Do’s and Don’ts When Approaching a CFO

Do’s and Don’ts When Approaching a CFO

A CFO, as the name suggests, is the chief financial decision maker within an organization. If CEO is all about risk taking and setting lofty business goals to be achieved, CFO is the person who decides on the budget and completes the financial forecasting for the company. It is important that the CEO and CFO agree on the business goals so that it can be achieved within the budget established for the organization.

Why approach a CFO with your campaign: The Chief Financial Officer is the executive decision maker when it comes to deciding whether to invest in a new product or service. CFO decisions would be made after considerable thought given to the profitability and sustainability of having the product or services purchased. If you are confident about your product or service’s life cycle and profitability, approaching the CFO would ensure immediate action and sales without any corporate delays getting in the way.

What not to do when approaching a CFO

1. Stick to the point: Thanks to the high-level profile, the executive officers would not have a lot of time to spare to browse through emails and read through elaborate and flowery marketing campaigns. You need to ensure that your message is direct and you are not beating about the bush. Also, you need to ensure that your campaign can show the profitability in form of numbers, pie charts or graphs so that the information included is easily understood and absorbed.
2. Use commonly used metrics for measurement: When you are presenting a campaign to the CFO, ensure that you are using metrics which are popularly applied in the industry. If you try to explain the financial benefits of your product using complex metrics that they cannot relate to, the executive decision makers are going to lose interest in the campaign and the product.
3. Provide realistic numbers: When you present a product or service campaign to a CFO, you should avoid inflating the profitability margins your product or service will achieve. Of course, it might look great on the paper but if the numbers don’t add up when the calculations are done, your organization’s credibility and reputation will be at stake.

What to do when approaching a CFO

1. Be information ready: When you approach a CFO with your marketing campaign, you need to be prepared to answer a number of questions on why the organization should invest in your organization’s product. You need to be prepared with information about the organization, their standing within the industry, how conservative they are with financial decisions and overall profitability so that you can paint a convincing picture of how your product will help.
2. Always explain about the cost savings: As CFOs make financial decisions, they would be interested in knowing how your product or service is going to help improve the financial stability of the organization. Rather than providing long and winding descriptions about how the product is going to help them, you will need to present the cost savings this one-time investment is going to bring to the company.
3. Explain about the target measurements and how the success or otherwise would be measured: You need to understand that you should spend time on preparing not just a marketing campaign but a succession plan once the product is purchased and integrated into the organization. It would be a good idea to explain how the product’s success would be measured and what actions would be taken if the business goals are not met.

The important thing to understand while introducing a marketing plan to a CFO is to keep it simple and ensure that you talk in a language they understand and go by.