Tweet

Partnering Techniques for the Entrepreneur the First Pitch

Written by: Sarah Gerdes

Article Overview: When the owner of a three person small business pitched Home Depot on a partnership to grow his painting company, he had no idea how close he came to achieving his goal. But his lack of asking the right questions and capitalizing on the needs of the larger business cost him the partnership opportunity. This article covers common partnership problems encountered by entrepreneurs during the first partner conversation and the six critical questions to ask during the initial pitch that can make or break the conversation.

Partnering Techniques for the Entrepreneur the First Pitch

Recently, a small business owner in Nevada relayed a partnership problem common to small business owners; the first conversation started great but slid downhill for ‘no apparent reason.’ Armed with a few good questions and focusing the partnership in the areas most important to the Potential Partner Organization (PPO), the odds of an entrepreneur creating a partnership during the first phone call dramatically increases.

Thanks but no Thanks
Let’s take a recent example. Joe, the owner of a painting company with two employees located in the northern California town of Quincy, desired to grow his revenues. He knew the largest paint supplier was the local Home Depot, two hours away. After listening to several of the BMG tapes on partner development, he created a value proposition (i.e. elevator pitch) and considered himself ready to make the case that his firm could be the partner to deliver painting seminars for a particular type of application found only in northern California. Armed with his confidence and resume, he cold-called into the manager.

Once he had the store manager on the phone, he asked to be placed on the local vendor list. This would allow Home Depot employees to refer local customers to him for specific projects and in turn, he could provide in-store seminars at the Home Depot. He was met with a negative response to both offers. Unlike other Home Depot stores, this location did not keep an ‘authorized’ or ‘certified’ vendor list. In other words, it had no formal mechanism to refer customers either by phone, in person or via email. Second, the manager told Ran that all seminars were conducted by in-house employees. Ran, feeling uncomfortable and not sure how far he should press the conversation, thanked the store manager for his time and ended the call.

This real life scenario is commonplace for millions of small business owners trying to establish a revenue-producing partnership. First comes the excitement of “getting the right person on the phone” said Susan Tranton, owner of a small clothing manufacturing shop, only to be followed by the “disappointment of hearing that it’s already being handled in house”.

What he could have done different?

Ask Ask Ask!
The first thing to do is ask questions. With each question, the door of opportunity has the ability to open. And when it does, you must find a way to wedge your foot into the room. For instance, when Ran was told Home Depot doesn’t not track vendors, he should have asked why. He might have uncovered the manager didn’t have the ability, the personnel or the understanding of value to create and maintain such a list. To this response, Ran could have suggested working with the store manager (or her personnel) to create such a list. The effort itself starting the foundation for a partnership with Ran’s company, who would then be in the position to create the selection, qualification and development of a vendor list.

It Doesn’t Always Pay to Think Big

How many times a day are you told to think big and think out of the box? As the CEO of a small company, or a manager of a group that effectively runs as a small company, thinking big or out of the box is really translation for staying out of a rut. In other words, be creative instead of being a drone. Creativity yields fresh ideas, innovation, and market leadership.

Yet the very notion of thinking big works when creating an idea, but fails miserably when it comes to carrying the idea out. Employees of large organizations (say Home Dept) focus on getting the job done today; delivering results measured in sales, revenue and margins. Partnership opportunities fail when the big idea doesn’t translate for the working line manager who needs to figure out how an “opportunity” equates to revenue TODAY.

Lets go back again to Ran, where he was ‘thinking big’ by devising a partnership to both increase the traffic to his business while creating brand loyalty to Home Depot for local customers. When told his potential partner service was already managed internally, he might have asked questions about the training and how Home Depot measures success of in-house workshops. If measured in terms of attendees, he could then ask if the number of attendees meets expectations. If not, he’d suggest a partnership could increase the revenue of the store by providing outside expertise. In hindsight, trimming down his offering to one area might have made the difference in attaining a yes instead of a no.

Balance the Pitch and the Conversation

The small business owner often delivers a one-sided pitch without stopping to confirm the level of interest, relevance or timeliness of the partner opportunity. Unwittingly, this portrays the CEO as a self-consumed, single-minded individual who is not considerate of the needs of the person or company on the other end of the phone.

This is easily avoided. A few simple questions peppered throughout the conversation will reduce or completely eliminate issues surrounding the intentions your call. It will also change a one-sided pitch into a two-way conversation; the very essence of a partnership.

6 Critical Questions to Ask During the Initial Partner Development Call

1. Is this a good time to talk about a potential partnership? (conveys respect for their time and attention)

2. Are you the right person to speak with regarding an opportunity of this nature? (conveys your seriousness to achieve results)

3. Does this opportunity address some/few/most of the existing needs of your company? (validates the issues within in the potential partner organization)

4. What are the most relevant components of the partnership to you at this present time? (validates the priorities of the potential partner)

5. How does this partnership opportunity fit with other existing partnerships or company initiatives? (This identifies if the partner has a successful partnership track record)

6. From your experience, what is the most reasonable way to begin the process? (conveys respect for their process if they have one, if not, allows you to create the path for progression)

For more information on partner development skills, visit www.bmginc.com or www.mybizhomepage.com/education.

