Never underestimate the power of hired goons

Jul 27 2008

Small businesses often come up against a major roadblock in trying to sell their services… We just look too darn SMALL. Anyone who has ever pitched or been pitched by a big company knows the difference.

As a small business owner, I’m often flying solo and presenting on my 15″ laptop monitor… But when I was director of marketing communications for a mid-sized products company and creative firms came to pitch me, they usually brought a roomful of people and their own projector. There’s a big difference in perception from the audience’s point of view and it can be a major handicap if you’re ever bidding against a larger or more established player who can fill the room for a sales call.

So how do you even the odds? Start bringing a couple of employees with you to your meetings. If you don’t have employees, use hired goons: a vendor, a partner, consultant or colleague that can add value to your sales pitch.

Last Thursday, my associate and I went to support one of our clients at a big sales meeting. This particular client is a husband and wife-owned business and they had been working diligently for several weeks trying to convince a middle-management gatekeeper to allow them to speak directly to the executive-level decision makers. After meeting on several other occasions without getting any traction, they were convinced that this would be their last shot.

So this time, we went with them. We helped them with their presentation materials, we sat with them for moral support, chimed in to quickly fill any conversation gaps and presented the marketing-related portions of the pitch ourselves, which gave our team credibility and gave the business owners a short break from presenting.

Before I made it back to my desk 45 minutes later, there was already a message in my inbox to confirm a follow-up meeting with the executive team this coming Tuesday.

I’m certainly not trying to take all the credit for this success; I spent most of my time as a hired sales goon sitting quietly and nodding my head whenever one of my clients made a good point and only spoke a handful of times during the entire meeting. But our presence there was one of several factors that allowed these clients to finally break through and take their pitch to the decision makers.

My colleague Mark DiNunzio talks a lot about applying big business sales techniques to small businesses and this is just one page from the playbook. But it’s effective and takes virtually no effort to implement.