How to find decision makers and reach the CEO

Find the decision maker by working out who owns the problem, then searching for that role, not a title. Use LinkedIn search, the company's own pages, a contact database, or ask a colleague who handles it. Reach a CEO with a short, specific message sent directly. Gong reports C-level executives are 30.2% less likely to reply to cold email, so make every word count.

Everybody wants to reach the decision maker, and most lists contain someone else. A message to the wrong person is not wasted by default, because people forward, but it is slower and it depends on luck. This guide walks through how to work out who decides, six ways to find that person and how to write to a CEO when the CEO is the right target.

Who decides, really?

In a company of five, the owner decides everything. In a company of five hundred, three kinds of person matter:

• The owner of the problem. The head of the team that suffers it. They start the search and shape the requirements.
• The budget holder. The person who can release the money. Often a director or finance lead.
• The blocker. Someone who can stop it: security, legal, IT, procurement.

You do not need all three on the first message. You need the owner of the problem, because they care most and answer fastest. Write one sentence before you search: "The person who feels this problem is [role] at [type of company]."

The Green Shield Logistics case study shows what the right target is worth. The company sells collection and destruction of medical and pharmaceutical waste. Named heads of quality, ESG, procurement and logistics replied at 8.2%, almost four times the 2.2% of generic clinic and laboratory inboxes, and produced 17 of the 18 positive replies. The service was the same. The reader differed. Read the case study.

Six ways to find the person

1. LinkedIn search

Search by role and company, then read the profile for what they own. Titles are unreliable: "Head of Growth", "VP Revenue" and "Director of Sales" can be the same job. Search by function and seniority, not an exact title. Our post on Sales Navigator filters that find buyers covers the filters that matter.

2. The company website

Leadership and team pages, press releases, job postings and blog author boxes show who does what. A job post for "Head of Operations" tells you the role exists and what it is meant to do.

3. A contact database

Sellinger includes a database of 700M+ contacts. You filter by job title, department, company size, location and more, check the search cost, and import the people you choose, with an optional verified email or phone lookup. Steps are on the help page for finding leads in the contact database. Check titles against LinkedIn before sending to a small, important list.

4. Public registers and press

In regulated sectors, registers name responsible persons: a compliance officer, a qualified person, a registered manager. Green Shield built its lists from official registers, company websites and a person level data provider, and wrote only to legal entities. For local firms, the commercial register shows owners and managers.

5. Ask

The most underused method. If you cannot find the owner of the problem, write to the most likely person: "I am trying to reach whoever looks after [topic] at [company]. Is that you, or could you point me to them?" Many replies come as forwards. In the Green Shield campaign, 11 replies forwarded the letter to the responsible colleague, and the Hotel Pirin letters drew 17 forwards. A forwarded letter arrives with a colleague's implicit endorsement.

6. Events and speaker lists

Conference programmes name senior people with a topic attached, which gives you both a name and a reason to write. This works for narrow audiences and costs time.

How do you write to a CEO?

CEOs are the hardest readers. Gong reports that C-level executives are 30.2% less likely to reply to cold emails than non executives, and that those who open an email typically read it for no more than nine seconds, with executives deciding in under three seconds whether to open at all. That shapes the message.

1. Be short. Gong puts the best emails at 50 to 100 words. For a CEO, nearer 50.
2. Say why them. One line of real context: a move, a launch, a statement.
3. Offer something, not a meeting. Gong advises including an offer of value instead of a meeting request.
4. Ask one small question. "Is [problem] on your list this year?"
5. Write like a peer. No exclamation marks, no flattery.
6. Send from a real person. A founder writing to a founder works. A faceless team address does not.

Example:

"Hi Ana, your announcement of the Burgas depot caught my eye. Teams opening a second site often hit the same returns bottleneck in the first quarter. I have a one page checklist of what to settle first. Want me to send it?"

That is 47 words, specific and answerable.

Should you go through the gatekeeper?

Often the gatekeeper is the route. An assistant or office manager decides what reaches the CEO, and a polite, brief message to them gets further than a clever one to the CEO who never sees it. Ask for the right person, not for access: "Who at your company handles X?" The Hotel Pirin campaign wrote to HR and office managers, who sent the most replies and forwarded many letters to colleagues.

How many people per company?

Start with one. Green Shield learned this directly: its first list held up to 15 people at one company, some of whom got letters at the same time as colleagues, which annoys people. From 9 October the campaign wrote to at most one person per company. Write to a second person only if the first does not reply, and say nothing about the first.

What mistakes cost the most?

• Going straight to the top in a large company. The CEO forwards it to someone, and your message arrives with no context.
• Relying on titles. Match by what the person owns.
• A stale list. People move. Check recency for senior roles.
• Treating a generic inbox as a person. info@ is not a decision maker.
• No second route. If the first person does not reply, have a way to ask for the right name.

What if the company is large?

In a large company, work down, not up. Find the person two levels below the top who owns the problem: a head of department, a director of operations, a procurement lead. They have the pain, the authority to start a pilot and a route upward. Messages to them forward easily, because they are a colleague, not a stranger. Messages to the CEO of a large company usually go to an assistant and then to the same person you could have written to directly.

Also note the case for writing to someone adjacent. In regulated sectors, the compliance or quality officer is often the true buyer, and the CEO is the signatory. The Green Shield letters were built around each buyer's regulatory exposure, written to the person who carries the risk, and that is what turned replies into meetings and offers.

A checklist

• [ ] I wrote the sentence naming who owns the problem.
• [ ] I searched by function and seniority, not an exact title.
• [ ] I checked at least one second source for each senior name.
• [ ] The message to a CEO is under 60 words with one question.
• [ ] I wrote to one person per company first.
• [ ] I have an "ask who handles this" message for when I cannot find the owner.