Winning Strategies for Women Entrepreneurs Marketing to Corporations

CWBR — Women entrepreneurs now have a one-stop resource guide to help them be successful in one of the nation’s largest business markets, corporate America. Methods that Work for Creating Corporate Clients, A Resource Guide for Women Business Owners, was prepared by the Center for Women’s Business Research and underwritten by the PepsiCo Foundation to provide knowledge, tools and best practices to help women business owners successfully navigate the challenges of corporate markets.

The resource guide is the outcome of the study Access to Markets:
Perspectives from Large Corporations and Women’s Business Enterprises by the Center for Women Business Research released earlier this year.

“On average, nearly half (48%) of the revenues of the women’s business enterprises surveyed came from large corporations,” said Myra M. Hart, Chair, Center for Women’s Business Research and Professor, Harvard Business School. “Gaining access to this market has a very positive impact on the bottom line. The resource guide distills the findings of our comprehensive study into research-based intelligence that individual women business owners can use to be successful in this lucrative market.”

“PepsiCo is committed to ensuring that women’s business enterprises have every opportunity to participate in corporate markets,” said Bob Gonzalez, vice president of supplier diversity, PepsiCo. “We are so pleased to participate in a project which helps further this commitment, and we recognize the contributions that women-owned firms make to supplying quality products and services at a good price.”

The guide has five success strategies that serve as a roadmap for women entrepreneurs to gain access to corporate markets. Along with the core strategies, the guide gives real-life examples of women business owners who have successfully marketed to corporations. It also gives women entrepreneurs the overall trends in corporate purchasing as well as step-by-step guidance on how and where to become “certified” as a women’s business enterprise, and a list of useful Web sites, organizations and publications that can help create corporate clients.