Partnerships·
The brand I worked with, PawHalo, was two people: a couple from Beijing who were new to the States. I was the third person on it. The product was one nobody in this country had heard of, and there was no track record here at all. In five months it was in six local stores, running monthly events with rescues and local businesses, including Priceless Pet Rescue and Twenty’s Pet Shop, and standing at a booth at SuperZoo, North America’s largest pet retail show, where a retailer agreed to carry the product and a supplier opened talks about improving it.
None of that happened because we hid how small we were.
Big organizations are not looking for your size
They are looking for low risk and low work.
A large partner has a full calendar, a small staff for this kind of thing, and a long memory for anyone who created work for them. Almost every no is really one of two sentences: this is too much trouble, or I cannot tell what happens if it goes badly.
Answer those two and size stops mattering.
Ask for something the size of a favor, not a partnership
The word partnership makes people think of agreements, approvals, and someone above them signing something.
One afternoon, one table, one post, one shelf for one month. That is a decision one person can make on their own without asking anybody, which is the only kind of decision that happens quickly.
Bring the work, not the idea
An idea is a request. A plan is an offer.
Arrive with the dates, the supplies, the sign-up sheet, the draft of the post they would put out, the person who will staff the table. What is left for them is to say yes and unlock the door.
Every task you keep is a reason for them to say yes, and most of those tasks cost you almost nothing, because they are the work you were going to do anyway.
Be exact about how small you are
Small companies get found out when they inflate, and being caught at it costs more than the size ever did.
There is a version of the truth that works: we are a small company, we make one thing, and you will be dealing with me the whole time.
That last part is worth more than it sounds. Anyone who has worked with a large vendor has been handed off to somebody new halfway through.
Sell the thing they cannot do
Speed is the advantage nobody big has.
We can change the flyer this afternoon. We can be there Saturday. We do not need three weeks of approvals to give you an answer.
To a partner whose own organization takes a month to decide anything, that is not a small thing. It is often the reason they said yes.
The first yes is the asset
One rescue, one shop, one booth. What it buys is not the sales.
It buys a sentence for the next conversation: we have done this with them, here is what happened, here is what they got out of it. The second partner is judging whether you are real, and the first one is the answer.
Small is not the problem people assume it is. Unproven is the problem, and there is only one way out of that.