As a small business owner of your own legal firm, you have a secret weapon that is extremely formidable when used in competing with larger firms. You may not even realize its potency or if you do, you may not be fully harnessing its power. This secret weapon is like a double barreled gun capable of firing two shots at one time. Likewise, the small guy has a two-pronged advantage over the big guns in business.
The first advantage is flexibility. Small firms do not have much of a hierarchy or many levels of management. As such, you can make changes often on the spot whereas large firms cannot. Small firms do not have to jump through hoops, get all sorts of approvals or hold meetings just to arrive at decisions. You can make decisions within minutes often with just one phone call to your partner. This high level of flexibility is unattainable once a firm grows large and therefore is an ace up your sleeve.
Here’s a true story about how flexibility can win the day for you. An advertising firm once offered a big corporation the opportunity to place their advertisement in a 30-second commercial slot just before the Super Bowl in the San Francisco Bay area. It was an incredible offer because it was only for $500 when it normally cost ten times that amount for such a commercial. But the staff of the big corporation turned the offer down because it did not line up with the company’s business plan and because it was too troublesome for him to gain the required approval of all the bosses involved. This golden offer finally went to a small firm that gladly snapped up the opportunity to get their advertisement in front of a giant audience for pennies on the dollar. Flexibility and speed are part and parcel of Guerrilla Marketing.
A Guerrilla Marketer always has his ear to the ground ready to take advantage of opportunities like the one described above.
The second advantage is personal touch. Small firm owners can get up close and personal with every client whereas large firms can only send their representative. The personal touch may be in the form of a personal letter or phone call. The client would certainly feel more valuable when you, the partner of the law firm speaks to him personally rather than one of the junior lawyers in a big firm.
Here is another true story that depicts the importance of the personal touch. This took place in another country outside the US. In 1977, a small mom and pop company dealing with marine equipment tendered for a contract to supply marine engines to the Fisheries Department of the Ministry of Agriculture. It was a $10 million tender. The owner of the small company (let’s call him Mr. A), had his contacts to keep him informed of how the tender process was going. The tender committee met and decided to award the contract to a large corporation which was very well-known in that country due to its stability and reliability.
The tender committee allowed every member of the committee to have his say. Then the Secretary of the Fisheries Department spoke up. He said that to avoid a monopoly, the entire contract should not be given to just one company. He suggested that at least two companies be awarded the contract and proposed that the contract be jointly awarded to the large corporation and the small mom and pop company. But the small company’s price for the marine engines was higher by 7% compared to that of the large corporation.
It was then decided to get the small company to lower its price and only if they can match the large corporation’s price will they be given the joint contract. So at the end of the meeting, Mr. A’s contact informed him of the results of the discussion. When a representative of the tender committee asked Mr. A whether he could lower his price he promptly offered a 7% discount which ‘coincidentally’ brought the price down to exactly what the large corporation was offering.
So the large corporation and the small company each got half the $10 million contract. But whether each will really get $5 million worth of orders in the end was left to be seen. The contract was a two-year contract. But the amount would all depend on which engines the fishermen chose. The large corporation’s brand was Mitsubishi, and the small company’s brand was Yanmar.
The large corporation brought in $2 million worth of engines, confident that they could sell all of them. Mr. A had less than $300,000 in stock and would have to contact his overseas suppliers in the event he needed more. But which brand would the fishermen choose? Mitsubishi or Yanmar?
The large corporation started giving away a few engines free of charge so that the fishermen could try them out. They were hoping that this would be a great endorsement for their Mitsubishi engines and more fishermen would want their brand. They even gave all the fishermen who agreed to try out their engines ‘cash rewards’. On the other hand, Mr. A could not afford to do that so he went back to his suppliers and negotiated two free engines from them to give away as samples, too. His suppliers agreed.
Then Mr. A personally went to the fishing villages and spoke to the fishermen. Over time, he got to know more of them and they got to know him as a friend, something the large corporation did not do. He gave his 2 free engines away as samples and eventually persuaded the fishermen to get his Yanmar engines instead of the Mitsubishi ones (the fishermen were simple folk, not very difficult to persuade if you have that personal touch).
The large corporation was stuck with unsold Mitsubishis worth $2 million. Mr. A’s $5 million contract ended up as almost $10 million because the large corporation could hardly sell anything.
That’s Guerrilla Marketing at its best. When you combine flexibility and personal touch, it is a very potent weapon in your arsenal against the inflexibility and impersonal nature of big firms.
