I have a small startup and what I want to push right now means my potential clients are big corps. If I identify the president/CEO/senior VP of the department I'm interested in, they could be handling $10s or $100s of millions.
Am I breaking etiquette to phone up and ask to contact these kind of people? Should I be finding someone lower down, or aiming at the top and letting them pass me on to someone at the right level?
By phone, they can easily keep me away from anyone too important, but if I have a name I can easily figure out an email address and send an "I'd love to talk to you about X, is it possible?" message. Is that a good or bad idea?