Whose game are you playing?

For most small professional-services firms, the honest answer is the big companies game, and it’s quietly costing you nearly every deal you think you’re competing for.

Has the deal already been decided before you show up?

Mostly, yes. By the time a buyer contacts you, they’ve already done roughly 70% of their buying journey on their own, before they ever talk to a vendor. And here’s the part that should stop you cold: according to 6sense’s Buyer Experience Report, the buyer’s pre-contact favorite wins the deal about 80% of the time, and 95% of winning vendors were already on the shortlist on day one.

Read that again. The decision is largely made before you’re invited to compete. You’re not fighting for the deal. You’re auditioning for a part that’s already been cast.

The big-company response is to flood that early, anonymous phase with content, ads, SEO, brand, and paid platforms until you’re the name buyers already know when they start looking. That’s a scale game. It’s expensive, it’s slow, and it’s the one game a firm your size cannot win on volume.

You might ask, isn’t aggressive outreach the answer?

It feels like it. So most small firms do the thing that feels like fighting back: they go active. Direct outreach. Hundreds of LinkedIn messages. Cold sequences. It feels like initiative. It isn’t. It’s the same scale game in a smaller, sadder costume. You’re buying lottery tickets by hand instead of by machine. Volume is volume no matter who’s thumb is on the send button.

So, what can a small firm do that a giant can’t?

If you’re interested in finding out the answer and taking your business a step further, head over to my Substack to read the full article and subscribe to Can I Borrow Your Car.