Posted on July 16, 2008 - by Jeffrey Posner

Are you in the boys club?

We all know that contacts help in business, the right ones anyway. Too many times I have been to meetings where everyone thinks we are in the right place talking to the right person when we are really not. The problem is that big companies have so many employees and VP’s and blabla that it is easy to get confused with it all.

I have two schools of thought when it comes to this:

1. Pitch until you find the right person and hope for the right meeting
2. Be in the “boys club” or know someone in the club

(the slow way and the fast track)

What is the Boys Club?

First off, I don’t call it the boys club because it is only made up of men; it’s just an expression.

The boys club is an inner circle of people who are in the know, whether it is financially or connection wise. They know people in different ways that usually hold much more ground on a personal level. Think about it this way.

Wealth seems to stay with wealth; the reason is that for the most part birds of a feather flock together. So everyone making money usually tends to hang around with people making money or ones who know how to make it. You may have experienced this on a smaller scale at a time in your life when you received a nice promotion or had you first company succeed and you made some new friends who were more on your level. Friends who were closer matched to your value (financially or intellectually).

Now think of the “boys club” as the cream of the crop in your specific industry, the big dogs. When someone in the boys club presents an idea or pitch to the other in the clubs, it is generally taken more seriously and encouraged rather than everyone playing devil’s advocate.

The Slow Way

If you decided to take my first school of thought and find the right person where you would eventually meet a member of the boys club, you may run into the following issues.

1. Not enough time to meet everyone and your business itself suffers
2. Instead of them welcoming the idea, they take a hard devil’s advocate line
3. You are at risk of them steeling your concepts and ideas
4. A smaller department takes it to the right people and you are thrown under the bus

And the list goes on…

I know this sounds rough, but these things happen and #3 happened to me recently. I really feel this approach is always necessary in the beginning and should always be used when starting a business. Just don’t make it your entire strategy, use it as a way to learn more about your industry and the people who work in it. Every business niche has a culture to it with its own rules and lingo and this is the time to learn it.

Don’t Give Away the Farm

Keep things simple and keep your mouth shut! As my uncle Ralph always said, the more you talk the more you have a chance of saying the wrong thing. I found one of the best approaches is to be on the offense. I feel meetings can be like battles of wit and knowledge with the intent on seducing the other party into feeling they need you to get ahead. I’ll have to write an article on the anatomy of a good meeting soon…

Which one is for you?

The answer is both, depending on who you know. Yes, a lot of life is who you know

If you don’t know anyone then you are going to have to take the slower approach in the beginning to get your feet wet. If you do know people in your industry “boys club” or you know someone who knows them, leverage your relationships to get in front of the right people; Right Now!