Sell where the money already lands

You run a six-person managed IT company. Your customers are dental offices, HVAC shops, a couple of law firms and a family-owned print shop: other small companies. Since January you have sent forty-one proposals and closed four. Two of those four pay late. The ones who said yes asked for a discount, and most who said no told you they would think about it when things pick up. Things have been about to pick up for two years.

You work hard and you are good. When the effort is sound and the result is thin, I look at where you are standing before I look at how you are selling.

Why is it so hard to sell to other small businesses?

They carry the same constraints you do, and their money is not moving much.

An owner of a small shop has a thin margin, customers who pay on their own schedule, and a tight cash cushion. When you bring that owner a proposal, you are asking them to spend money they have not collected yet. A “no” or “later” from them is rarely about you. It reflects the position they are in.

Now look at the other side of the region. In the spring, the port authority approved a terminal expansion. A hospital system announced a new tower. A school district passed a bond. Those are large landings of money, and each one comes with a list of companies that have to deliver, supply, staff, secure and insure the work. Those companies are growing fast, on deadlines, with signed contracts.

My first work in business, in 1987, was with an economic development group, and what those groups do all day is court these exact moves. They understood what small businesses were to a region: the fleet around every flagship. The small businesses often did not. They were in the story every morning and did not read it.

What is the flagship, and what is the fleet?

The flagship is the large institution or industry that the region’s money flows through, and the fleet is the suppliers, contractors and shops that feed it.

I grew up near a university that was the economic driver for a whole region. The jobs, the shops, the landlords and the contractors all lived off one institution. Every regional economy has one, with the suppliers, employees and banks around it. In my city it is oil and gas, and healthcare is the hedge. Yours has its own list.

Think of an airport. When a cargo carrier announces a new hub there, the airport does not get busier evenly. The fuel provider, the ground handlers, the aircraft mechanics, the catering kitchen and the security contractor suddenly have more work than they can staff, on deadlines, under signed agreements. At the far end of the same airport, the flight school and the small charter operator keep selling to the same few customers they had last year. Same airport, same weather, different position relative to where the money landed.

That is the position I am asking you to look at. Most of your forty-one proposals went to the flight school end of the airport, to owners who were not positioned to buy. The same effort, aimed at the companies around the hub, tends to find a different conversation.

Here is what that looks like in practice. A prime contractor on a nine-figure terminal job needs systems, security and support for a dozen subcontractors in a hurry, and the contract often requires proof that they have it. The subs need somebody who understands their problem by Friday. A marketing agency can call the flagship that just landed a large contract and offer to market to every sub and supplier under it. The principle holds for IT, insurance, bookkeeping, staffing, safety training and cleaning.

The call itself is short. You mention that their company just took on a large piece of work with a hard start date, and ask what part of it keeps their operations lead up at night. If your answer fits, you have a conversation about their gap. If it does not, you have learned what that fleet needs, which tells you what to build next.

How do you start reading the money?

Spend twenty minutes a morning on where money landed, and keep a log.

The tool is the Money Map from Chapter 22. You can use it freely. Open your local business journal and one national source. Write down every large figure moving into your region: who signed it, who receives it, and what demand it is there to fulfill. Money lands to fulfill demand, and it is rarely hidden. After thirty days the log stops being a list and becomes a map.

Then do what the paper cannot do. Go to the meeting. Talk to the people on the project and find out who has to sign, when, and what has to be true first.

Read the clock too. A company three miles down the road brings in a team on a contract that runs a few months or a few years, and they are spending. That is real demand with a window. Serve it, and keep your own spending in proportion to how long the contract runs.

What can you do this week?

Pick one landing and make three calls under it.

1. Find the largest landing in your region over the last ninety days. Write who signed it off and who receives it.
2. List the prime contractors on it, then the second-tier suppliers underneath. Public award lists, permit filings and agendas will name most of them.
3. For three of those companies, find the person who would feel your gap first, an operations lead or a project manager, and call. Say what you see in their situation and what you do about it.
4. Call your commercial banker and ask where the market is going. Bankers and the investment community see money moving before it is announced.

If three calls reach three people who answer, you have found the part of the airport where the traffic is.

The market publishes its intentions every day. Read them, then call the people they name.