Gifted entrepreneur and wheelchair user Carmen Jones came up with the idea for her company, which helps corporations target people with disabilities, while on a sales call. At the time, Jones was Vice President of Marketing at Evan Kemp Associates, Inc., and its three subsidiaries.

“I went to an insurance company that was interested in participating in our cooperative mailer, and it wasn’t the typical type of company that we had advertise,” she remembers. “At that time, most of the companies I called on were manufacturing companies that made wheelchairs or sold vans or products.”

Companies Don’t Target People with Disabilities
“I had this great ‘Aha!’ where I recognized that as a woman and as a person of color, companies targeted me” for marketing. “But not as a person with a disability,” she realized.

Her company,   Solutions Marketing Group (SMG), was born in February 1999. SMG creates loyalty and enhances sales for clients through marketing campaigns that align with the needs of people in the disability community.

These days, Jones has accounts ranging from America Online to the Discover Card under her belt. She’s been featured on a division of CNN, Glamour,  the New York Times, and recently visited the White House as a guest of President Obama. But what was it like starting out?

“I was definitely nervous,” she says. “What built my confidence tremendously was that my first client was American Express. I had to put up or shut up!” Jones laughs.

“It made me work that much harder to try to make my company work, to be successful.

“I think at that time I was so naïve I didn’t think strategically, like, ‘What can I do to add value?’  I was really focused on work stuff. My focus was really on ‘How can I get this work done?’ And ‘How can I do a good job?’

“I didn’t know what I didn’t know!”

“That’s the beauty of starting out and taking that huge step of faith: I just didn’t know what I didn’t know! And a lot of things I discovered along the way, and thankfully I never had any really major gaffes where it cost me work or anything like that.

“But it definitely raises your business acumen; you’ve got to be on your toes to work with a company like American Express. And I’m thankful because it definitely built the credibility I needed to work with other companies.”

Disability Hardest to Overcome
Jones didn’t have an easy time getting into the workforce. She had a triple whammy working against her: race, gender and her disability. Of these, she says the hardest to overcome was the disability factor.

“By the time I became disabled, women and people of color had made advances in the workplace, but not disabled people,” Jones says. “When I was a senior in college, I interviewed for a lot of jobs. I interviewed for 30 jobs and I did all the stuff they tell you to do, and I still had a hard time finding work.
 
“I had no job when I graduated. That was a major disappointment and source of great angst. So I ended up working for a center for independent living by default, but it was a blessing as well. It has laid the foundation for my professional life. It’s been a great thing in retrospect, but at the time it just was painful that I couldn’t get a job.”

Evaluate Internal Operations First
SMG advises corporations how to target people with disabilities in their marketing campaigns. But Jones thinks the company must initially take a look at its hiring practices and internal support for people with disabilities, as well as its interactions with the disability community.

“I’m of the belief - and I’ve seen it be very successful - that companies should target that relationship first, whether it’s attending conferences or strengthening customer service. A company really needs to look at where it has touch points with members of the disability community, and really study what those look like and see where they’ve been vulnerable or where they’ve missed opportunities and where they can capitalize on strengthening their offerings, etc.

“Initially when you target [the disability community], you want to make sure that consumers know that you have products, that you understand how those products relate specifically to their needs, that you have staff that’s trained to address their needs, and that when you get marketing messages to them, it’s either something that conveys an inspirational message, or there’s some value add.

Integrating People with Disabilities
After the corporation has made sure that its employees are educated in how to deal with customers with disabilities, whether it’s over the phone or in person, SMG looks at ad campaigns, the company website and press releases to find opportunities.

“So once that targeting and that relationship is built, then I think pulling back the lens is helpful because then you can create mainstream messages using disability themes, integrating people with disabilities into ads and into messaging, and that helps educate other  consumers.”

Jones calls this “polishing the halo.”

“You see a boost in sales. You begin to build that win-win relationship, and what I’ve discovered along the way is that once you start targeting the mainstream market using disability themes, you find that there are groups of people who are not directly impacted by disability who are responsive to that messaging.

“So for instance, if they’re therapists or professionals or caregivers who aren’t disabled personally, they definitely will respond well to companies that support the people that they serve.”

American businesses, are you listening?