Employee Spotlight
Larry Graubard
Business Development Manager, Catapult Headquarters
Larry Graubard Identifies Business Opportunities
Larry Graubard, business development manager with Catapult’s Technology and Management Solutions division, has worked in sales for more than 25 years. He believes that, to make the sale, it’s essential to discover what keeps a person up at night. “If you don’t address their problem, why should they buy from you?” he asks.
You have to find out what the sale will mean to them personally, as well as professionally, Larry says. Then you have to ascertain the challenge they face. It all boils down, he says, to four causes: a financial impetus; an organizational change; a need for business improvement; or a way to improve customer satisfaction.
“People have both a professional and a personal reason to buy,” he says. “They want to solve their organizational problem; and they want to be recognized for a job well done.
“Selling is psychological. You have to understand the prospect’s problem and his or her aspirations, and then align your proposal.
“Before they’ll buy from you, you have to earn their trust,” he adds. “If your product or service is going to help them with both, then you stand a good chance of winning the deal.”
Since joining Catapult, Larry has applied his sales philosophy to several major wins for Catapult. He was instrumental in winning the GSA IT Infrastructure Technology Global Operations (GITGO) task order. “I did the up front capture, identified potential partners, and constructed the pricing models,” he explains.
In addition to GITGO, Larry has won several other more recent projects for which Catapult is subcontractor: IT NOVA, a project with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS); OASIS, a project with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA); and Security Assurance Services and Innovations (SASI) program with the Department of State (DoS).
What interests potential buyers about Catapult, Larry says, is that “we’ve ‘been there, done that’” in terms of the scope and complexity of the projects we bid on. “We have the past performance to back up our claims.”
