It took a couple of years, a lot of sweat equity and who knows how many phone calls and meetings but now, you’re in business! You’ve got the contract and you’re doing business with a FORTUNE 500® corporation. Life is good. Now it’s time to put your feet up on the desk and rest on your laurels and let the cash come in, right?

Hardly!

Any good entrepreneur worth his or her salt knows that this is when the real works starts. Not only do you have to prove you were worth the trust the corporation has put in you to perform, but you want to do an even better job than expected. Not only do you want to establish yourself; if you have multiple lines of business that are appropriate to this corporation you want to strategize how to cross-sell.

Expand your relationships

Here’s your strategy going forward: First, you overachieve to prove this corporation made the right choice. Second, start building relationships throughout the company. Get to know the stakeholders, those people who stand to gain by your performance. Make it your business to know those people and keep them satisfied. Who are they, what’s important to them? Relationships, as you know by now, ARE the business. Build your web. Keep in touch with supplier diversity. Third, start finding out other challenges people are facing. Don’t be in a hurry. Over time, as people learn to trust you because of your service to the company, develop your knowledge of other ways you can make an impact.

As you build your track record, you’re going to start picking up information and knowledge about areas where you can add value and do other work. This is not a place to make a hard sell. There are several ways you can go about this. Talk to supplier diversity and let them know you have other areas of expertise that could be useful to the company: you’re an established veteran supplier and it’s in the corporation’s best interest to expand their spending with you. Be able to prove you can do the work. They’re likely to assist you here. In addition, you can make informed, helpful suggestions to people that allow them to experience your knowledge and see you as an expert in this new area.

Success in the soft-sell

It’s important to not see this as giving away your expertise. It’s a way of expanding credibility. People inside this corporation see you as the packaging gal or the marketing guy, but now you’re offering up advice and expertise on something else. Let them take the advice and learn for themselves that you know what you’re talking about. They’ll come back to you for more. The more generous you are with your expertise, the more likely you are to gain more business – again, because it’s all about the relationship. You’re already inside the company, people are seeing you regularly.

Remember: do what you came to do first, then build new bridges. Enjoy the ride!

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