MAKE YOUR OWN TERMS

The Lesson - Create disruption, confusion and keep the giants totally confused. They have rules and silos and you have none. You always have the advantage if you learn the secrets and deliver value.

These stories both good and bad should send up success or warning signs for you to learn from experience.

Years ago i was competing with a very large global CONsulting company. We were at a 17 billion dollar client and I was doing demos and they were always attacking me from all sides.

First I made up my own Lingo - I had called my transaction processing language a  TRN  language.  I got the client to start using my lingo so when they talked to the giant they would say we just saw the TRN language he has and it's impressive.

The sales guys for the bloated company went back to techies, corporate everywhere looking like fools and looking everywhere for what a TRN language was and why they did not have one.

I had stopped the client from doing a deal that would cost the Giant about 400-500 million dollars in orders. The client would still buy the product but maybe 1-2-3-4-5 years later. So instead of one big order they could run what they had with my solution and slowly replace the equipment as needed.

We know how pricing drops in this industry and 400 million order today is worth about 200 million in 2 years.

The Friendly Giant at the time calls me to headquarters and tells me they want a favor. I said sure how can we work together. The response was you need to get out of out accounts and stop meddling in our business. I said well i could take this project and help them with that project. Their response was you don't understand we don't want you talking to our clients anywhere.

I said to the the branch manager for Florida at that time - Well someone failed to tell me you owned the world.

His response was - we care about our clients and have a huge investment there.

My Response - one for the record books was - you only care about your big house, your kids in private school and that country club membership. You are nothing but a puppet in a string of 29 layers of management and have virtually no decision making capabilities. You don't care about that client and what their needs are. In fact I don't even think you understand their needs.

He took a swing at me and lost that job soon thereafter.

I then proceeded to show the client that i could get the same products they bought from the giant at the supposed best price due to volume from a dealer in CA cheaper and overnight instead of 3-4 months in a que.

I explained to my client that they all have to get sales credit before the order hits manufacturing and your delay is because of their inability to run their internal systems better. Sometimes it was a puppet in the 29 layers saying have you tried selling printers, scanners and the cycle started over.

I got the business and it took them a very long time to recover and I remember the parting shot was if you threaten me again i will show the whole world this model.

You can win but you need to know how the company is structured then realize that most of these people you compete against have no decision making capabilities and you can attack the battleship from all sides.

I am working on showing the world this model in the near future. it will be called  Inside the Great CONsulting Industry.