're never going to read that. So let's get the ask in the first line and two bullets of context, and then this is where I was saying the too long didn't read like it really does serve a purpose. You can put it below your signature if the executive really wants the full background, and if you feel it's compelling enough that they have that, but the beginning better be right up front. The ask better be right at the top.
Susan Tatum 15:55
So you said you can put it below your signature. So is it like, would you put a PS.
Kathleen Burke 16:00
Yeah,
Susan Tatum 16:01
you want to know it, or addendums or something, or, you know,
Kathleen Burke 16:04
yeah, I would just put it at the bottom, and I would say, you know, if, if you want the excruciating detail behind the context of this request here, or I'm also happy to jump on a call
Susan Tatum 16:16
And so you got to be pretty when you're dealing at that level. I guess you do. You talked about flexibility. You got to be available to jump on calls within a reasonable amount of time
Kathleen Burke 16:24
well. And I also want to say, I mean, oftentimes you're working with the executives teams at these larger companies, and they are under an incredible amount of stress. I mean, I know the executive is but so is the team. And the team is being, you know, their job is managing the crazy schedule and all the multiple asks, and so having a lot of compassion for them as well, and really just building the relationship. I mean, at the end of the day, all of our work just, I think, comes down to connection with another human being. And so I would as much as possible make time for a coffee chat. You know, get to know that person as a person.
Susan Tatum 17:04
to the person that's your key contact, if you don't have direct access to. And really, I mean, I guess, you know, we talked about the What's In It For Me thing, right? That person I mean, the best thing you can do for that person is to make them a hero.
Kathleen Burke 17:18
Yes, I love the executive assistants and Chiefs of Staff for C level folks. They are whip smart. They are juggling the entire business, and they are just buried in a mountain of work. So if they if when your name comes up on their email or your phone number comes up on their phone, and they're like, oh my gosh, I get to talk to Kathleen, yay. That's what you're going for. Because they're know they know that what I'm calling it's probably something high profile, it's probably a tiny bit of an issue or a decision that needs to be made, but they know that I'm going to make the process as pleasant as possible, because we're in it together, and that's where, that's why I think kindness is so important.
Susan Tatum 18:04
Well, you mentioned that you just, it's, it's humans that we're dealing with, and you can't, I mean, I think there was a time when the old command and control management systems and the and the good old boy networks, where everybody else is just in the way, right? And that just does not work these days
Kathleen Burke 18:22
right. Exactly.
Susan Tatum 18:23
Didn't work with me? For sure. So you touched on building trust, and what are the important things about doing that, to build the trust and ensure that you don't lose the trust?
Kathleen Burke 18:35
Well, I think being very honest, and I feel like that's stating the obvious, but being honest, being transparent in what it is that the challenges are. What is that is possible? Anything is possible. As we would always say, overselling, right? If you got enough time and you got enough money, sure we can make something crazy happen tomorrow. Is that the best experience for everybody involved? Probably not. What are the you know, what's the cost to doing that, and what would be the benefits to pushing something out? I mean, sometimes there's a program, you've got a great idea for a program on a certain timing, and then it's not going well, like, push it and talk to your client about pushing it. Like, what if we push this six weeks and we took the three people that have confirmed, but we really want 20, you know, and we regroup. So don't be afraid to adjust. Don't be afraid to talk through what is possible and then really just doing what you say you're going to do. And if you make a mistake, you own it, and you just say, Well, that happened. The fastest way to lose trust is if you blame somebody else, like I had,
Susan Tatum 19:45
or try to say nothing,
Kathleen Burke 19:46
right. I mean, I had experiences where something went wrong and the CEO was telling me that the thing had gone wrong and it needed, you know that was a problem, and it wasn't my fault by a long shot. It wasn't anywhere near my charter, but all he cares about is getting it communicated. And I was like, Yep, got it won't happen again. We'll look into what, what went wrong. And you know, the person who was in charge of that piece of the program was standing right next to me, and that when, when he walked away, she said, Why didn't you point to me, you know, this is my bad. And I said, it doesn't matter who did it, we're all one team. And he just needed, you know, to tell us that it had happened so we can fix it. So that moment built huge trust between us, right? She was like, Oh, wow, we are, we're one team. And like, yes, we are. We're one team. We just need to get work done.
