- By Julia Hubbel

Ask most Fortune 500 supplier diversity professionals how much time you’ve got to make a first impression at the big trade shows and they’ll tell you: about seven to ten seconds. That’s only a few heartbeats for most of us, and hardly time for the thirty-second elevator speech that most of us were trained to deliver by so many sales professionals over the years.

Imagine the scene: You’re standing in line in front of Linda Ware from General Motors at NMSDC, with a line of twelve people at your back. Everyone is pressing forward, awaiting their turn to make their pitch. Linda is very aware of their presence, and she needs to appreciate their time and their right to be heard. You’re up. She doesn’t have time to hear five minutes of how long you’ve been in business, how many employees have Ph.D.s, how nice your home offices are. Cut to the chase: What can you do for GM, buddy? How can you help GM make more money? Seven seconds!

This is the reality of making the most of your time at the trade fairs, matchmakers and big shows when you are presenting to supplier diversity and procurement professionals. The trick is to get across your value proposition in seven seconds or less, and then be ready to answer that golden question – if you’re lucky enough to elicit it – “OK, tell me more?”

The “OK, tell me more?” earns you another 15 seconds to describe your capability statement, or a quick resume of something you’ve accomplished recently that proves you’ve got the chops to do the work you want to do for this company. Assuming all goes well, you get the green light. You get a contact name in the company or the supplier diversity professional wants further contact with you. Either way, you’re in. You exchange cards, you shake hands, you’re on your way. Time for the entire transaction: less than two minutes. They’re happy, you’re encouraged, everyone behind you is grateful.

You can move through about 30 booths at the show with this level of efficiency, assuming that you have 30 companies in your target market. But to earn that competency, this is where the work begins.

Your value proposition needs to answer one of two questions:

-What problem do you solve?

-What solution do you offer?

You should know your product or service intimately well by now. How do you serve that market? What is your niche? Not everyone can use you. If you still think that everyone is your market, you have serious work to do on your marketing plan. Get very clear on your sweet spot, and identify the bandwidth of corporations that best fit your product or service.

Now here’s your plan:

1. Research. Study the website. Read the Wall Street Journal articles, trade publications, anything you can get your hands on. Learn the corporate language. Understand who these people are. Find out what their problems are. What are others saying about them? What are their challenges? Most of all, how are you ideally suited to help them solve those challenges?

2. Resume. What other work have you done for similar corporations- especially other Fortune 500 firms- that proves you can scale up to this level? If you’re a small company, are you partnering with a larger firm?

3. Relate. Be able to, in a few seconds, describe what you have done for another company: a project, the results of that project (give numbers if you can), your company’s role, and someone’s name for a reference. If you haven’t done the work yet, describe what you are ready to be able to do, and be able to back it up.

4. Write your value proposition. Practice it over and over again. Ask friends to listen to it and critique it for you. It’s great if it can be funny, witty. Someone who makes jam can say “I berry people” and make people laugh when she explains the play on words. You get the idea. You could get a pin and wear it to events. Be playful with your idea but be able to back it up.

5. Write your capability statement. Make it short and sweet. Practice it out loud. Keep it to under 15 seconds. Ideally practice these two statements together for flow. The more you practice these, the more comfortable you will be delivering the information.

6. Relax. The point is not to be an automaton. When someone asks you what you do, or what can you do for AT&T or Verizon, it’s to know the gist of your message, not to hear a mechanical, canned communication. It’s vital to really know your stuff and capture their attention with a great answer with the confidence that you have built through practice. Besides, this is you we’re talking about--your best material, in seven seconds!

People often complain that they can’t limit themselves to just one thing, that their offerings are too broad and too complex to cut them down. To a degree this is a copout. Many large firms have multiple offerings, like management consulting and professional services. However, corporations complain loudly that when they are hit with a barrage of offerings from companies that cannot focus on, there’s a clear message. To be successful in selling, you need to spotlight your best product or service. Come in ready to sell to a particular need, not with a can of multicolored paint that you are going to throw on the corporate wall, hoping that something will stick. This confuses the issue and makes it extremely difficult for the supplier diversity professional to sell you internally.

One of the jobs this professional has is to take your value proposition and translate it to potentially interested buyers or key stakeholders throughout the company. That is one of the most important reasons your value proposition has to be so clear and effective. Not only does it have to sell the supplier diversity professional, it also has to be translatable for that person to use internally to sell your goods and services to others. The sales job doesn’t end at NMSDC or WBENC. There’s a long way to go, and you need to arm people with excellent sales tools. That of course includes excellent virtual material, which is why no one wants to take home collateral. Always have your collateral material ready to send by email so that it can be forwarded internally and circulated throughout the company for you. Always be thinking about how you can make their job easier. Once they have taken an interest in your company, how can you help them make your case?

So when you show up at the trade fair, the matchmaker, NMSDC, WBENC or your local Council’s Business Opportunity Fair, you really don’t need much. You have your business cards, your value proposition and your capability statement. You’ll have a unique value proposition for every different industry you plan to approach, with a corresponding capability statement, because one size does not fit all. You’ll have done your research, you’ll have plotted out the corporations you plan to talk with and you’ll have a well-marked map of the event with each booth you’re going to visit. Your load will be light because you’re not carrying collateral. You’ll be carrying a huge amount of confidence because you know what you have to offer, the problems you solve, your niche, and your value. You also know that the business is going to take a few years to develop, and relationships take time to develop. In other words, you’re a master of this process.

Your seven seconds are likely to earn you a raft of solid leads that will lead to contracts in the coming 18 to 36 months. Have fun!