Ideas have power. And there’s nothing more powerful than watching ideas spread.
A while back I was contacted by a reporter for the Financial Times of London, looking to do a story on small companies hunting big deals. It’s what we do at Hunt Big Sales, and it’s so exciting to see the idea taking hold around the world. Here’s the message Londoners saw in their morning paper:
“Small companies too often focus on their advantages and unique value proposition when selling to bigger companies. Those benefits open the door, but closing the sale comes from overcoming their fears over your size and resources.
“Smaller companies need to ask themselves: what would scare this prospect about buying from us? Prepare your answers and deliver them regardless of whether the company asks.
“Many small companies lose big sales not because they hunt for too few, but because they hunt for too many. I advise small companies to create a rubric for evaluating their largest prospects. How that opportunity scores will determine whether or not a small company should expend the effort. These rubrics should be customised for each business, but a few standard questions include: do we have an executive sponsor in this prospect, what difference will we make compared with other competitors, how long has the incumbent been in place, and how many bid cycles have they survived?”
You can read the rest of the articles at the Financial Times web site (registration is required), but this post is about more than tooting my own horn.
If you’re reading this, you’re already on the ground level of this movement. People are in the process of rethinking what is possible for themselves and their businesses. The old rules no longer apply: now it’s about who has earned the big deal, not who is entitled to it.
We’ve seen how this can change business on this side of the pond. Now, it’s going global.
Things are about to get very interesting.