Selling to Big Companies

Stategies to Break Through

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Do you ever dream of the day when your customer roster includes companies like GE, Wal-Mart or IBM instead of Ma & Pa Inc.? If you’ve ever made attempts to crack into a large corporation, you know how tough it can be.
Plus, it’s downright intimidating. Those companies are so huge that you don’t even know where to start. You question why they’d ever want to do business with your small, no-name fi rm.
Enough already! Big companies can be virtual gold mines for savvy entrepreneurs. If they like your product or service, they’ll eagerly expand their relationship with you. But that can seem like an impossibility when you’re still on the outside looking in.
Here are eight fresh, pertinent strategies you can use to set up meetings with corporate decision makers and ultimately land big contracts.
Break big companies down into smaller entities.
Unless you’re selling enterprise solutions, you’ll find it much easier to get your initial contract if you pursue opportunities in a small subset of an organization. Rather than being immobilized by the magnitude of selling to GE, you might pursue a relationship with the marketing department of the Fleet Services division of GE Capital Solutions. This enables you to find out the names of potential decision makers, conduct due diligence without being overwhelmed and implement a customized getting-in campaign.
Employ a foot-in-the-door sales approach.
When most sellers go after big companies, they want their prospects to know the full range of products or services their company offers. Yet taking this approach to a corporate decision maker immediately creates objections such as: “We’re happy with our current suppliers.”
Instead, you’ll be much more successful if you focus on solving a small or overlooked need that your prospect is facing. This enables you to slip in under the radar screen of long-entrenched incumbents who own the account. Once you get your fi rst contract, you can prove your value and expand from there addressing related divisions with a targeted approach.
Pay the price of admission.
Corporate decision makers are swamped. They have way too much work to do and not nearly enough time to get it all done. They protect their time at all costs; it’s their most precious resource. If you want a spot on their already overcrowded calendar, you have to earn it.
What’s the price of admission? Research the company, industry and marketplace. Gain knowledge of their business issues, challenges, goals and objectives. Acquire expertise on their processes, methodologies or critical success factors.
Busy decision makers don’t want to take time to update you about their business. Nor do they want to learn about your offering unless they know, from the outset, that you bring value. Do your homework before you make a call.
Speak the language of business.
When you’re trying to set up a meeting with a corporate prospect, most likely the fi rst thing out of your mouth is something like this: “Hi, Pat. This is Terry calling from XYZ Systems. We specialize in offering a full range of services for all your needs in [fi ll in the blank] area. Our products [or services] are top-notch and we’re passionate about meeting your needs.”
Wrong! That’s all about you and it’s going to lead to an objection. Instead, talk about the business results your company provides. For example, decision makers want to hear you can:

• Speed up time to revenue on new product launches.
• Increase sales to new market segments.
• Reduce supply chain costs.

That’s the language they speak. To capture their attention, you need to speak it, too.
Launch an account entry campaign.
After four to five attempts to reach the decision maker, you likely conclude that they’re not one bit interested in your product or service. But, truth be told, that’s an erroneous assumption that could be costing you lots of business.
In today’s business environment, you should expect to contact corporate decision makers at least eight to 10 times. If you’re trying to reach C-level executives, expect to make 12 to 14 contacts before you give up.
Plan your campaign from the onset. Decide what business results you want to emphasize in your various contacts. Spread your value proposition over multiple voice mail or e-mail. Send interesting articles with short personal notes. Invite prospects to hear an industry speaker. Put on your own events, too. One to two contacts per week is appropriate, so long as you leave a business-focused message.
Focus on trigger events.
One of the best ways to crack into corporate accounts is to leverage trigger events—those happenings that cause a sudden shift in corporate priorities. Internal examples are mergers, spinoffs, venture capital funding, new leadership or changing corporate direction. External triggers include industry trends, economic issues, competitive moves or government legislation.
Savvy sellers continually monitor the media for information about what’s happening in their targeted accounts. They’re constantly thinking, “What could this mean for the company? How can I use this information to create a new opportunity?”
Then they launch a time-sensitive account entry campaign to their targeted account, emphasizing the urgency and value of taking action soon. By doing this, they speed up the sales cycle and encounter minimal competition.
Pursue multiple relationships.
When you’re working with big companies, you don’t want to have your entire future resting in the hands of a single person. This individual could change jobs, leave the company or even blockade you from meeting other decision makers within the organization.
Initiate contact with multiple people concurrently. Let them know you’re speaking to others in the company. Engage your contacts in helping you identify everyone you should know in the account. Most corporate decisions involve multiple people, so it only makes sense that you’d have relationships with many of them.
Use Sales 2.0 productivity tools.
Use Jigsaw.com or NetProspex.com to fi nd decision makers’ names. Check out LinkedIn.com to see if you have any networking relationships you can leverage. When you’ve identifi ed people you want to reach, see if they’ve posted a profi le online. Google their names to learn as much as you can. Use InsideView.com to be alerted to trigger events as well as possible dooropening connections. Set up Google or Yahoo alerts to be notifi ed of changes in your targeted accounts.
Some of these Sales 2.0 tools are free. Others cost a small monthly fee. In every case, they significantly enhance your productivity and your expertise, making them a wise investment.
Don’t fool yourself, though, into thinking that landing big corporate clients is just a numbers game. Traditional sales gurus tell you to just keep dialing, smiling and making those calls.
That doesn’t work when you’re trying to crack into big companies. Lots of planning, creative thinking, research and persistence are needed. A strong business case is essential. Corporate decision makers demand that you come prepared—with valuable ideas, insights and information that can help them improve their business, reduce expenses or increase revenue.
By using these strategies, you’ll turn your entrepreneurial dreams into a reality. First you’ll land one corporate client, then another. Before you know it, you’ll have an impressive customer roster with lots of upside potential. S
Jill Konrath is the founder of SellingtoBigCompanies.com, helping sellers win big corporate accounts. She is also a speaker and author of Selling to Big Companies.

