This is a copy of the review I posted on Amazon for John Warrillow’s book: Drilling For Gold: How Corporations Can Successfully Market to Small Businesses
If you’re selling to small and midsize businesses (there are 27 million of them in the U.S. and Canada) this is a very important book to own. Devour it.
Here’s the secret to this book and John Warrillow’s success: Research. Not someone else’s research. Not a rehashed or reworked version of a previously published work. No, Warrillow gets his own facts and draws conclusions for us (the readers) from these facts alone. No skillful contrivance to get us to believe something that isn’t true. This book is the real deal.
So that’s the foundation. What do we learn from the book? Well for starters, we first learn there really isn’t a “small business market.” For me, it was like finding out there wasn’t a Santa Claus. How he came to that conclusion is obvious (once you read the book, that is). We also learn about Mountain Climbers, Freedom Fighters and Craftspeople—their motivations and how to target them.
But Warrillow doesn’t stop there. He gives us the words and the guidelines for reaching out to small businesses. He also goes out of his way to tell us how not to talk to small business owners. I liken it to advising a friend how to avoid putting their foot in their mouth. You get the idea John is one of us—someone who’s on our side who wants to prevent us from doing something embarrassing (like something that could be career-limiting).
And that’s just the first half of the book. The second half is just as deep and pragmatic. The discussion of aggregators and networking, alone, is worth the price of the book.
If you’re selling to small businesses—pick this book up and keep it within an arm’s reach.
Click to View on Amazon