Related Articles
  Power of Partnerships
  FRANCHISE SELLING TIPS: # 3
  Developing Telemarketing Success – The Importance of Partnering
  Handling a Market
  Building Your Business Top Ten: Exploiting the Power of Franchise Systems

Article Tags:



Related Forum Posts
Re: Bad SEO techniques? - There are few more techniques which also known as the Bad SEO Techniques or Black Hat SEO Techniques. Such as: - Relying on keyword metatags - Purchase Links (From Spamming or blacklisted sites or doing purchase links on high level for site marketing) - Horde Page Rank: This is one of my favorites, because it's one that most webmasters don't understand yet. This is because it changed over the past year or two. The concept people have in their mind is that page rank is a key part of site rankings and linking to other sites "leaks page rank" from your site. However, the world has changed. - Swap Links: Another oldie, but not goodie. Search engines want links to represent endorsements. Swapped links represent barter, and they are trivial to detect. Don't swap links for the purpose of building page rank. It's a waste of your time - Implement duplicate content - Use Session IDs on your URLs - Use lots of Javascript - Implement your site in Flash
Pitch Like A Girl: How a Woman Can Be Herself and Still Succ - Pitch Like A Girl: How a Woman Can Be Herself and Still Succeed Ronna Lichtenberg 2005 From the inside cover: "As a woman, you probably feel uncomfortable when it comes to promoting yourself and asking for what you want." WHAT IN THE HECK IS THIS, I asked myself when I read that. Women are the fastest growing business owners in the US and Canada, there are t housands of women executives and CEOs - though not as many as might be expected, admittedly, yet the book opens with this surely out of date stereotype. However, as she continued to give examples of women who had high paying jobs but were routinely not paid as much as men because it hadn't occurred to them to ask for raises, etc., I decided it was probably true for a majority of businesswomen... Anyway, more of the info from the jacket: "Other books have told you how to get what you want by being more like a guy. Pitch Like A Girl tells you why its an advantage to be who you are and how to do better by bringing more of yourself to work." The TOC: 1. Pink and Blue 2. The Quck-dry Chapter 3. What's In your head that's not in his 4. The Me, Inc Mindset 5. Visioning: Discover What You Really Want 6. Identifying Prospects 7. Pre-pitch homework and heartwork 8. Crafting the pitch 9. Pricing the pitch 10. Packaging the pitch 11. Delivering the pitch 12. Closing Conclusion A Word to the guys The Empathy Quotient The Systemizing Quotient Bibliography And on a side note - non-fiction books without indexes - of which this is one, annoy me.
Re: Bad SEO techniques? - [quote="WebBizIdeas.com":1jr37kqx]There are few more techniques which also known as the Bad SEO Techniques or Black Hat SEO Techniques. Such as: - Relying on keyword metatags - Purchase Links (From Spamming or blacklisted sites or doing purchase links on high level for site marketing) - Horde Page Rank: This is one of my favorites, because it's one that most webmasters don't understand yet. This is because it changed over the past year or two. The concept people have in their mind is that page rank is a key part of site rankings and linking to other sites "leaks page rank" from your site. However, the world has changed. - Swap Links: Another oldie, but not goodie. Search engines want links to represent endorsements. Swapped links represent barter, and they are trivial to detect. Don't swap links for the purpose of building page rank. It's a waste of your time - Implement duplicate content - Use Session IDs on your URLs - Use lots of Javascript - Implement your site in Flash[/quote:1jr37kqx] Hi Jeff, Thanks for adding to the list. I have one question, though. How would one implement Session IDs for a URL, and what benefit would come from doing so?
Why women don't charge more - I just read a chapter in Pitch Like A Girl: How a Woman Can Be Herself and Still Succeed, by Ronna Lichtenberg that deals with this. THe chapter is called Pricing the Pitch. "In a WAll Street Journal article about what might be holding women back from corporate success, Terry Dal, a former vice president at Wells Fargo bank, said, "Good girls don't advertise; only prostitutes advertise. We feel dirty promoting ourselves." The author's advice: The first step in getting the money you desserve is to understand the market rate for your offering. Not what you think you need, not what they're willing to pay, but the going rate for similar goods and services offered in your area by someone with your skills and experience. Then, seek expert advice. "Men routinely consult lawyers, financial advisers, exxecutive recruiters and any other paid counselors to help them assess what constitutes a fair fee." Your research into going rates should not lead you to a single price for your pitch but rather a range of prices - both a market range and a personal range, which should overlap but won't necessarily be identical. In pricing, one size does not fit all. The final step in determining your price is to consider what you think you'd be paid for the same job if you were a man. The author also discusses why women usually discount their prices (must'n't appear too over-confident), the difference between discounting and "giving a discount", and other issues. I'd advise every woman wondering about what to charge to read at least this chapter of the book.
Partnering for the wrong reasons - Well I guess the 2 biggest fears/mistakes are: 1.) Partnering with someone just because you trust them (i.e. a close family member or friend) and more importantly, need his/her money to implement YOUR unique idea. 2.) Giving away too much (in terms of company shares) too soon. For instance, let's say you gave away 50% of your company shares to a friend who was mainly just an investor who paid for more than 70% of the initial startup costs. You do more than 70% of the work, and the company becomes successful and you're able to repay all of your debts. Then going forward, you're stuck doing the majority of the work still, while you investor friend has been repaid in full and sits on his/her laurels because of the initial written agreement didn't require him/her to help out as much. What would you do then?


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

LISTENING SKILLS IN COACHING

Work at home Opportunities for the Disabled

Environment and productivity at the office

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.