Arm the operators, then align the executives
The person who executes and the person who approves the budget are rarely the same person — and most programs only ever talk to one of them.
Any account or partnership past a certain size has two levels of people in it. There’s the operator — the person doing the day-to-day work, closest to the actual product or process, most likely to notice what’s broken. And there’s the executive — the person who allocates budget, sets priorities, and decides whether this relationship gets more resources or fewer next year.
Most engagement plans, without meaning to, pick one of these two people and build the whole relationship around them. Programs aimed at operators are hands-on, tactical, useful — and invisible to the person who actually controls the budget. Programs aimed at executives are strategic, high-touch, well-catered — and disconnected from whether the people doing the actual work have what they need.
The fix is sequencing, not choosing. Engage the operator first, with something genuinely useful and tactical — training, hands-on problem-solving, tools they’ll actually use. Then bring the executive in second, close enough in time that the operator’s momentum is still fresh, with something built for their level: strategic context, a forward look, peer conversation.
Done in that order, the operator arrives at the executive conversation already primed, and the executive arrives already hearing that something real is happening on the ground. Done in the wrong order, or done to only one of them, you get a relationship that’s strong on paper and thin in practice.