Broadly speaking, the most difficult thing in business is trying to make a sale to another company.  This holds true whether this “sale” is an entrepreneur trying to raise capital, an agency pitching a new campaign idea or a start-up trying to get a brand to buy their platform.

But despite this being one of the toughest things in business, there are really only two approaches that companies use to make a deal happen.  Some take the approach of going straight to the top, only wanting to engage with a senior executive who has direct budget authority.  Others take the opposite approach, instead looking for someone that can become their advocate within the company.  Usually this advocate is a more junior employee, the person that influences the budget instead of controlling the budget.

Anyone that favors the first approach generally views the junior people at the company as unnecessary gate keepers.  But as Phin Barnes, a Principal at First Round Capital, points out, it might be natural to take this view, but it is also dangerous:

Non-partners on the investment team are friction in the system, but if we do our job well, we can be the friction that keeps you IN, rather than the force that keeps you out.

Phin makes a great case that entrepreneurs should take the second approach and view junior people at a VC as advocates and allies instead of gate keepers.   And I would echo that anyone looking to do business with a CPG company or brand should take the same approach.

After all, in the world of Brand Management, there is tremendous noise at the top levels of management.  You are talking about executives that oversee billions of dollars of sales and hundreds (if not thousands) of employees.  Their time is managed down to the minute and their inbox is filled with hundreds of messages.

In other words, good luck breaking through that clutter.

But you can break through the clutter with junior people such as myself.  When I was an Assistant Brand Manager, one of the first lessons my Marketing Director taught me  was that my job was to know the consumer better than anyone else.  She stressed that my job was to use that knowledge of the consumer as the foundation for our marketing plans.   As a result, the senior brand leaders trusted my judgment when I said a campaign idea wouldn’t resonate with the people we were trying to reach.  And they took notice when I advocated for us to try marketing in a new area that are consumers were using (think social networks back in 2005).

Good business leaders use the people working for them as filters to find the best ideas.  They trust their people to be specialists with deep knowledge of specific areas of responsibility.

It is a simple truth that holds true in both the venture capital and brand worlds.  Instead of fighting against the system, I believe there is real value in making the system work for you.  If you can find an advocate, they can help you make your proposition better.  And more importantly, they can give you – an outsider – an insider’s seat at the business table.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 at 7:38 am and is filed under Thought Provoking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.