Marketing Mix

For more than four decades, the term marketing mix has been used to describe the operational aspects of the marketing function. The term became popular in the 1960’s after Neil H. Borden published an article in the Journal of Advertising Researchtitled “The Concept of the Marketing Mix.” Borden’s marketing mix included product planning, pricing, branding, distribution channels, personal selling, advertising, promotions, packaging, display, servicing, physical handling, and fact finding and analysis. E. Jerome McCarthy later grouped these ingredients into the four categories that we know today as the 4 P’s of marketing – product, price, place, and promotion.

So, if you’re a marketer, give these ideas some thought:

·        Marketing is about communicating your company’s value propositions, but it must also be about determining what those value propositions will be.

·        Marketing is about communicating the important features and attributes of your company’s products or services, but it must also be about determiningwhat features and attributes your products/services need in order to be attractive to buyers.

·       Marketing is about communicating your company’s price-value equation, but it must also be about determining what your company’s pricing strategy will be.

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Take Accountability for Your Own Success

by Ron Ashkenas  |  10:00 AM September 18, 2012

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Human beings have an almost infinite capacity to rationalize failure. For example, many years ago I was working with a project team at what was then Chase Manhattan Bank when a once-in-a-decade snowstorm shut down New York City for several days. For the next six months, the project team used that snowstorm as an excuse for why their project was delayed.

We too have plenty of opportunities to make excuses for our missteps in today's business world. Technology changes rapidly and it's hard to keep up; it's difficult to keep track of global competitors; new regulations constrain our ability to take action; economic ups and downs make it impossible to plan; and the list goes on. In the face of these forces, taking accountability is difficult and painful. Furthermore, accountability has consequences: If you take the blame, you may also pay the price.

One of the most common excuses for lack of organizational progress is that "senior management" (or the CEO) isn't providing the right direction or sending the right message. Over the past few years of writing blog posts on a variety of topics — innovation, simplification, customer-focus, strategic planning, information management, or whatever — the most recurring comment from readers is that any changes on this particular issue (no matter what it is) have to start at the top; that without senior demands, support, and action, everyone else is powerless and no real improvement can occur.

Of course there is logic in this argument, because hierarchical organizations do take their cues from senior leaders. People respect positional authority and therefore give more weight to words uttered from the C-suite. But these hierarchies (for the most part) are not dictatorships. In fact, many of the CEOs and senior executives I've worked with over the years are surprised, humbled, and sometimes frustrated by their lack of real power. And the best know that telling people what to do will only get them so far.

The reality is that the most effective organizations engage in continual (and sometimes brutally candid) dialogue — across levels, functions, and with customers and suppliers. For organizations to be successful, dozens, hundreds, and thousands of people have to be engaged and aligned around common goals and directions. That doesn't mean that everyone needs to move in lockstep, but it does mean that everyone needs to take accountability, to see themselves as part of the solution on the field rather than a distant observer in the stands.

So that's where accountability comes in. If you want to be part of a successful organization, you need to be part of the dialogue — to share your views, influence others, and make a difference. If you don't feel that you can take the initiative to do that, then either think about what gets in your way or what you can do differently. If conditions don't allow you to speak up and exert your influence, go somewhere else. But waiting for senior leaders or the CEO to make things better is probably not going to be a very effective strategy. It makes more sense to blame the last snowstorm.

