You may be a new firm, a small firm or you may have very little experience in the industry you want to pursue. Yet you have your sights set on a big company you would like to have as a client.
Expressing your offering in as specialized a light as possible limits the number of percieved competitors you may have. Chunk up what you do into several packages if you want to, but present each in its own niche when going after big companies.
Here are 3 ways to find out what your "super-niche" might be.
1.Track the companies you'd like to win as new clients:
a) Go to the investor relations' area of their websites & get on the distribution list for shareholder materials. You do not need to be a shareholder and the slide presentations made at conferences or news releases will give you great insight.
b) subscribe to newsletters from the most influential industry publications.
You are educating yourself. In order to speak to business leaders, you need to see the world through their eyes, speak their language and understand how the "cheque signer" views what your firm does.
2. Express your firm's expertise in relation to industry-wide pressures. A similar challenge in a different industry is relevant. For example, new regulations or compliance requirements affect businesses in all industries.
Showcase project(s) where the business challenges you addressed were driven by compliance pressures.
3.When speaking about your firm's expertise, demonstrate how you have helped deliver on a company's promises made to shareholders.
When you're funded out of a discretionary budget, timelines are short. Your "super-niche" may be that you deliver using a company's intranet and therefore have global reach and rapid turnaround. Back your statement up with a generic project path document.
As you become familiar with industry pressures and how that relates to shareholder promises, your "super-niche" will become apparent.
The next episode will discuss the "30-second Commercial", which demonstrates speaking from the "buy side" instead of the "sell side" of the table.
Catherine Mcquaid is a Big Game Hunter in the Urban Jungle. Her clients are mid-sized business services firms who want to win consulting assignments with the Fortune 1000. Trained as a semiotician/literature critic, she now owns a key account development business.
Her strategies for getting into large companies and getting very senior executives to open the door to the C-suite can be used by big game hunters everywhere. She writes on Major Account Acquisition strategies.
Connect / Follow: blog, Twitter, LinkedIn.
To contact directly: email, Skype: cmcquaid
Thanks Sam;
Getting attention in the concrete jungle is almost always the name of the game isn't it?
Catherine McQuaid
Posted by: Catherine McQuaid | December 09, 2009 at 09:46 AM
Catherine--- this is a PHENOMENAL title.... I would say the best in the competition...
WAY better than mine!!!
Regards,
Sam Diener
Posted by: Sam Diener | December 09, 2009 at 09:32 AM