When choosing your ideal customer persona (ICP), you have a list of criteria to consider but the two most important are:
a.) Does your ICP have a strong need or pain that you can solve?
b.) Does your ICP have the power to close your deal or at least strong access to power?
If the answer to one of those questions is "no", the chances of getting the best possible deal are close to zero.
CSR - all the pain, none of the power
CSR responsible are great sponsors when you are a charity, which "only" needs financial support from the company.
But as impact startup you need more. You need to have line managers and users engage with your product and service.
The CSR responsible will certain be highly supportive of you, but
a.) they have no purchase power beyond their charity budget, which doesn't apply to you.
b.) they rarely have any sway with line functions who have the purchase power you need.
(Impact) Sourcing - a lot of power, none of the pain
A lot of impact startups seem to see impact sourcing as an opportunity to gain access to larger companies. But they have little understanding what that means "impact sourcing".
It means that the Purchasing or Sourcing department of a large corporation factors impact into their decision matrix and their standardised purchasing processes or tenders.
Because that is the entire reason for professional sourcing or purchasing departments to engage in a buying process - to make the purchasing decision as objective as possible based on pre-determined parameter.
And as someone who had to sell through as well as purchase through professional sourcing departments, I can tell you that neither is fun!
So what to do instead to succeed?
Solution - sell to c-level instead
C-level executives have both the power to make the purchasing decision and ensure support of line managers as well as pains, or better needs your impact startup can solve.
And it's not your product or service - it's your impact story. So what matters to approach them is not the size of the deal you want to close with their company, but the strength of your impact story.
If you want to know whether your impact story is strong enough and how to approach c-level executives, feel free to reach out and let's see whether I can help you with this.
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