Four More Patent Marketing Help Tips

One potentially lucrative way to capitalize on your patent is to sell or license it to a retailer. That way, rather than painstakingly developing your product and mass-producing it, you simply cash out and hand those tasks off to the retailer. For the busy entrepreneur who is eager to move on to the next project, what could be better?

However, like many attractive-sounding things, marketing a patent to retailers isn't as easy as it sounds. Most retailers will not pay a significant amount of money for a patent unless they believe owning that patent will make them tangibly better off in the marketplace. This concept should be at the core of your attempts to sell or license a patent to them. Everything you say and do should in some way reinforce the idea of your patent making the retailer feel better off.

That being said, here are 4 practical ways to do this:

1) Select the right retailer(s) to make your pitch to

Everyone wants to be able to say they sold a patent to Wal-Mart or Target. It makes for a great story to tell the relatives and does wonders for one's sense of pride. But for the same reasons, it is very difficult to sell a patent directly to these types of companies. Wal-Mart and Target are gigantic, mega-profitable corporations with extremely diverse product lines. If you try to market a patent to them, you will be competing for their time with an unbelievable and ever-growing number of people, pressures, and challenges.

Taking this into account, it might be smarter to market your patent to a company more intimately connected to your field. For example, Rawlings might be more receptive to hearing about your patent for a new baseball glove than Sports Authority. (Although, Sports Authority would likely be more receptive to hearing about it than Wal-Mart.)

The idea is to market to retailers who are as close to the actual implementation of your patent as possible.

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2) Focus your pitch on benefits to them, not hype of yourself

Nobody ever bought a patent because it was "great", "amazing", or "awesome." (At least, no retailer ever did). They have bought patents that lowered costs, increased sales, or some mixture of the two. If your patent can help retailers do either or both of those things, shout it loud and clear! A clear, compelling statement of value is your best bet for marketing a patent, to retailers or anyone else. If they cannot see how their own interests will be advanced by buying or licensing the patent, they will not buy or license the patent.

3) Identify the right person within the retailer to make your pitch to

Don't just look up the retailer's corporate headquarters and mail your pitch to them (or call their generic 1-800 number). Just like you selected the retailer most intimately connected to your patent, you want to select the person within that retailer who is most intimately connected to acquisitions, business development, etc. This is the person whose job it is to evaluate business proposals and render decisions on them. Find this person or department on the retailer's webpage or call the company to ask who is in charge of such matters. Another excellent resource for finding decision makers at various companies is LinkedIn.com.

4) Get straight to the point and close strong

Corporate decision makers are extremely busy. They do not have time to sift through a business proposal the size of a Lord of the Rings novel while they patiently search for the main point. Keeping this in mind, your proposal should be as short as possible without leaving anything important out. State who you are, that you have a patent (including the details like patent number and issue date), why that patent is relevant to them, and why you would like to discuss a sale or licensing of the patent. Once you have explained the concrete, specific benefits to the retailer, close by asking for some type of action.

This could be anything from a phone call to you, a meeting, e-mail, or anything else that requires him to act. Do not ignore this step! Unless you prompt the decision maker to act, he may forget about your proposal in the daily shuffle of his work life.

Above all, remember that any pitch to market your patent to retailers must be based on benefits to the retailer, not hype about yourself or the patent. Keep this in mind and you will have increased your odds of success dramatically!