The problem with selling your product to big companies: Middle men. The people who buy your products aren’t the same ones who use your products.

That disconnect is terrible for your business. You wind up making and selling products to appeal to people who aren’t using them. And that means you aim to impress the wrong people.

Let’s say you’re a gym owner trying to sell memberships. When you sell a big corporate client, you’re dealing with one individual at that company – and that may be a person who never even works out! So you impress this guy with nice dinners, tickets to the big game, fancy talk, brochures, lists of your equipment, and promises of low prices. You sell him on the sell, not on the product.

On the other hand, when you sell individual memberships to one person at a time, you sell your product. If your treadmills are always broken or your instructors are lame, individuals will go somewhere else. If everything’s great, people will stick with you and tell their friends. Your success is linked to the quality of what you make, not how well you wine and dine some guy in purchasing.

You want your success to be aligned with the quality of your products, not the quality of your promises. And the best way to do that is to build for small companies (1-10 people) or individuals who aren’t aligned with any company — freelancers, independent contractors, people building their own business during nights/weekends, etc.