I'm definitely not advising you to memorize everyone you meet.
Most companies tend to hold real allegiance to a small handful of customers. Get to know your key stakeholders. If you have a component supplier that makes up 30% of your business, you should have dinner with their key stakeholder on at least a bi-annual basis. If you have a set of clients that make up 40% of your revenue, invite their stakeholders to dinner.
You'll notice that I never say CEO, only stakeholders, because those relationships are the valuable ones. As you move further up the food chain I think you'll find, as I have, that CEOs are often figureheads with a big hammer. You need their permission, but the real leverage comes from elsewhere within the organization (usually not the techies, unfortunately).
We're all always selling things. It's an unfortunate consequence of the human condition.
You know your shit. :) Instead of just upvoting every one of your comments in this thread, I'll just post here to let everyone know that everything you've said is both true and excellent advice. Thanks for contributing!
Most companies tend to hold real allegiance to a small handful of customers. Get to know your key stakeholders. If you have a component supplier that makes up 30% of your business, you should have dinner with their key stakeholder on at least a bi-annual basis. If you have a set of clients that make up 40% of your revenue, invite their stakeholders to dinner.
You'll notice that I never say CEO, only stakeholders, because those relationships are the valuable ones. As you move further up the food chain I think you'll find, as I have, that CEOs are often figureheads with a big hammer. You need their permission, but the real leverage comes from elsewhere within the organization (usually not the techies, unfortunately).
We're all always selling things. It's an unfortunate consequence of the human condition.