Never Get a ”Real„ Job (19 page)

Grow and fund your start-up with customer revenues. Fix and improve upon your service as you go. It’s always better to improve your product offering based on what your clients actually need, not based on what you
think
your clients need.

Get piggyback rides
. Piggybacking on the infrastructure of an established company can offer your start-up access to shared office space, resources, new client prospects and personnel. These strategic partnerships are based on barter deals or revenue sharing and are meant to combine both parties’ resources to make the collective stronger and more productive. In short: Determine who the right partners are—the ones who can make more money with you and for you.

Identify bigger players who are good strategic partners for your company, and figure out ways to pitch them about your start-up’s value. Consider the answers to these three questions while you craft your strategic partner pitch:

Whatever the case may be, reach out to compatible, like-minded companies to develop win-win strategic partnerships that keep revenues high and overhead low.

Reduce, reuse, and recycle
. Before you label something as junk, see if it still has some mileage in it or if it has the ability to teach you how to be more efficient in the future. Ask yourself these three questions before you throw anything in the trash:

Little changes can make a big impact. Switching from bottled water to tap water can save you hundreds of dollars a year. Refilling old printer cartridges can bring new life to an existing asset. Old business cards can be reborn as note cards. Don’t be so quick to throw things out. Analyze your junk before it hits the landfill. Even garbage has a way of telling you how to run a leaner business.

Don’t be a bank
. It’s hard enough to collect your revenue in a reasonable time period. Don’t give clients more reasons to string you along. Establish procedures to collect accounts receivable as quickly as possible. Have clients sign contracts that clearly stipulate your fee collection schedule, preferred method of payment, and the terms for penalties and late fees.

Get a down payment before a job begins. Typically, companies will either collect 50 percent down and 50 percent on completion, or 50 percent down, 25 percent based on a midway milestone and 25 percent on completion. Figure out your hard costs and determine what payment schedule is best for you. Also discern what forms of payment—such as check, cash, and credit cards—are most likely to get you paid faster.

Keep better credit and early payment incentives in your back pocket only to be used as a reward for repeat customers.
Never
offer credit to first-time customers. Make them earn convenience and good faith. Your business will feel a big difference between cash on delivery and cash within 45 to 60 days—or even 90 to 120 days.

Zero percent interest is your best friend
. The right credit card can make the difference between cash flow and cash crunch. Used correctly and maturely, a credit card will enable you to maintain a positive cash flow, stick to a budget, and easily track your expenditures for bookkeeping and taxes.

Compare credit cards from various companies to see which one is the best fit for you. Talk to customer representatives to get a sense for their level of support. Ideally, you want to sign up for fee-free cards with low interest rates or zero percent interest offers whose incentive offers and rewards programs are most conducive to your business needs.

Once you select a credit card, charge
every business purchase
. Never pay for anything in cash. I don’t care if you buy a stick of chewing gum—if it’s for your company, charge it to create a record of the purchase in a secure location that can be called on if need be at a later date. More importantly, avoid carrying a balance unless you have a zero percent interest card. And even if you do get a zero percent interest card, be sure to pay off the outstanding balances as regularly as possible so you don’t get tripped up later with ballooned interest payments.

Avoid spending hours upon hours looking for long lost receipts on April 14 at midnight. Trust me—you’ll be thanking me when the taxman comes. Don’t miss out on potential refunds. Business write-offs are as good as cash in your pocket.

Go paperless
. There is no better way to complement your virtual office than filling it with virtual supplies. Creating a digital and mobile work environment can eliminate most of your office-supply expenses. By establishing a digital workflow, Sizzle It! was able to cut down its office supply usage by more than 90 percent and save the company an estimated $10,000 per year.

Eliminate the need for filing cabinets and bulky file folders. Store and automatically back up your documents on hard drives or virtually with cloud storage. Save paper and postage by communicating with clients and suppliers via e-mail instead of mailings and by reading messages and documents off your computer screen instead of printing them. Skip the fax machine; scan and e-mail documents instead. Cut down on your need for checks and envelopes by using online bill-pay tools. Make freemium work for your business by using Web-based applications instead of purchasing costly software.