Susan Tatum 20:42
I have a question about that scenario. If that, if the other person had stepped in and said, Hey, this is my my bad.
Kathleen Burke 20:51
Oh, she did. He would not acknowledge that she was he was focused on me. That's okay. What were you gonna ask if she had stepped in and said that.
Susan Tatum 21:06
does that make a difference? Is that? Do you get brownie points with the execs for doing that?
Kathleen Burke 21:09
Oh, no, I don't think, I mean, it's interesting, for better or worse, and I think it's speaks to the size of the company. So I don't know that this is transferable, but when you're running a company of that size, it doesn't really matter who's doing what. It just matters that it gets done. And that's why the fact that you have a team that's really collaborative underneath you, that everybody believes you know, you succeed, I succeed. We're doing the right thing for the business. That's when you have the kind of hyper growth that you've seen at Salesforce, because you get a lot of stuff done.
Susan Tatum 21:43
Yeah, so there's a lot of other things that I would love to ask you about, but I do want to give you a chance to talk about because I know that your true love is putting is connecting these high level folks together. And you, you ran a lot of different kinds of events for them, and this is maybe something that independent consultants would be interested in suggesting to their clients, or keeping in mind that this is another, another good way to help your clients. Can you talk a little bit about the the types of high value events that you did and why?
Kathleen Burke 22:23
Yeah, exactly. Well, I will say, you know, my tagline is, deals close when CEOs connect. And the reason that works so well is it's true, right? If you can just get the right executives into the room to get to know each other, and I'm not. We're not pitching product, and we're not talking deals like we're getting to know each other as human beings. There's usually a topic of conversation that is relevant to everybody. So today, no doubt that would be something around AI, or it could be some sort of world, world topic. It could be a leadership topic, something that is relevant to the folks in the room. If you create that experience, and you give time people, time within that to get to know each other, magic happens. I have seen it. I've probably done, I don't know, 300 programs, maybe more. I should probably total it up over the 16 years. And it's, you know from from bringing a small group of CIOs in Chicago together for a half day roundtable conversation, inevitably, they would walk out of that room laughing, smiling, so excited to meet again, looking at me say, When are we going to do this again? And I'm like, This is not a customer advisory board. This was a one off conversation, and you guys are gonna have to meet your, you know, organize your own get together, which, you know, I didn't actually say out loud, but, but that's to the point of like. And I think this is true more than ever. People are just craving connection, so the magic is in and I keep using the dinner party analogy, but it's getting the right people together in the right room for the for a relevant conversation, it's facilitating it and giving them time to get to know each other, whether that's the cocktail hour before or maybe you take them for a hike in the redwoods. I mean, I'm all about movement, so if you do that, then suddenly you pick up the phone and can call them when the deal starts to go south, or when you know somebody internally to that customer doesn't you know, maybe the CFO isn't wanting to sign off on the deal. But we've the CEOs have connected. So now the CEOs just, it just transforms the business, also, especially at the CEO level. And I do believe in doing this at all, all C suite levels. But this, the magic of the CEO is that they can really get to know each other and understand how they can partner together to transform each other's businesses in a way the rest of us, who are, you know. Working very hard on doing our piece of the business. We just can't do that. But they have that scope of vision that I've just saw it time and time again with Mark having these conversations with CEOs. You know, the deal would go from a million dollars to 10 to 40 to 60 million almost overnight, once the customer CEO really understood what was possible, and I deeply believe that that is possible pretty much at any company, any B2B Company, for sure.
Susan Tatum 25:31
So Well, there's there's also when they get at these high levels, and I don't know that it really matters about the size of the company, they're isolated and they don't have a lot of people that they can trust who have the same level of view that they have really to get to have somebody else in that same position is has got to be very valuable to them.
