Cathy Stucker - The Idea Lady

Attract Customers and Make Yourself Famous

How to Get Your First Customer

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The first customer can be the hardest one to get, but these ideas will help you land that first customer quickly and easily.

Typical advice given to new businesses is to give away their services or charge steeply discounted rates in order to get experience and build a customer base. This can work, but it is a dangerous strategy. First, because those first customers may not value your work if they are not paying market rates, and second, because the time you spend working for nothing or next-to-nothing might be used more effectively in marketing to customers who will pay full price.

When you have attracted customers by giving them bargain-basement prices, those customers may not stick around when you try to charge market prices. Plus, bargain seekers can be more demanding that customers paying full price, so you may end up spending more time than you expected providing service.

There are times when it makes sense to work for free or almost free. For example, if you are volunteering for a charity you support, or if you are building your portfolio or making contacts, it can be worthwhile. As a major strategy for getting your first clients, though, it is not your best choice.

Here are some other ways you can find the clients you need to get your business off the ground.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. If you recently left a corporate job, your former employer could be a good prospect for your new business. You understand their business, they know what you can do, and the stage is set for them to become your first customer in your new enterprise.

Get your net working. Contact people you know and tell them about your new business. Let them know you are actively seeking new clients and what you can do for those clients. Do you think it is hard to call people and ask for their business? Get over it, but in the meantime, instead of asking for their business, ask if they know someone who could use your services.

I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. Barter with other businesses for products and services you need through an informal exchange or a barter network. When you barter and get something you truly need in return, it is as good as cash and it is not the same as working for free.

Try it, you’ll like it. Clients may be reluctant to commit to a high-dollar or long-term contract with an unknown and unproven business. Give them a lower-cost way to try you out that compensates you fairly, such as a small project, or give them an out in the contract if you do not meet performance goals.

Get visible. Speak to community and professional organizations. Join the Chamber of Commerce and networking groups. Get active in your professional association. Find ways to get in front of people that can become customers.

May I borrow a cup of customers? When you do not have customers of your own, use the ideas in my article about borrowing customers from other businesses.

Choose the strategies that are the best fit for you and your business, and put them to work. You will have your first clients in no time!

Success Strategies for the Home Based Business

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This is a guest post from Bethany North of www.thecoffeebump.com.

There is nothing more wonderful than being your own boss and working at home, but there is also a measure of risk involved since you will be taking a personal financial hit if you don’t succeed.

Since failing is not an option, here are some ideas to get you started to guarantee your success in a home-based business!

  • Focus: Even though you will be your own boss, you do have to work your way up the ladder by doing a number of different tasks until your business begins to succeed. It is also important to keep your mind away from your household chores, like doing laundry or running errands, which will eat into your work time. Even though you are working at home, you need to treat it as an actual job.
  • Put Forth Effort: If you are not willing to put forth the blood, sweat, and tears (hopefully, not literally!), then you can’t expect to receive anything in return. Many people fail in their home-based businesses because they don’t have the focus, commitment, or determination to continue to work at it even if they aren’t seeing results.
  • Market Constantly: No one else is going to do this work for you, and you are making a mistake if you feel like you can start to slack off after getting a few sales. If you are not continually marketing, your customers may go to another website for the same product, so there is no guarantee that you will get repeat sales. You need to continue to market yourself, even if you are getting a few sales, to guarantee that your sales will increase and grow as time goes on.
  • Focus on Your Strengths: If you are working alone, you may need to do everything for your business for it to succeed. However, if you are working with a spouse or partner, then you can identify your strengths and weaknesses to maximize how far that your business will go. If you are excellent at writing and creativity, you may want to use those strengths to increase the appeal of your webpage, get links back to your website through article marketing, and write creative ads online so that people will visit your website.
  • Ask for Help: In the same way, if you are aware of your weaknesses, you need to know when to ask for help. If you don’t have the faintest idea about how to increase your search engine rankings, then you need to either begin to do your homework, or ask a professional company to help you. If you are not asking for help, you could be missing a serious blind spot in your overall business plan that could be detrimental in the long run.

These simple tips will make a difference in guaranteeing your success as a home business owner! Working at home is a risk in itself, but it will pay off in the long run in allowing you to live your dreams and be passionate about your work.

For a great selection of all things coffee, check out Bethany North’s website, www.thecoffeebump.com.

Finding New Business Opportunities

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If you are looking for an idea for a new business, a way to tap into a new market, or a product line expansion, the answer may be right in front of you. The secret is to learn to see the opportunities that exist.

An article in the Wall Street Journal told about entrepreneurs who profit by providing stylish ways to wear those security badges so many corporate employees are now required to carry. The businesses mentioned range from an intensive care nurse who sells crystal beaded holders for $30 – $50 each to her fellow nurses, to a jewelry company that has sold 100,000 badge holders at prices ranging from $10 to $300.

Although the scale and execution differ, what these entrepreneurs have in common is that each one saw a need and a way to fill it. The nurse designs and creates her holders as a side business, and turns away business because she doesn’t have the time. The jewelry company sells both retail and wholesale, and creates special holders for large customers. (Boeing wants theirs made using ball bearings!)

