What working with "corporate" clients actually means
Art Deco details at The Fifth Floor Buenos Aires- a gorgeous boutique B&B. Photo above Hotel Fierro also in BA. Both photographed by the ever fab Jocelyn Mandryk. And both count as great examples of small businesses.
When people ask me about building a business based on "corporate" clients, they're usually intrigued by the word "corporate."
Now, I put corporate in quotes because most peeps automatically think corporate means Fortune 100 or 500 or 1000 companies. The big ass public companies with tens of thousands of employees. The companies with multi-billion dollar IPOs. The companies that we thought were too big to fail.
Those companies could be clients, but they're not where I would recommend you start if you're looking to expand your own small business by selling to corporate clients.
Why?
Because they are big and often full of bureucracy. Because they sometimes move slowly. Because you don't want to mess with their legal departments.
At a future time I'll write about those kinds of companies as clients and the unique skill set you'll need to access those potentially lucrative accounts, but for right now, go for the ones that are often much easier to land.
Thousands of privately held businesses with revenue between $1 million and $100 million (and much more) are right in your back yard NO MATTER WHERE IN THE WORLD you live.
So, for the purposes of these blog posts, corporate refers to all businesses that are going concerns:
A going concern is a business that functions without the threat of liquidation for the foreseeable future, usually regarded as at least within 12 months.
That does exclude most startups for the time being but more on that later.
Now, go make a list of potential corporate clients in your neighborhood.
Hint: start close by because the local furniture store totally counts, as do any and all franchise owners.
Up next? How to meet the decision makers at these corporate prospects.
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