29. Put false blossoms on the tree

This stratagem is aimed at gaining ground or market share. It is likely that if you make competitors or potential customers aware of your weaknesses and problems you will go out of business very quickly. Although you need to be aware of your weaknesses you need to portray a different picture outside your organisation.

 Small, start-up companies can make themselves appear well established and professional with the marketing literature they produce and the quality of written proposals they present.

This stratagem is about presenting a message that will help you achieve your goals and give you the necessary time to turn it into reality.

I took over a small engineering company to turn it around. Most of the key personnel had already left and the company had not received a new order in nearly eighteen months. I prepared a tender for a large engineering project within which I had to provide an organisation chart of the company. I took each person I had and showed them on the organisation chart as head of a department. We won the tender and gained the largest project the company had ever had. The initial stage payment allowed me to recruit the people I needed to deliver the project on time and within budget.

If I had told the main contractor just how few people I really had there was no way we would have been given the contract and would probably have gone out of business.