Where will the Money Come From?
By Don Matlock
www.risktakersuccessmaker.com
Having made the decision many years ago to start my own corporate advisory business (Matlock Corporate Advisory Pty Ltd), the initial fear concerning where the money would come from was very real. Of course in the decision making process to go it alone, I believed that my contacts and understanding of the industry would provide me with many opportunities.
The very first question is – WHO ARE LIKELY TO BE MY CLIENTS?
Then follows - Where do I look for them? How do I assemble the initial contacts information, in what form do I keep it in? How do I keep it up to date? These are the commonly asked questions for very good reasons. The answer to the first question is simply - No better place to start than people I already know!
First thing to do, gather every business contact you presently have, or have ever had, as well as personal contacts you currently have who are in any industry, profession, etc and start your own business directory, divided by category (alphabetical listing, by entity, within each category) for each type of industry or profession in which your personal and business contacts do business, irrespective of the categories from which you expect paying clients will come.
This should be in electronic form and continually updated and added to, but with a bound hard copy always with you at work, whilst at meetings and while travelling, at home or when you go on holidays! – And as an aside, you will learn very early in the piece that when you are a consultant there are two things your clients will never allow you, to be sick or to be on holidays, and if you are sick, unless you are near death, you just keep working anyway, for your own sake let alone theirs.
The Directory’s details should include the personal title (e.g. Mr, Mrs, Ms, etc) of the person, their full name and correct business title, the full company name and mailing address, brief reference to Industry type e.g. Food – Consumer goods, the person’s direct phone number and the entity’s switchboard number, fax number, mobile number, email and website reference, the name of the person’s PA or EA (if applicable), and lastly, a business summary column which describes in brief detail what the business is. The reason for the second last point about the PA or EA’s name is that you can win a lot of silent brownie points with the person you wish to do business with if you always remember his or her PA’s name when you are speaking with them (the PA). There’s nothing false about it, it’s common courtesy to try and remember someone’s name, and in my own case, I very much enjoy speaking with the many PA’s and EA’s I have met over the years.
The electronic record should be updated and added to on a daily basis, with a bound hard copy run off each month, but with hand written amendments made to it on a daily basis during the month until the next re-run.
Whilst the electronic record can always be referred to on the screen in the office or on the notebook, practice has taught me that it is always best to also have the bound copy at your fingertips wherever you are for easy and immediate reference.
This is the most important document you will continue to produce, as it is your client and/or prospective client base, and your total contact network, and in time, it will also be the primary source of your information base.
You should also separately develop a much larger master file, by contact, to compile, on a continuing basis, all data and information on any such contact/s (including website information and/or web reference), which should be updated, edited and/or deleted as you see fit. There is no particular format for such a file. It is basically just a continuing chronological record of available information, as combined with your own notes accordingly.
The next major questions are - WHAT IS MY TARGET MARKET? WHAT CAN I OFFER EACH TYPE OF TARGET?
To answer both parts of the question, you have to first exhaust just how many services you may and can offer and to whom, given your past experience as to what products and services you have worked with and to which type of client they have been offered and/or transacted. Given that you are now more than likely in a sole-principal role (compared to possibly conflict of interest issues when you were employed), you may be able to provide services in a pure advisory role or as a broker, once again depending as to which industry you are in.
In exhausting this process you must think outside the box to make certain that there is not one stone unturned as to any service or partial service you can provide from your menu of services, bearing in mind that obviously not the entire menu can be offered to all categories of prospective clients. (During this most important preliminary phase, whatever may enter your head in relation to both aspects should at least be written down and considered before any elimination thereof).
Simply, this means e.g. that if the full menu of your offering numbers say fifteen products and/or services, you may only be able to offer say three of that total menu of fifteen to a particular category of potential client.
By exhausting simultaneously both the services you may offer as well as to whom you may offer them to, you should arrive at a point where you are satisfied that the process has left no opportunity unnoticed in relation to both aspects, and thus what you wind up with is what you will initially offer, and to whom (as an industry category).
We then move to the marketing of your business, ask ourselves, how do I first present myself/ourselves to others? How big or small should the initial Business Profile be? What should the main content be, and how “glossy” or otherwise should it be? Should an introductory letter be sent with it? Who should I send it to? How many presentations do I send out at any time in order to have adequate timely follow up?
Once a Business Plan process is completed (read Don’s article - Developing a Practical Business Plan), the next item on the agenda is to produce your initial Business Profile, which essentially at that early stage is your CV. However, it should be very seriously condensed into a short, sharp package, with primary reference to major transactions/achievements secured with which clients of your previous employer/s (but after confidentiality consideration as to the extent of permissible detail), preferably the ones best known to all, the more significant the name the better, but remembering of course that big is not necessarily always beautiful.
The underlying principle here is very simple, if you have done it for a well known or noted company, then it is easier for the big and small company (prospective client) alike to believe that you can provide the service to them, even if you are now acting in your own right as an individual in your own business – in other words, nothing speaks a better language than professionally and tactfully dropping names, but as sure as hell, don’t drop the name if you have not done the work with the party you make reference to – industry participants, even competitors, check people (and possibly, you) out between themselves without you being any the wiser.
The rest of the profile should briefly, but succinctly, refer to the full menu of services that your business offers to all categories of potential clients.
Once the text of the document is finished, it should be bound into a quality presentation folder with suitable graphics and colour, etc utilized, but not over the top, it’s the content that counts, not the fizz! Your business card should be attached in such a way where it will be removed from the package and thus hopefully included in the target’s own electronic and/or hard copy directory, and possibly a card index also. In this regard, if one card is affixed to the presentation in any way (and may be left affixed by the target), then include an additional loose card as well.
