Thinking · Global · 4 min read
Access is a capability
Businesses invest heavily in product and almost nothing in access. Then they wonder why the product never reached the people who would have bought it.
By Mark Eve
Two businesses, one product
Take two businesses with a comparable product. One reaches a national retailer, a regional distributor and a serious investor within a year. The other spends the same year sending emails. The difference is rarely quality. It is access: knowing who decides, what they are measured on, and when they are able to say yes.
Access is specific, not general
Access is often confused with a contact list. It is not the same thing. Useful access has three properties.
- It is to the person who owns the decision, not the person who owns the relationship.
- It arrives with credibility already attached — someone the decision-maker trusts is standing behind it.
- It is timed to that organisation's cycle, not yours.
It compounds
The reason access behaves like a capability is that it accumulates. Each credible introduction that goes well makes the next one easier, because the reference is now first-hand. Businesses that treat this as an asset — and invest in it deliberately — find that markets which looked closed were simply unaddressed.
The practical implication for a growing business is straightforward: budget for access with the same seriousness as product. It is usually cheaper and it usually moves faster.
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