How Clients Buy

Chapter 14Element 6: I Am AbleI've Got Budget and Buy-In

“We want to do work for IBM.”

Doug was having coffee with the CEO of a professional services firm that was small but growing, with a fifteen-year reputation for doing excellent work.

“We could help them. I know we could,” said the CEO.

Doug looked at his Americano. He wasn't quite sure what to say. IBM did almost $80 billion in worldwide revenues while his client would be lucky to break $4 million in sales. It's one thing to ask for marketing advice, it's another to enable someone's delusion.

Despite the look on Doug's face, the client was undeterred. “We can get anyone. Watch.”

Doug remembers that coffee with a smile.

He got IBM in the end, and it wasn't luck. It was pure, distilled perspiration. They worked it. I remember the first thing they did was to reach out to the head of the operating group with which they wanted to work. They had an intern Google half the night until she found the guy's email address. Then they pinged the guy, but didn't get a response. But that was only the start. When that didn't work, the CEO called around to people he knew to find someone who was currently working with IBM, someone who could steer them in the right direction.

And that worked—at least partially. He found a woman with whom they had worked at a different firm. She was out on her own and was doing some consulting for a unit inside of IBM. He and his team renewed the friendship and asked for her help getting into IBM, putting ...