All Freelance Work is a Community for Freelance Workers Including Free Portfolios, Job Search, Job Posting, Helpful Articles, Forums, & More for the Self Employed.
UNDERSTANDING
THE CORPORATE BUYER (Tips on How to Sell Your Freelance or Small Business Services to Corporations)
by C.J. Hayden
Selling
your services to corporations is an attractive proposition.
The contracts are larger than with small businesses and individuals,
and often longer-term. There's the possibility of repeat business
worth many billable hours at respectable rates.
But the best clients are not always the easiest to get. If
you don't grasp the realities of the corporate environment,
you may sabotage even a hot lead.
Here are five important
keys to working with the corporate buyer.
1. Managers are busy.
This is just as true
in economic downturns as during a boom. When business is slow,
unnecessary employees get laid off. The people left behind
have to pick up the slack.
Busy people ignore unsolicited email and letters, and will
not return your phone calls. Even when you are in the final
stages of closing a deal, your contact may not return your
calls for weeks. If you accept this as normal behavior instead
of obsessing about how you may have caused it, you will sleep
better at night and use your daylight hours more productively.
2. Hot buttons open doors.
If you want to
capture the interest of a busy person, you need to tell them
exactly how you can help them. Calling just to introduce yourself
will not get their attention.
What do the people in your target market perceive to be the
greatest problems they face, or the biggest goals they wish
to achieve? Ask these questions of the people you serve and
the other businesspeople who serve them. Read trade literature
or special interest publications and educate yourself on the
key issues in your marketplace. Then tell your prospects in
every communication how you can help address these needs.
3. Every choice must be justified.
When you
sell to the owner of a small business or to an individual
for his or her own use, your buyer is free to make purchasing
decisions based on instinct, whim, or gut feeling. But every
corporate sale must be justified to someone else in the organization.
A supervisor must justify choices to a manager, the manager
to an executive, the executive to the CEO, the CEO to the
board, the board to the shareholders. Each one of these people
wants to look good to the next link up the chain, and dreads
making a public mistake. If you want your sale to go through,
you need to provide your contact with EVIDENCE why you and
your solution are the best choice.
4. The bottom line rules.
When you provide
your evidence, it had better include dollars and cents. If
you are more expensive than your competition, what added value
will you provide? If hiring you will cost more than solving
the company's problem in some other way, what tangible benefits
will they receive that make the added expense worthwhile?
Individuals and small businesses buy services in the category
of nice-to-have, often to improve their quality of life or
that of their employees. Corporations, especially in lean
times, don't. You must sell them something they actually NEED
and prove how it will enhance their bottom line. Real-life
examples of results at other companies can speak volumes.
Illustrations with charts and graphs are more convincing than
any brochure.
5. No budget; no project.
Even when the company
needs what you have and thinks you're the best one for the
job, the deal won't go through if there's no money in the
budget. You can ask your contact to try for a budget variance,
but no budget usually means your project will be deferred
until the next fiscal year.
Always ask if the client has a budget at the first meeting.
Don't necessarily expect them to tell you how much it is --
price negotiations will come later. But if your contact can't
answer budget questions, it's also a strong clue you are not
talking to the decision-maker.
C.J. Hayden, MCC
C.J. Hayden is the author of Get Clients
NOW! Since 1992, C.J. has been teaching business owners and
salespeople to make more money with less effort. She is a
Master Certified Coach and leads workshops internationally.
Read more of her articles at www.getclientsnow.com
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All Freelance Work is a Community for Freelance Workers Including Free Portfolios, Job Search, Job Posting, Helpful Articles, Forums, & More for the Self Employed.