Every dollar saved on office expenses is one more buck you’ll have to pay yourself or spend on marketing. For the supplies you really need to purchase, buy in bulk and choose generics over brand names.

Vendors aren’t your friends
. Do your hired service providers pay your rent? No. Do they buy your clothes or feed you? No. Then don’t help them make more money at your expense.

Instead, force vendors to earn your business.

Don’t fall for bogus case studies and exaggerated sales talk. I assure you that no matter how jazzed the salesperson on the phone gets you about their service, your success won’t achieve the same level attained by their magical case studies. Do your own diligence. Locate the vendor’s past and present non–case study clients to check out the average results for yourself.

Don’t be a jerk merely for the sake of being a jerk—but don’t let yourself get bullied around, either. Negotiate fiercely with a walkaway mentality. Fight for better payment plans and credit terms, and encourage them to sweeten the pot with steep discounts, additional services and introductions to potential clients. Basically, request everything you wouldn’t want to do for your own clients. And never accept first-round bids for any reason.

Haggle. And then haggle some more. Pit vendors against one another by playing their bids off one another. If a vendor doesn’t give you what you want and you believe you’re being absolutely reasonable, walk away and find somebody else.

Never get roped into a deal you don’t want to do.

Remember, a vendor’s primary goal is to sell you product or service, not make your business a success. Vendors need you more than you need them because without you they don’t make money. You have all of the power. In this one instance, abuse that power to the fullest to get what you want at the price you can afford.

9

Those Phones Won’t Ring Themselves

The 15 Principles of a Power Seller

In business, there is nothing quite as dreadful as the deafening sound of silence. And in the
company that shall not be named
, we weren’t exactly getting migraines because of the noise.

In hindsight, we would have made more money had we subleased our office to a funeral home. No one would have been the wiser—and maybe, just maybe, we’d have actually been able to pay off the rent. “Why was it so quiet?” you ask. Here’s why:

 

• We relied on our “uniqueness” to attract clients.
  
 

 

• We didn’t establish any turnkey selling systems or tactics.
  
 

 

• Our lead-generation methods were highly untargeted and unspecific.
  
 

 

• Our infrastructure was not geared to sales, and neither myself nor any of the other partners directly oversaw this critical department.
  
 

You
may know how great your offering is, but that doesn’t mean that anyone else will give you a second look. Even if your product or service can truly save your customers money, help them become more efficient, or revolutionize the way they do business, you must always remember: Sales and marketing present uphill battles for start-ups. Your prospects don’t know that they need your product. In fact, you’ll find out quickly that most won’t even want to hear about it or speak to you at all.

Change and decision making are two things that people generally don’t want to face. In fact, most would rather put their heads in the sand and continue on with their “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” mentality rather than try something new. In their minds, both of these things can lead them to problems or failure. And in this day and age, that could mean the chopping block for managers and employees
thankful
to have a job.

Persistence, passion, and patience are vital to any sales and marketing campaign. But without the right messages and tactics, your energy and hard work will fall on deaf ears and get lost in the shuffle. Before you produce a single flyer, pick up your phone to make a single call or send a single e-mail, you need to learn how to attract prospects, convert them into longtime customers, and stand out from the other guys. Now I’m going to teach you how to acquire quality leads, take the “cold” out of cold calls, and build a sustainable word-of-mouth buzz about your business on a shoestring budget.

COME OUT! COME OUT! WHEREVER YOU ARE!

The key to your lead generation success is to understand, identify, and capitalize on a series of niche marketplaces that you believe are being underserved. Niche marketplaces are small, specialized market segments within larger, viable commercial industries, such as green moms are to the parenting industry or people who buy designer dog clothes are to the overall pet industry. Locating the right leads from the start will make it a little bit easier for you to get blood from stones more frequently.

