Selling to a COO

A COO buys outcomes, not projects. If your message talks about technology, they'll forward it to IT and forget it. If it talks about throughput, cost or a deadline they're on the hook for, they'll read it.

The COO is often the most practical person in the C-suite. They run the machine. Write to them like someone who understands that.

What the COO owns

The COO owns how the company actually works day to day. Operations, supply chain, service delivery, sometimes customer support and shared services. In some companies they own IT too. In others, IT sits beside them and they're its biggest internal customer.

They're the person who has to make the strategy happen. When the CEO announces a plan, the COO figures out how the company will execute it, with the people and systems it already has.

That makes them a natural economic buyer for services. They own big, messy, cross-functional problems, and they control the budget to fix them.

What they're measured on

COOs are measured on efficiency and reliability. Cost per unit. On-time delivery. Uptime. Customer satisfaction. Margin, often shared with the CFO.

They're judged on whether the operation runs, and whether it runs cheaper and faster than last year. They're rarely praised for a good quarter, and they're always blamed for a bad one.

So the misery a COO feels is usually about something that's slowing the operation, costing too much, or breaking in ways that show up in the numbers.

What they ignore

COOs ignore technology pitches without an operational outcome. "AI-powered," "cloud-native" and "digital transformation" mean nothing to them till you connect it to the cost, the deadline or the customer.

They ignore vendors who want a meeting to "learn more about your business." They don't have time to educate you.

And they ignore anything that sounds like another initiative. Most COOs already have more programs than they can run. A new one is a burden if it doesn't replace a problem they already have.

The signals that matter

A new COO is a strong signal. New operating leaders get asked for a plan early, and they usually want outside help to build one fast.

Business pressure in filings matters a lot. Margin programs, restructuring, plant or site consolidation, supply chain disruption, all show up in annual and quarterly reports and earnings releases. Those are COO problems by definition. The cost program post covers why those programs often need outside capacity.

Acquisitions matter. Integrating an acquired company is an operations problem first, and it lands on the COO's desk.

Hiring for operational roles matters. A cluster of roles for operations analysts, supply chain planners or process engineers says a program is underway.

The COO is the economic buyer, but they don't work alone. A VP or director of operations is often your champion, the person who feels the problem daily. The CIO or IT director is usually the technical lead.

Write a version for each. The COO's version is about the outcome. The champion's is about the daily grind. The technical lead's is about the systems.

An example opener

Say a mid-size food distributor names a new COO. The latest quarterly report mentions rising delivery costs and a plan to consolidate regional warehouses.

You took over as COO this month, and the quarterly report says delivery costs are up and the regional warehouses are being consolidated. New COOs tend to get asked for the consolidation plan and the cost story at the same time, in their first quarter. My guess is the hardest part is routing and inventory across sites that don't share one system yet. Is that right, or is the bigger problem somewhere else in the network?

Every line ties to something the COO owns. No technology words. A guess they can correct in one line.

When a COO replies, they'll often correct you. Take it. The correction is the real problem, stated by the person who owns it.

Then talk outcomes and timelines. What changes, by when, and what it'll cost. Leave the method for later. COOs care that the work gets done, not how clever the method looks.

Show up with a specific guess about their operation, and you'll get a straight answer from one of the most direct people in the company.