Kathleen Burke 25:55
It's huge. I mean, they and again, this is why it's interesting across the C suite. So if you bring a group of CFOs together, they have a different conversation, but it but they get each other, and it's, it's regardless of industry. By the way, the cross industry conversations are some of the more interesting ones. They really understand each other. And when you have this is, you know, I had the good fortune, amazing fortune, to be part of the Salesforce ecosystem. And our executives are our top in the business. So people really wanted to talk to them. But I think regardless of sort of star power or, you know, impact on the industry, it's a good conversation to have people get a lot out of the connection, and then when you connect, then do the the whole process of building a deal, in increasing a deal size just comes so much more naturally. It's a it's a fascinating business.
Susan Tatum 26:57
I'm just thinking about all the moving parts and something like that.
Kathleen Burke 27:00
hmm, many
Susan Tatum 27:01
running something like that? Well, you have to, I mean, there's a logistics of it. There's getting the right executives there. It's finding a time when they all can do it. It's, I mean, there's just a 1000 things that,
Kathleen Burke 27:14
oh yes, it is not easy. It is not easy, but it is. It is quite fruitful when it works
Susan Tatum 27:23
and it drops to the bottom line, right? It's, yeah, has a direct impact.
Kathleen Burke 27:29
I will say, one of the things that surprised me about this business, but it makes total sense, and it's a part that I really love, is working with sales leadership to identify the right accounts to be going after because, especially for a customer advisory board, you really want a certain kind of individual to be a member on your board. You want somebody who is collaborative, someone who is an open thinker, right? You don't really want somebody to come in and just say, Nope, this is the way it's done. It's always been done this way, and I'm right near wrong, like you can't have that kind of thinking in a customer advisory board conversation. So partnering with our sales leaders to really figure out who the right people were is is a really fun piece of the process, and all of this is extremely high touch, right? It's not really something you can just model and run like you're dealing with executives. It needs to be thoughtful. It needs to be every email conversation needs to be typo free. Please don't spell mark with a K, please spell mark with a C, little things like that, right? But then they're always asking for, well, who else is in the room, or can I bring my second in command, or can I bring my wife? Or, you know, it's just like there's and you can't have a black and white answer to that. It depends on the client, depends on the program, depends on the moment. It's what makes it fun. Yeah.
Susan Tatum 28:56
Well, okay, so speaking of fun, now you have your own business that you're I assume you're going to be doing this type of work.
Kathleen Burke 29:04
Yes,
Susan Tatum 29:05
so, so what kind of do you know yet, what kind of services you're going to be offering?
Kathleen Burke 29:09
I will definitely be figuring it out as I go along, but I suspect that I will be brought in when a customer, one of my clients, wants to build a customer advisory board, or wants to maybe has a new CEO who doesn't have a lot of connections with their customer base, and wants to build maybe a road show for him or her to go out and meet with all of their top customers. Yeah, it's, it's going to be fun. I mean, I ran, I had the good fortune to run salesforce's footprint at Davos, which is the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting. I did that three times, and that, in and of itself, as a whole experience, you know, it's this Swiss, Swiss village that is taken over by world leaders and people that are making the world better. And, you know, Fortune 500 CEOs and yeah, just experiencing and running a program like that is fun, so
Susan Tatum 30:07
I would imagine it'd be a little jaw dropping at times too.
Kathleen Burke 30:10
It is, it is, I will say, the amount of military presence to keep everyone safe. Yeah, although the Swiss police people are very friendly when they're walking down the street with their
Susan Tatum 30:24
machine guns.
Kathleen Burke 30:25
I was like, wow. Look at she's smiling. I don't think we keep smiling in the US, but this is nice. Oh, wow. But it was good.
Susan Tatum 30:31
Well, this has been really interesting, and I appreciate your your sharing so much knowledge with us. For folks that might want to follow up with you, what's the best way to do that?
Kathleen Burke 30:40
Well, I do have a website, so it's KB strategygroup.com and I have a little form on there for people to reach out. You can also reach out to me directly at Kathleen at KB strategygroup.com and I would love to chat with folks.
Susan Tatum 30:57
All right. Well, thank you again, and we are just about to go into labor day weekend, so I hope you have a good one.
Kathleen Burke 31:05
Great. Thank you. You too, Susan, have a Great day.
Susan Tatum 31:08
You too. Kathleen.
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