Find your niche and create your own marketplace
. To identify the niche marketplace you wish to enter, determine all of the key information you will need to produce a detailed profile of your ideal target customer. Who lives in your marketplace? Why have they been underserved? How can you better serve them and unite them? What do they eat, read, earn, and wear? Why do they purchase what they purchase? What do they love and what do they hate? Where do they work and what positions do they hold? What groups and organizations do they belong to? Where do they hang out online and offline? Do they attend specific events, trade shows, meetings, and conferences? In short: What defines them?

Be sure not to cast too small or too large a net. Too specific of a marketplace can leave your pipeline bone dry, while too broad a net can open up the floodgates and drown you in untargeted leads. Whenever I want to find a good estimate of a market, I use the free ad tools on Facebook and LinkedIn. This allows me to see if my niche marketplace has five people or 50,000 by simply typing in a few keywords and selecting my target client parameters—without having to purchase a single ad on their networks. Compile your data and add your conclusions to your One Paragraph Start-up Plan and Guess and Checklists.

Mine the data for digital footprints
. Want to throw away time and money on extremely ineffective marketing campaigns? Send materials to general mailing addresses, e-mail generic info@ accounts and cold-call leads, and pitch whoever picks up the phone. However, if you want to significantly improve your chances for success, you must know exactly who you want to reach out to—down to the individual’s name, title, and direct contact information.

How do you uncover that type of information? All it takes is a little bit of stealthy online detective work. Most prospect information is available online—that is, if you know how to find it. In some cases, locating it will be as simple as going to a Web site’s contact page. In other cases, it will take some Internet digging.

For those prospects who don’t appear right away, start your search by using keywords from your customer profile to hunt down your lead’s digital footprint. Join relevant online groups, forums, feeds, and social networks to gain access to group administrators and leaders. Find brochures and press materials from past trade shows, conferences, and industry events. Look for client testimonials on competitor Web sites, printed materials, and chat threads. Locate case studies and quotes on blogs and industry press outlets. See if the person maintains an account on Twitter. When I was handling Sizzle It!’s lead generation during its infancy, I would regularly visit press release distribution Web sites to acquire public relations professionals’ contact information from the press release footers—since they were my target clients.

Sometimes having certain contact information can still be enough to solve the lead generation puzzle. I’m not advocating becoming a spammer, but if you’re able to find a lead’s name, company, and the format of said company’s e-mail address or a department’s phone number, I’m sure you can find
some way
to reach out to them with relevant information. For instance, I used to call a prospect’s sales department and tell whoever answered the phone that the operator transferred me to the wrong extension. When they would ask me to whom I was supposed to be transferred, I’d tell them the PR department and ask them for the correct contact’s name and extension. Whereas many receptionists would simply hang up on solicitors, I found that salespeople just wanted to get their phone lines cleared as quickly as possible.

Never purchase leads and contact information from vendors. Don’t fall for the lies about “getting thousands of quality leads” instantly, or any other similar nonsense. In my experiences, most companies that sell leads are scammers and spammers whose lists are anything but fresh and fertile. Remember, the same leads you’d be purchasing have been purchased by many others many times over.

Don’t piss away your cash on “easy” or “too good to be true” lead generation tactics. Do your own research, and formulate and execute your own lead-generation research and acquisition process. Remember, no one knows your exact niche marketplace better than you.

Find the preferred contact info on prospects
. Don’t just reach out and touch anyone; that person very well might not want to be touched in the first place. Use the data from your niche marketplace profile to determine the appropriate way to connect with key decision makers, enthusiasts, and influencers in each niche of your marketplace.

Figure out which tactics will offer you the greatest chance of success. If, for example, your marketplace is filled with hip, savvy tech enthusiasts, the best ways to contact them would probably be via e-mail, social networks, or text messaging. If, however, your market is packed with older folks who don’t know the difference between CDs and DVDs, phone calls and mailers may be more appropriate. Determine the most convenient ways for your prospects to see, hear, and consume your message in a format and channel of
their
choosing—not yours. Are they always on the go and prefer e-mail or are they social butterflies who like to be engaged in face-to-face forums? Don’t just assume that you know the best way to insert your message and services into your prospects’ lives. Not all members of a niche marketplace want to be contacted the same way, either. You need to break down your niche marketplace into specific divisions and categories to ensure that you use the right key for the right door.