Great article on the power of charisma and cultivating it in your own life

Why You Need Charisma

by Rosabeth Moss Kanter  |   8:00 AM September 11, 2012

The emerging leaders and rising entrepreneurs on whom I place my bets have one thing in common besides a promising idea: a lot of charisma.

"Paul Lee" (not his real name) is particularly adept at attracting people to his visions and engendering trust. A tireless networker because of his great interest in people, he can spend thirty minutes on a commuter plane and disembark with new friends. He approaches potential investors and also top figures in sports and entertainment based on sheer charm and willingness to do personal things for them, like get tickets to a game for the kids or make introductions, immediately on his mobile. His magnetism isn't in the stories he tells; it comes from the intense way he listens to other people's stories and then draws them into an activity connected to that story. Within a two years after leaving an established firm, Lee built a mini-conglomerate in New York and Los Angeles. He attracts capital, celebrity endorsements, and money for philanthropy based on talking people into joining him and constantly nurturing those relationships.

Lee's business model involves building a core marketing company and surrounding it with satellite investments that can draw on the capabilities of the core to realize their growth potential. His leadership model involves making sure all feel that they are special and will have their particular needs met, yet also feeling that they are all in it together, drawing strength from association. At charity events Lee and his wife host for causes he cares about, CEOs mingle with his childhood friends and rock singers. Lee's world is appealing because it is highly positive; it's hard to find a hint of rivalries or enmities (even though I know he could demonize a rival if he wished).

Charisma isn't oratory or rhetoric; Lee is not a polished speaker or writer. Charisma isn't devoid of substance, either. Lee's numbers must look good — which they do, because he can entice the best people and that entices others. Lee is just at the beginning of his leadership journey, but people have faith in him — more accurately, faith in the groups he can assemble because of his magnetism. That's the essence of charisma.

Charisma has been getting a bad rap recently. The trend among leadership gurus is to discredit the "great man" theory of leadership (there aren't enough women leaders yet for a "great woman" theory to discredit), and emphasize instead the ideas of multiple leaders, followership, distributed leadership, and teams. It is true that no single individual succeeds by himself or herself. Even so-called "water walkers" (named after a religious figure, and one of my favorite images from my bookConfidence) have stones holding them up while they walk on the water — that is, support systems just below the surface. It is also true that the religious tinge associated with charisma conjures up images of blind faith, whether leading people to drink the lethal kool-aid or invoking the false hope that a new CEO can rescue a failing corporation all by herself. But rejecting charisma as a factor goes overboard, missing the personal appeal that makes someone a leader.

Similarly, U.S. Presidential elections have been criticized for emphasizing personality over substance. Social psychologists have turned likeability and competence into distinct variables, as though leaders can't have both. In election season, the likeability factor is measured but simultaneously discredited by pundits who caricature it as a choice of beer-drinking companions. I come down on the other side: I think people should choose the more charismatic candidate, all other things being roughly equal, because a leader that can charm us and lead us into a movement reflecting our better selves is also the most likely to use that appeal to get things done in a contentious political environment. Both Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan had charisma in abundance. Leaders can hire for spreadsheet skills, but they can't outsource relationship skills.

Some people, like President Clinton or my young friend Lee, seem naturally high in charisma, but there are ingredients that can be cultivated: A genuine interest in people. Listening to their needs and concerns, and showing that you will help them achieve their goals. Treating people as though each is special and deserves attention. Remembering details about them.

In today's troubled world, entrepreneurship is sometimes treated as the new religion that will save the economy and build world peace. The analogy to religion is appropriate, because there's always an element of faith in innovation and entrepreneurship. That's why venture capitalists' rule of thumb is to bet on the leader, not the idea. Charisma can be a decisive factor.

More blog posts by Rosabeth Moss Kanter

More on: Leadership

Forbes- 3 mistakes and how you can avoid them

Mike Maddock

I am an Entrepreneur, Author and Idea Monkey.

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9/10/2012 @ 10:01AM |1,345 views

Three (Incredibly Stupid) Mistakes I Made -- And How You Can Avoid Them

In my last post where I talked about three incredibly simple questions the best leaders ask to change the world, I said intelligence is learning from your own mistakes and wisdom is learning from the mistakes of others.

So it’s in the spirit of contributing wisdom that I share three mistakes that I’ve made and unfortunately see other leaders making every day.

My hope is that this leaves you with a few less lumps on your forehead and a few more bucks in your pocket.

