The Cold Hard Truth About Landing Corporate Clients
If you’re targeting corporates or organizations as customers, you need to know how to work with them. And it’s a far cry from serving small businesses or consumers.
I’ll never forget the time I confidently strode into my first meeting with a company ready to impress them with my genius plan.
The moment I enthusiastically dove into my monologue about reinventing their marketing, I was met with blank stares and deflating silence. Talk about awkwardness.
That’s when the SVP finally said: “That all sounds great, but how exactly will this translate to our key performance metrics?
Record scratch moment.
Performance metrics?
Translation?
As I scrambled for coherent sentences, they probably wondered if I was in over my head. I clearly didn’t grasp their priorities beyond the surface buzzwords.
Suffice to say I didn’t get that contract. But as embarrassment goes, this was a game-changing one. You see, corporations speak an entirely different language than consumers.
One rooted in data, scale, and bottom lines - not just insight and inspiration.
If you can’t fluently articulate business impacts using their lingo, you’ve lost before even stating your case.
Since my awkward learning experience, I’ve code-cracked exactly how to resonate with these giants by understanding what truly drives their decisions from the inside.
Here are three crucial mindset shifts to work effectively with marquee corporations:
They Don’t Care About Your Insights - Just Business Outcomes
Corporations have one north star metric - how something impacts their profit engine. Ideas must translate clearly to efficiency boosts, cost savings, productivity lifts, revenue gains, risk reduction.
If you suggest training employees on resilience without demonstrating a connection to turnover rates or burnout-related system breakdowns, they tune out.
Lead with business results - not conceptual insights.
They Speak a Language of Numbers, Not Just Vision
Corporate decision-makers live in a world of quantified performance goals, benchmarking, metrics, and OKRs. If you can’t discuss ideas in tangible statistics and data tied to business objectives, it’s Greek to them.
Fluency in conveying logarithmic impact through their native language - financials, metrics, ROI - makes all the difference.
They Care About Scale and Ripple Effects
Now, let’s discuss the trickiest but most vital element – conveying your impact. In the corporate realm, it's all about scale and ROI.
It's not just improving team dynamics or personal development... but demonstrating how these changes translate to revenue, efficiency, adaptability, and employer brand.
That’s what corporates are eager to hear.
For example, take a relationship coach collaborating with an executive team. Rather than focusing narrowly on enhancing team relations, also showcase how greater cohesion and empathy lead to:
20% faster product development cycles thanks to more aligned decisions
10% higher Glassdoor scores and retention rates from positive culture
35% savings from less turnover and hiring costs
Unlike consumers concerned mainly with their individual experience, corporations think exponentially. Connect the dots to powerful enterprise outcomes. Numbers, data, ripple effects - that's the language that speaks to corporates.
A program for 50 directors that cascades across 5000 employees excites them. Ripple effects and enterprise-wide transformation capture attention.
Blow their minds with a bird’s eye view of the immense organizational change you can facilitate through a single high-level engagement. Revenue ripples get big yeses.
Those key shifts completely changed how I positioned myself to enterprise prospects. Suddenly I was having authentic dialogue and sealing 6 figure deals left and right.
When you convey this level of measurable impact focused on their business prosperity, your niche expertise becomes irresistible.
They see you as a revenue driver and secret weapon - not just another self-help guru.
That strategic messaging and positioning is what cuts through the noise. It's how you become the obvious choice in a sea of consultants making vague promises.
The principles work for solopreneurs and big agencies looking to activate lucrative corporate partnerships.
You have to know the code. But once unlocked, the floodgates open to transformative engagements at renowned brands desperate for this level of business fluency.
Are you ready to crack the code and speak their language?
What type of corporate would benefit most from what you offer? Let’s start quantifying that enterprise impact!