Much of capital in the business sense comes down to defining what makes you different. For example, you may be the only firm in your region, or the only one bidding on a particular project, that offers NICET certified technicians. This is excellent capital, giving you a chance to differentiate your firm, to explain what NICET means and why it's important. And why it makes you a better choice.

Managing capital can be challenging. I tend to be aggressive, sometimes too aggressive, when pursuing the sale. Three recent projects really brought this to light. In all three, the clients expressed serious concerns that their projects (all in the 100K-150K range) were "too small" for our firm to handle. In short, I was overly impressing them, and they were worried about being ignored at the expense of our "larger" clients.

A lot of explaining later, we landed all three projects. The goal, ultimately realized, was shifting their mindset to hiring the best contractor for their project, not just the best contractor who happened to be not too busy for their "less important" project. A subtle difference, yet huge!

I learned something important in this process. Some times you can deploy too much capital, overwhelm the customer into thinking you're much more important and busy than you really are. Much better to have the client understand that they are the center of my business universe, that they have my full attention. Use capital to generate excitement, to be sure the client is excited that you'll be doing their project.

There's a story about the sales process as it relates to potato chips. The point of the story is that sales should be like eating potato chips, giving the client a little bit at a time and always making sure they want more. I forgot the lessons of this story on a recent stadium project bid, using all capital - every fact, every marketing material, every relationship, every phone call - too early.

Come the final decision meeting, and my presentation just didn't pop. Meanwhile, a dark horse candidate who had barely made it to the table in the first place wowed the client ,based mostly upon the freshness of their information. And they got the job.

So it's a fine balance between not giving enough capital to advance the sale process and giving away too much, too soon, so that you have nothing left in the tank when you really need it.

Capital also resides in your current business relationships. Just because you've installed and been paid for a system doesn't mean that customer ceases to exist. Stay in touch, help them with the "small" stuff even if it's not billable - and you're first in line for the next big project if it comes along.

Building capital and managing capital. It might not win you a presidential election, but it can be the difference between winning and losing a systems project.

Gary Zandstra is head of A/V Systems development for Parkway Group of Holland, MI and can be reached at garyz@prosoundweb.com.