How Localization Leaders Can Get Effective C-Suite Engagement
A three-part framework for turning executive meetings into strategic opportunities
Communicating with VPs and c-level leaders can be a fraught experience. On paper, it’s an intimidating scenario: a mismatch of seniority, the mystique of executive presence, and a perceived expectation of an impeccable presentation.
It doesn’t have to be like this.
Your company executives want localization leaders to bring them useful intelligence. Don’t consider your meeting with them as a favor they are granting you or a test you must pass. They share a common interest with you: they care about revenue growth, customer retention and satisfaction, and growing market share. Your meeting represents an opportunity for you to turn this shared interest into mutual value.
Before you meet with an executive at your company, spend some time to consider three key factors that will influence your approach:
Their priorities
Your meeting goals
Your message
Most people focus on the last part (your message) without considering how it may align with the priorities of the person you are meeting and without any strategy that links it to your goals.
Let’s walk through each of these factors to help you prepare for your next executive conversation.
Their Priorities
The biggest shift that happens when someone becomes a VP is scope - in multiple dimensions. A VP holds company-wide responsibility, with all of the visibility and accountability it implies.
Resourcing decisions, goals, and personnel changes are all viewed through the lens of company impact. A VP of Product must consider the implications of their product roadmap for the customer success team or how the support team will deal with a new API product. A VP of Marketing must ensure their bet on video content draws in the right leads for the sales team or consider the engineering implications of a company rebranding exercise.
Beyond the company, an executive will consider the impact on the industry. How are their decisions showing up in public? How are they helping the company strengthen its position against competitors - either through innovation or messaging or customer experience? Some executives will spend time on LinkedIn, crafting a message that reinforces the company’s position. Others will show up at conferences or on podcasts. Regardless of the approach, their industry focus demonstrates where they seek to make an impact.
Most executives will spend time interfacing with the company’s board. The board shapes long-term priorities and this is where long-term bets get made or killed. Executives are constantly thinking about how to justify strategic investments over a 3-5 year horizon, as that’s how the board will consider it.
It’s essential to build a bridge between executives’ priorities - company-wide, industry-impacting and long-term focused - and the opportunities made possible through localization. The priorities of most executives are highly visible. They will share progress against goals at all-hands or through regular emails.
Localization leaders sit at the intersection of every customer-facing function, which makes them uniquely positioned to bring cross-functional intelligence that most VPs can’t easily get elsewhere. The terminology executives use is the fastest route in.
If your CMO talks about MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads), think about which markets have the shortest MQL-to-close.
If your CRO talks about NRR (Net Revenue Retention), consider which markets are outperforming.
If your CPO talks about activation rate (users that have achieved key product milestones), consider mapping drop-off across markets.
Once you have identified the priorities of your executive, use them to form the structural touchpoints of your meeting, forging a link between your areas of focus and their strategic goals.
When you are clear on your executive’s priorities, the next question is what you actually want from the meeting.
Your Meeting Goals
In most cases, a meeting with an executive to discuss localization is rare and short. This may be the only 30 minutes of the entire quarter when they will dedicate their attention to localization. Don’t waste that time on a status update.
Regardless of whether you requested the meeting or were scheduled to attend on rotation, make a plan for what you want to achieve in the meeting. Always use the start of the meeting - or better yet, when sharing an agenda in advance - to explain the purpose and goal of the meeting. This will help keep the discussion on track.
Generally, your meeting goals should hinge upon one of the following categories:
Awareness
Raising awareness is a reasonable goal for your first meeting with an executive, particularly if they are new to their role (they’ll need context before taking requests from you).
Be careful not to interpret awareness as an information dump. Don’t overwhelm them with operational data, localization jargon and technical acronyms. Instead, focus on leaving an impression of competence, domain authority and confidence.
Find the best anecdote, benchmark or insight you can share with them [more on this in the next section]. Give your executive something they can carry with them into another meeting.
The best outcome of a meeting goal of awareness is a follow-up meeting to dive into more details.
Unblocking
Frequently, escalating a blocking issue to an executive is the fastest way to make progress. If you’ve raised an issue twice at the level below and it hasn’t moved, that’s usually the signal to escalate. The best time is usually after you’ve exhausted your own options and before the issue reaches a point of criticality.
Asking an executive to unblock something should never be framed as a personal request or a plea for help, but always as a company-impacting matter that you are raising that needs their input. Consider how the blocking issue may intersect negatively with the priorities of the executive to build your case. Think through constructive solutions your executive can bring to their peers, rather than simply escalating a zero-sum problem.
Securing a Decision
Executives are constantly thinking about trade-offs. Where to invest headcount, where to increase or decrease budgets, which initiative to fast-track and which to defer. If you need the approval of your executive - or funding for a specific project or headcount - be clear about this at the outset of the meeting (“I’m here to seek your approval of our Q4 expansion plans”).
Before asking your executive for approval - for anything - pressure test your case. Anticipate their questions, concerns and pushback so you are ready for questions and can talk through the trade-offs in real time. Can you strengthen your case with co-sponsorship from a peer executive? Have you considered the risks, measures of success, alternative paths and dependencies? By demonstrating that you’ve considered all strategic angles in advance, you’re clearing the path to an easier “yes”.
Your Message
Think like a newspaper editor when preparing for an executive meeting: state your conclusion first, then the supporting evidence, rather than building to it. It means you should front-load the key points you want to convey into the first 5 minutes of the discussion.
It’s not unusual for meetings with VPs to get stuck on the first topic or sidetracked. Anticipate this by structuring your approach accordingly.
Only present content you have complete understanding over: expect to be questioned on anything you present. I’ve seen many well-intentioned meetings go completely off the rails when an executive asks for more detail on a particular issue only for the presenter to be lost for words. It’s the fastest way to lose credibility (and interest).
The message you craft should align closely with the goals of your meeting, while reflecting the priorities of the executive, to ensure relevance and relatability. If you show a dashboard or report, make it self-explanatory and omit any acronyms you haven’t already heard the VP say themselves.
Let’s consider a few examples:
Awareness:
Share a story of how product activation in Brazil increased by 25% during H1, as a result of your team partnering with the onboarding team to develop locally relevant templates.
Unblocking:
Explain how your team had to scramble 3 times in the past quarter to rectify a looming PR issue in France and Japan because the Marketing team used AI translation in their email marketing campaigns to publish content directly. Your recommendation is to integrate your terminology platform at source, maintaining immediate time-to-market and securing brand reputation.
Securing a Decision:
Show how your recent experiment of hyper-localization on the German landing pages grew marketing qualified leads (MQLs) by 40%. You now want to move ahead with hiring 3 language growth managers to partner with in-market sales teams and grow market share.
Putting it all Together
Most executives have dozens of routine status and review meetings with internal teams each week. Make their meeting with the localization team distinct, consequential and memorable by tailoring your approach carefully.
Think of it as a circular system: your executive’s priorities will inform your meeting goals, which in turn, will shape the message.
Understand what matters most to your executive and how you can link it to your work.
Be clear about your singular goal for the meeting and set expectations in advance.
Lead with your message in language that connects immediately.
When prepared carefully, a meeting with an executive offers a localization leader the perfect opportunity to demonstrate their own company-wide strategic thinking, represent themselves as a powerful ally for the exec and underscore the rich potential to expand the value of localization.