Take time to know, meet, and understand them on their own turf. Find out what makes them tick. Devoting a little time to knowing your target audience may show you that you can throw all of your costly marketing ideas out the window—because free options such as handing out flyers at a supermarket or networking in person might be all you need. Putting yourself in your customers’ shoes will often open your eyes to just how misguided your assumptions about your market are. I once made the mistake of sending a $2,000 Sizzle It! postcard mailer to prospects because I thought that a mass e-mail would be automatically dismissed as spam. The tactic didn’t produce a single lead. However, when I transferred the exact same offer to an e-mail blast, the result was a huge return on investment. Had I called several of my existing clients, I’d have known that most PR firms immediately discard solicitor materials as a point of policy and, as a result, I would have saved a ton of money.

SELL LIKE THERE’S NO TOMORROW—OR THERE WON’T BE

It’s wonderful that you are the creator of your very own niche marketplace filled with thousands of prospects. Go you! Now the real challenge begins: Convert them into loyal, paying customers.

I’ll let you in on a little secret: Most entrepreneurs are clueless about—or simply just suck at—selling. I’ve found in my travels that many small business owners fall into one of two categories: Overly aggressive with no concept of personal space, or meek as mice and can’t muster a whimper. Some don’t sell enough, while others fail to create systematic sales practices. Most waste too much time trying to convince naysayers to convert to yes-men.

The key to becoming a strong salesperson isn’t having a great product or service. Those come, go, and change regularly. The trick is to create and perfect an effective selling system that builds consumer confidence, generates sales, and produces steady cash flow—one that is ready to handle any type of client, encounter, or circumstance. You can’t master the art of the sale overnight. It will come through practice, constantly revising your sales arsenal, and learning from failures and successes.

The following 15-principle system will teach you how to become a power seller for your business.

Principle #1: Know What You’re
Really
Selling

Do you know what you’re really selling? I know you
think
you do, but I bet you don’t. Don’t feel bad; most other business owners don’t have a clue what they’re selling either.

If I were to ask you what a plumber sells, you’d probably answer by saying plumbing services or supplies. If I were to ask you what your local dry cleaner sells, your response might be cleaning services. However, if I asked you to tell me the reasons
why
you hired a specific plumber or dry cleaner, I doubt these answers would hold water.

Sure, it’s a given that a plumber has plumbing skills—but what they are truly in the business of selling
isn’t
plumbing. They’re actually selling you the peace of mind that your pipes won’t burst and the knowledge that you’re covered even if they do. It’s understood that dry cleaners wash and fold clothes and sheets; however, customers aren’t paying them to wash their underwear. They’re doing it because the service offers them convenience, more time for themselves, and the
feeling
of wearing a neatly pressed, clean dress shirt.

Understand this simple fact: Customers won’t hire you for your services alone. Hundreds of thousands of people are plumbers and dry cleaners. You’ll get hired because your service offers some benefit to them, and because you’ll somehow be making their lives easier. Clients don’t hire Sizzle It! because we produce video sizzle reels; there are thousands of video production companies that can edit videos. They hire us because we’ve simplified a once complicated production procedure and tailored it soup-to-nuts to our clients’ workflow and project management needs.

Sell
benefits
, not services. Inspire confidence by identifying a client’s pain points and explaining how you plug the holes. Before you spearhead a single pitch, take a step back and figure out what would make
you
buy your own product or service. This is not the moment to fool yourself into believing your own sales jargon. Simply saying that your service provides a cheap alternative to the competition or that it’s an “innovative” product may sound great and all, but get real—I highly doubt you’d buy anything based on such a crappy pitch. You probably wouldn’t listen to it in the first place.