Do you know who Charles Koch was?
He died recently but he was the head of the largest privately held company in the world. Over 100 billion dollars.
When Charles took over the company from his father, in the 60s, it was worth $21 million. Since then, he managed to grow it 5,000 fold.
But the great thing about it is the way he did it…
Charles’ company was oil-based. Meaning, they would buy oil and then turn it into all sorts of products from textiles to whatever. And because of that, one of the most important things for Charles was oil gathering.
Unfortunately, there were more oil buyers than there were companies drilling for oil and selling it. So you had to compete with everybody else on pricing.
Charles didn’t want to do that. He figured he’d be in a much better shape if he came to these oil-drilling companies and offer them something they really, really wanted...
Pipelines.
You see, when an oil company finally discovers oil… the one thing they want the most is getting that oil out of the ground and into the market as fast as possible.
And the way it was done at the time was... if you’re a company wanting to buy oil, you’d wait for an oil driller to strike oil… and then descend on them and bid to build their pipelines in exchange to get the oil. So the only way to get that contract was to out price everyone else.
So the only way to get that contract was to out price everyone else.
Charles, however, had a much better idea.
He went to the oil companies WHILE they were still drilling and said to them:
“I know that when you strike oil you're going to want to get it out as fast as possible. Let us build a pipeline for you now, while you're drilling. We'll pay for it, no problem. And if you do strike oil, would you sell the oil to us?”
Guess what happened?
There was zero resistance. Charles managed to swoop up most of the oil companies right under his competitors’ noses. And build one of the largest private companies in the world.
Here’s the lesson in this…
There’s a difference between SELECTING a single target market and BEING SELECTED.
Most companies are trying to cast as wide a net as possible. And then wait and hope to get selected by somebody to help them. But that means you’re limiting yourself to the number of people who can select you.
There’s no money in waiting to be selected.
Instead, be proactive. Select the ideal prospect that you know you can have the biggest impact on…
And your business will flourish.