Reddit mentions of Selling to VITO the Very Important Top Officer: Get to the Top. Get to the Point. Get to the Sale.

Customers don't care about certifications, skills, or breadth of experience. Those are proxies for "Can you solve my problem?" And what you want to do is communicate to customers that yes, you can solve their problem properly, while Mr. Cowboy "I downloaded Tableau and it doesn't look that hard" Coder can't.

a) Reputation. You want to have a portfolio of references.

b) Charge Cadillac rates and don't negotiate. If you start at $85/hr, the customer is going to think of you as a glorified staff aug / placement type. Charge $175/hr "take it or leave it" and they know you're serious. (You also know they are serious. If they don't want to talk about prices like that, they're going to be a very frustrating customer)

c) Recognize that you are going to be spending more time finding work than you're used to. That's actually the way consulting has traditionally worked - the high rates are about expertise, sure, but also recognition that someone that good can't work 2000 hours a year.

d) The really great thing about Cadillac rates is that they make it much easier to cut good clients deals. Let's say you're on a three month gig and end up spending a week wrestling with access to some data source. It's easy to tell the customer "Hey, this took longer than it should have, and I feel it's mostly my fault, so I'm not going to bill you for those 40 hours."

e) Portfolio. When you're starting with a client, especially on a dashboard job, try to get a provision to use screenshots with dummy data in your sales media. Also try to get a signed endorsement at the end of the job.

If you didn't already know this - when working in the rarefied air of senior consulting rates, you have to understand enterprise sales. It's a nasty job, but it's how you win work.

On that note, I highly recommend:

• Selling to VITO which teaches you how to access and pitch to executives.
  
  
• Solution Selling which is pretty much the enterprise sales bible.