Mary Zinn is a business development consultant at CLIMB United. Recently, she tried using LinkedIn to share her creative ideas with a hopeful client. She succeeded in getting the attention of the company and a call with the VP of Sales and Marketing. Below is her LinkedIn post. 

WOULD YOU TRUST YOUR PICKLES TO ME?

I’m trying something different here; as I’m looking for new clients, I am hand-picking companies I think would be fun to work with. They don’t know me yet, and maybe I’ll never meet them, but today I’m learning about Van Holten’s (the pickle in a pouch people).

Why am I targeting them?

  • Because they’ve got to be fun to work with and I love pickles! The photo above is from the company’s LinkedIn profile. Not every company can have such fun on LinkedIn. And the President has a photo of himself with a GIANT pickle on LinkedIn. Cute, right?
  • They support The Boys and Girls Club and visible support for a local charity is important to me. They have committed $190k in the next five years. Maybe I can help them exceed that.
  • They’re in what I consider to be a sweet spot of 50-200 employees. Not too small (no resources), not too big (too corporate). Surely, there is some way to make a “sour” joke here but I can’t think of it right now.
  • They’re the leader in their space which means they’re smart. They’ve changed and continue to change their products over the years and seem to have a good handle on that. That speaks to me.
  • I like the marketing they’re already doing. Their strategy is to position pickle in a pouch as an “alternative snack” and they do it with products called Big Papa, Hot Mama, Garlic Gus and Sour Sis. You can even print character coloring sheets from their website.

What am I hoping to pitch to them? Oh, I have lots of ideas brewing and can’t share that here, but suffice it to say, it will be very fitting with their brand, tons of fun and will probably include bacon somehow if I can help it; they already have a bacon related product (bacon cheddar popcorn).

Again, I may never meet the pickle folks in Waterloo, WI, but I can still have fun trying to figure out how I might help them strengthen their brand and sell more pickles. I’m an ideas person and the ideas I have here, will help another client somewhere down the road.

Related posts:

No related posts.