Incredibly Stupid Mistake #1: You assume the best ideas in your business will naturally win

This one may surprise you because most leaders trust their team to do the right thing and make clear, unemotional decisions—especially when it comes to good ideas. Unfortunately, most leaders are wrong.By assuming the best ideas will rise to the top, leaders often throw the best ideas to the wolves, and they are truly shocked to find out months later the great ideas have been forgotten and marginal ideas are still alive and kicking.What happened? Fear. The best ideas are often the scariest for the people who have to support and implement them. For them and their teammates, big ideas often mean dramatic change, lost jobs, new responsibilities, unknown futures—all of which are frightening and hard to do. Instinctively, we avoid danger. So it is safer and easier to find ways for the status quo to win and danger to lose. Presto, the ecosystem just killed the best idea.So how can leaders make big ideas happen? Match words with actions, such as comp models based on metrics that measure the change instead of rewarding the status quo. Don’t stop championing an idea until it comes to fruition. Kennedy did more than say, “We choose to go to the moon.” He made sure it happened. He ensured NASA had funding. He wouldn’t let go of the idea until it was real.

As a leader, you simply must champion and support big ideas. Otherwise they will die a slow but almost certain death.

Stupid Mistake #2: You hire proven, industry experts 

to shake up your market

We’d been in business for about 11 years when I decided we were ready to take it to the next level. So I went on a talent hunt to find people who had successfully helped grow a firm like ours from small to big. My logic was that they’d come to our company and repeat a learned pattern of success.

Cue the something bad is about to happen music.

There was only one problem with my idea: We were in the middle of building an Agency of Innovation—an unproven, new-to-the-world category that would rely on a creative new business model and offerings.

Needless to say, bringing in proven “experts” turned out to be a disaster. At first I was mystified by the fearful, slow-moving monster I helped create. After all, we hired four, incredibly smart, very seasoned and well-meaning leaders…who were fighting changing our business model tooth and nail because they knew what worked, and it didn’t look like the agency we were becoming.

Three years later, after two of our worst years in business, the wisdom of this lesson finally sunk in: Expertise can be your Achilles’ heel. Unfortunately, all too often our expertise keeps us from seeing possibility that is right in front of us. We know what worked in the past, what we can afford, what business we should be in, what our customers want…but we know all of this from experience that may no longer be aligned to the market. The market changes, and sometimes experts don’t want to.

As my friend Marshall Goldsmith is fond of saying: “What got you here won’t get you there.”

The solution is not to avoid experts. Use them when you have a specific or common legal, technical or industry challenge to solve. They will absolutely help you solve it more quickly.

But you’ll need to import experts from other industries if your mission is to change the rules of the game. Look for experts who have delivered similar solutions in a parallel way. It was fashion and beauty experts who revealed teeth whitening as a business opportunity, not dentists.

Stupid Mistake #3: Hiring your strengths instead of weaknesses

In our latest book, Free the Idea Monkey…to focus on what matters most!, I point out that everyWalt Disney needs a Roy Disney and every Steve Wozniak needs a Steve Jobs. Wherever you find great innovation, you will find symbiotic relationships like these. The challenge is that we like to be around people who share our strengths—people who are like us. So unless we are very aware of our strengths and weaknesses, we often go looking for the wrong relationships.

You see this with entrepreneurs all the time. The inspiring, creative entrepreneur hires an inspiring, creative operating partner, who hires an inspiring, creative sales lead…before long, you have a whole company of inspiring, creative people who are too busy using their inspiring “Sparkle Fingers” (think jazz hands) to notice the P&L is completely screwed up. Small wonder that Sparkle, Inc. is out of business in 18 months.

By the way, the same thing happens with highly analytic operators who hire similar folks. The results are similar, just less sparkly.

The solution? First, know thyself. Next, hire the proven “anti-you” as a partner.

There you have it. Three huge mistakes I made. When I spell it out in black and white, I can’t believe how dumb I was.
I’ve learned from my mistakes. I hope you can too, by not making them.

Getting comfortable with team conflict

Four Lessons from Good Bosses

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Four Lessons From the Best Bosses I Ever Had

by Deborah Mills-Scofield  |   9:00 AM September 4, 2012

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My first boss at Bell Labs had a habit of yelling. While he was an equal-opportunity yeller, when he shouted at me in my first department meeting, I got up, told him when he wanted to talk, not yell, I'd be in my office and walked out. I was 20 years old, just out of undergrad, and sitting among a group of aghast Ph.D.'s . Perhaps this was not the best initial career move. But about 30 minutes later, he walked into my office and apologized. He never yelled at me again (though he did keep yelling at the rest of the team), and became one of three manager-mentors that shaped my career at Bell Labs and AT&T — and taught me to manage others and myself. I'll share one story from each boss and the lesson I learned from each.

