Some advice to the salesmen out there- be aggressive. 

For my pipeline, current and past, I literally cold-called the C-suite at many of the companies I was trying to reach. I'm notoriously known for getting responses for my crafty and thought-out emails and cold-calls. If you have something interesting to say and you are able to tell the story in an interesting manner, people will generally listen to you. If people don't, you most likely suck at your story-telling, so you might have to revert to sending out GIFs and stalking people with odd gifts such as: trashcans, french fries and plane tickets...