Nicolas ColeCo-Founder Ship 30 for 30, Premium Ghostwriting Academy

Selling To CEOs Is 100% An Ego Game #shorts

5 Jul 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:03

In this short video, Nicolas Cole explains that selling to CEOs is fundamentally an ego game. He describes CEOs as extremely busy, decision‑fatigued leaders who are accustomed to being the smartest person in the room. To succeed, a seller must match the CEO’s energy, treat them as peers, speak their language, and understand their priorities and constraints. Cole stresses the importance of removing all friction: present a single, easy‑to‑accept option and design the sales process so the CEO only needs to hop on a brief bi‑weekly call with pre‑sent questions. He uses his ghost‑writing service as an example of a friction‑free B2B offer. The core message is that the secret to B2B sales with high‑level executives is to respect their ego, simplify the decision, and eliminate any extra effort on their part.

Chapters

When you sell to CEOs, there's like no other way to say this, but it is all an ego game. When you're talking to a high-powered executive, you're dealing with someone who has no time. Their inbox is a disaster. They have a gazillion meetings on their calendar. Everyone wants their attention. They have massive decision fatigue and they're used to being the smartest, most powerful person in the room. And so you have to learn how to have those conversations and literally match that energy. Because if you show up as like, you're the CEO of the billion-dollar company and I'm the lowly vendor, it's ruined. It never works. But if you show up as we are peers and I speak your language. I understand your priorities. I understand what you're challenged with. I understand you have no time. I understand you're exhausted from making decisions. I'm only going to present one option. It's going to be the easiest thing for you to say yes to. If you can dial that in, that's the whole secret to selling to B2B. You have to remove any and all friction. That's why our ghostwriting offer was literally, I need you to hop on a call once every 2 weeks. I will send all the questions beforehand so you can look at them. I just need you to get on the phone and talk because I knew if I asked for anything else, they would be like, I don't have time for that. So whatever the B2B offer is, it's like, how do you remove every point of friction? So all they have to do is go, yep, that sounds good.