That first boss, the reformed yeller, provided multiple opportunities for visibility up to the president of Bell Labs, coaching me all the way. He went out on a limb to make me the first person promoted to Member of Technical Staff (MTS) without a Ph.D. or M.S., and under the age of 25. He gave me the freedom to design my own role and the autonomy to accomplish my goals, only "interfering" to remove obstacles and create more visibility. When I was going to quit to move to Ohio and marry my husband, who had left Basic Research at Bell Labs to teach Physics at Oberlin College, he pulled strings with HR and his counterpart at AT&T for our project (and my next boss) so I wouldn't quit. These two men arranged my transfer to my new boss's organization, moved me to Oberlin, Ohio and flew me back and forth for nine years...just so I wouldn't quit.

Lesson: Let Your People Go. When you find great talent, do what you need to in order to encourage and support them. Treat them justly and do what's right for them and the organization over what's right for you personally. Give them opportunities to excel and succeed and air cover if they fail. Be willing to take "personal" risks for the right employee.

I knew my second boss already, having worked with him for a year or so with mutual respect and admiration. He fully supported my telecommuting, since it "proved" our project in action, and funded a home office with every device imaginable for 1988, including a laptop and cell phone. I commuted weekly to New Jersey and monthly to Europe and Asia. I designed my own job with my own set of outputs and outcomes — he provided the resources to make it happen. He taught me how to succeed at corporate politics without compromising my integrity and championed my work up the executive ladder. He orchestrated a "loan" of me to the president's office for a special project that was a significant career opportunity. And, when the project was done, he helped me choose from my available options: stay in the executive suite, go with the business I'd helped start as a result of the project, or return to my organization. I did not want to stay with the executives — there were no role models for me in the C-suite (which they interpreted as no women and I clarified as no humans). I wanted to go back to my boss and his wonderfully addictive leadership style, but he pushed me to join the management team running the new business.

Lesson: Light the Fire and Clear the Path. Guide your people's passion and get out of the way: the autonomy and freedom I was given to create and do my job exponentially increased my passion, excitement and success. My manager-mentors made sure my passions aligned with organizational direction, gave me some high-level boundaries, resources, and introductions to make it happen. They removed obstacles, showed me how to handle challenges, provided opportunities, and took the blame while giving me the credit.

The new business's management team consisted of many Labroids (Bell Labs folks), and my next boss also believed in autonomy, outcomes over outputs, customer-centricity, and developing his people. The experiences, opportunities, successes, failures, and learnings during that "start-up" time were amazing and we had a lot of fun creating a separate culture. While working for him, I had my first child. In addition to the very generous maternity leave benefits, his support and communication with the rest of the team in New Jersey made it possible for me to work from home, without travel, and still have significant impact on the business. For him, the fact I wasn't in New Jersey meant I had a politically unbiased perspective on the business's needs. He'd handle the politics; I'd handle getting the work done with my team. Unfortunately, AT&T was changing dramatically, and not positively. We all started leaving. But to this day, my friendship with my former boss remains strong.

Lesson: Remember, They're Human. Many companies treat their employees as employees — nicely and kindly, even generously — but not as humans. My manager-mentors made it clear that I mattered not just for what I could do, but also for who I was. It wasn't just about the generous maternity leave or the work-from-home flexibility, although I was grateful for both. Boss #2, for instance, required that I take two consecutive weeks of vacation to fully relax. My assistant took care of everything and virtually banned me from checking email, even though we would still do the New York Times crossword puzzle every day — an important ritual for us no matter where I was in the world. While I had "official" vacation days, no one ever kept tabs on them unless the number to be carried over was too large. It was important to all my bosses that I learn from their successes, mistakes and not share their regrets.

What else did I learn from three incredible manager-mentors? While there were many lessons, this has stood out for me over the past 30 years: Trust trumps everything. And everything flows from trust — learning, credibility, accountability, a sense of purpose and a mission that makes "work" bigger than oneself.

Yes, I've been extremely blessed and my circumstances were, and unfortunately still are, atypical. But they don't have to be. As you look at your organization, at your people, at your culture, please think about how you can apply just one of these lessons, perhaps even just one part of one lesson. The benefits last decades.

More blog posts by Deborah Mills-Scofield

More on: Managing people

DEBORAH MILLS-SCOFIELD

Deb Mills-Scofield is a partner at Glengary LLC, an early stage venture capital firm in Cleveland, OH, and an innovation and strategy consultant. Her patent from AT&T Bell Labs was one of the highest-revenue generating patents ever for AT&T & Lucent. You can follow her on twitter @dscofield.

Playing the game: Office Politics