For small businesses at the moment cash is king - and the best way to get more money into your firm is to attract new clients. Corporate clients can be hard for smaller firms to attract, but normall pay good rates and if you win their business and do a good job repeat business is extremely likely.

Seven ways to attract big businesses:

1. Know your potential customers
Due diligence is vital before pitching to a new company for business. By understanding exactly what your target company's goals are, you can be clear about how your services will directly benefit them and help achieve those goals. Demonstrate that you make it a priority to know your customers in order to achieve the best results for their individual business.

2. Demonstrate your stability
Big businesses may worry that SMEs are less financially stable and therefore less able to give a sustainable level of service. Remove these uncertainties by demonstrating your company's financial health and long term plans. Arrive at pitch meetings prepared to discuss your business plan in detail, noting your targets, and making it clear that you are a partner for the long term.

3. Price sensibly
Your prices should be based on operational costs and must be sustainable. Companies that win business simply by undercutting the market are often unstable and go bust. Be competitive, but price sensibly to maintain stability and focus on giving value for money.

4. Be customer focused
A good technique is to train your main team members to understand as many different areas of your business services as possible. This way they are able to address most customer questions directly without transferring the enquiry to different parts of your business. A knowledgeable account manager is vital for corporates that demand a responsive, dedicated service.

5. Be innovative
In a competitive market, smaller players need to be innovative to stay at the forefront of the market. Ask your customers what additional business requirements they have and use this to create new offerings. By doing this, Opus Energy was able to identify a need in the corporate market for an online flexible energy purchasing platform. This was developed in-house and launched as Opus Evolution in September 2007. This service has since become one of Opus Energy's leading products, boosting turnover in the past 12 months by 25%.

6. Network
Referrals from existing contacts tend to make up the majority of good business leads for SMEs with smaller marketing budgets. Attending industry events with a product you can demonstrate is a good way to encourage interaction with potential customers. Become a member of industry associations and be sure to produce case studies with existing customers - corporates are much more likely to consider you as a contender having seen glowing reviews from their peers.

7. Retain customers
Face-to-face meetings are important to build and grow relationships with corporate customers. Surprisingly, very few businesses actually do this as standard. Opus Energy has a high customer retention rate, achieved by ensuring that account managers travel to client sites for regular account reviews. Each customer must be valued as a long term investment.

For more information please visit www.opusenergy.com