Both the nurse and the jewelry company started their lines for nurses; however, with the increased security in place these days, more companies are requiring the use of security cards and the demand has increased.

What can you learn from this? First, if you are looking for business or product ideas, solve a problem faced by yourself and those around you. The above businesses addressed the desire of employees to avoid those tacky lanyards and express individualism within a corporate environment.

Listen to complaints and suggestions about existing products and services. Whether customers are talking about your products and services, or you hear comments about other companies, each negative is an opportunity to create something new that meets a need.

Keep your eyes open for people who should be your customers, but aren’t yet. The badge holders were created for nurses, but found a large market in the corporate environment when employers started requiring employees to carry cards. This change created entire new markets that had to learn about the availability of the products.

Look for new uses for old products. Caboodles cosmetic cases were launched when the company learned that women were buying fishing tackle boxes to store their cosmetics. (Insert your own obvious joke about what the women were trying to catch here!) They created a line of boxes especially for that purpose in bright colors to appeal to women. Same boxes, new look, new market.

As needs and circumstances change, watch for opportunities to meet the needs of new and existing customers—sometimes by offering things they don’t yet know they need!

Six Things You Need to Know About Sales

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This is a guest post with sales advice from G.L. Hoffman. It is excerpted from his book, Dig Your Job.

sales-woman

Sometime during your adult years you will wonder about starting your own business or company. Everyone thinks about it so you will too. There are a lot of factors than go into this decision and things you should know. Some people can achieve success on sheer effort combined with a great business idea…even if they have little experience or knowledge about business. However, no business can survive without sales. Here are some things you need to do to make your business successful.

1. Sales is number one, two and three on the priority list. You should plan on spending most of your time worrying and working on your sales efforts. Nothing else matters much. A sale happens when someone pays you for your service or product. Don’t get too excited if the marketing focus group says everyone will buy one. Get excited when someone pays for it.

2. To sell many, sell one. To build your company, you have to sell multiples. You can’t just sell one. Anyone can sell ONE. The trick is to sell a lot, right? Sure. But before you can sell many, you have to sell that one single customer so that he is excited and pleased to have your product or service. This is why when you talk to venture capital investors, they are obnoxiously insistent on waiting until someone buys something from your company. Everything else is classroom.

3. Do you know what scalable means? This is a relatively new business topic for an old business process. What this means is that you should try to develop processes in the business that can be easily duplicated and replicated. It is one thing to sell your product to one person, quite another to figure out how this sale was made so that you can make the next sale more efficiently. Success often hinges on your ability to continue to do the correct things faster and better that result in some tangible success.

4. Your sales people don’t work for you. The sooner you realize that all good sales people work, truly, for the customers and not for you, you will understand more about sales people than 90% of all non-sales people.

5. Sales trumps all. Sales will mask a lot of internal problems. Or, said another way….sales mean you can live to fight another day, and buys you time to fix and solve internal problems…which are sure to come.

6. Just stay in business. Too many new companies flame out, just like the afterburner on some supersonic jet. The pilot kicks in the after-burner for an added jolt of power, but once it happens, that’s it, no more power. If you can just continue your new business, first year to the second year, then to the third year…chances are great that you will make it. Do whatever it takes to make it to that third year. Don’t flame out.

G.L. Hoffman is a serial entrepreneur and venture investor/operator/incubator/mentor. Two of his companies have traveled the entire success path from the garage to IPO. He has been featured in Forbes, Wall Street Journal and other local business publications and newspapers.

Currently, he is Chairman of JobDig, an employment-focused media company that delivers multi-channel recruitment advertising solutions to employers of all sizes in all industries. JobDig publishes a free weekly jobs newspaper in markets throughout the U.S., operates the popular website jobDig.com, and partners with network and cable TV stations and radio stations in each of its markets to allow companies to leverage broadcast media in their recruitment advertising. The company also owns and operates LinkUp.com, a site that aggregates and publishes only jobs listed on corporate web sites from over 10,000 companies around the U.S. His daily blog can be found at www.whatwoulddadsay.com, JobDig.com, and now as a weekly guest writer at US News and World Report. He can be followed on twitter at www.twitter.com/glhoffman

Concentric Marketing

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concentric

Most small businesses do not have the resources to launch a large national marketing and advertising campaign. However, you can grow your business in stages to ultimately reach a large national or international market. I think of it as “concentric marketing.”

When you picture concentric circles, you envision a small circle surrounded by a series of increasingly-larger circles. Imagine your marketing starting in the smallest circle, then expanding to larger and larger audiences, growing your business in manageable steps.

One way to expand is in geographic markets. Your first marketing might be focused on your part of town. Join the local chamber of commerce, participate in networking groups, advertise or get publicity in the community’s weekly newspaper, place fliers on doors in local neighborhoods, sponsor a local sport team, and engage in other activities that will make you prominent in your small, local area. As you experience success, you can target broader areas, going from your neighborhood to the entire city, the county, then your state, a region, and national or even international audiences.

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