The next task is to develop separate letters for each type of category of target – these should be brief, no more than one page, referring specifically (but only in very brief and general terms, preferably bullet points only) to the particular services that pertain to that specific target company, which are from within your full service menu as described in the text of the enclosed copy of the Business Profile. The only other reference in the letter should be to the fact that you will be following up with a phone call within the next week to ten days to arrange a mutually convenient appointment time to meet at their office.
You should take particular care to get the precise detail and spelling of all of the following one hundred percent correct; the personal title (e.g. Mr. Mrs. Ms etc) of the person, the name of the person you are addressing the letter to, the company name, the person’s correct job or position title, and the correct mailing address. If any of these details are noted and sent incorrectly, it may be interpreted by the recipient as sloppy, careless and indicative of your business’s attitude and attention to detail in its performance. You should also address the envelope either “For the addressee’s eyes only” or at least “strictly confidential”, to ensure that it at least gets to the addressee’s personal assistant or secretary (if applicable), and thus try and eliminate the possibility of anyone else making the decision as to who should get the document, despite it being specifically addressed.
In circumstances where you are sending the material cold (without having had any prior contact) then despite the management level of the particular person you believe you will finish up negotiating the business with, it is best to address it to the person who that party reports to (if you happen to know, or if not, you find out), so it at least gets a brief review by possibly the party who will eventually be signing off on your appointment. If they as a result happen to very much like your presentation and style, they may well recommend (internally) to the party with whom you will negotiate that they at least give you the opportunity to meet with them initially to present yourself. For obvious reasons, your initial contact is thus preferably with the more senior person, who, even if they do initially speak to you, may then direct you to the less senior party with whom you are to negotiate.
A good example of the above mentioned “top down” principle was one I experienced during the process of an acquisition-search assignment I conducted with a multinational company many years ago. Prior to my appointment, the Chief Executive of the same company had contacted the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the target Group about buying one of their divisions. The COO, a particularly abrupt, arrogant and difficult individual (who was someone I had also encountered in my own travels before being appointed by the multinational) had told the Chief Executive (of my new client) to politely piss off! Because of that unfortunate precedent, I recommended to my new client that we instead target a fresh approach via the Group Chief Executive (GCE), the COO’s boss, appeal to his better sense of judgement that we had done our homework on the target, that we were serious, and all that we wanted was a chance for the possible sale of the division to at least be considered. We accordingly, on my letterhead, sent a letter to the GCE. The tactic fortunately worked, as I soon thereafter received a very polite phone call from the COO inviting myself and the Chief Executive of my new client to visit their office in Sydney to have a general discussion about the possible sale of the division. Approximately 18 months later the sale was concluded to my same (then) multinational client. The vendor Group sometime later nearly went to the wall, primarily as a result of a series of bad investments being made upon the recommendation of the very same COO. The Group has since re-established itself as a major global corporation within its industry, no thanks to our COO mate, who was retrenched at the beginning of the rescue operation for the Group. The simple message of the story here, “top down” can certainly work in your favour, and may in a lot of cases.
Back to the main agenda, depending upon how many presentations you have to mail out, you should mail them in batches of say fifty at a time, three to four working days apart before you dispatch the next batch. At the time of sending each batch you make a diary note to follow up on that batch in approximately ten days time. The reason for the break of three to four days between mailing batches is to allow that same amount of time to make the initial phone contact to each of the fifty parties in the preceding batch, even if the contact only results initially in leaving your phone details with the PA or on voicemail.
You may ask why don’t I email it to the targeted person or his/her PA – the answer is simple, how much attention do you pay to each promo email message you get each day amongst the many you may receive – yes, quite a number of them go straight into the trash can, particularly if you are busy. What you may find from your initial follow up call(s) is that the person or the PA has lost or misplaced your mailed presentation – if they then ask you to email it, you at least know that there is a chance that they will look at the electronic copy once it comes through to them, and the minor embarrassment of them losing it will only help your cause! Alternatively, if they have delegated it on to the right person within their own establishment, you then at least know that it has not been thrown out, and further, you are at least in the starting gate, having the opportunity to speak with the delegated, and right, person.
Despite my comments on email here, I do on occasions (for reasons associated with becoming aware of the target’s either known, assumed, or emerging communication habits), first email the document, with the message that a hard copy has also been sent in the mail, and further, that I will telephone soon thereafter. This alternative approach may be used if the previous more direct approach has failed.
In summary;
• Gather all the business and personal contacts you have ever had, and put them in to a business directory, by category.
• Make certain that all the details recorded against each person therein are completely correct.
• Always have a hard copy of your directory with you at any time, including at home and on holidays.
• You may also choose to develop a secondary, much larger master file, per contact, for information reference purposes.
• Think of how many services or product offerings you can offer, and to whom, by category, and client specific.
• During this process, think outside the box so no opportunity is missed.
• Develop your Business Profile, including your full service menu, into a short package. Refer to major achievements within, and for whom.
• Develop separate marketing letters for each target category. Keep brief, bullet point form; refer to follow up phone call.
• Make certain all personal and other address details are correct, and that it is addressed to the appropriate senior person.
• Time the dispatch of batches of letters to allow sufficient time in between for follow up phone calls.
Don Matlock has had in excess of 30 years collective experience in investment banking, including the last 20 years as the principal of Matlock Corporate Advisory, a leading boutique corporate advisory firm in relation to corporate divestment, merger or acquisition advice.
Don has recently published Risk Taker, Success Maker – Consulting for Career and Personal Growth – www.risktakersuccessmaker.com
Where will the Money Come From? - To learn more about this author, visit David Parker's Website.
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