Lesson 3: Getting new business
The best way to get new business right away, over the next few days and a good plan to get new customers continuously over the next few months.
Introduction
After you've done all your preparatory work, identified your groups, put your added value and competitive advantages into place, you still have to get those orders. That basically involves contacting the members of your target groups and telling them about your products and services. If you've done your homework properly, what you're offering is exactly what they want with great value at a good price. The products and services should sell themselves.
Unfortunately, the problems are often in the details and the details here deal with presenting your products and services. They have to be presented in a thoroughly professional way and in accordance with the image you are trying to project, an image corresponding with the image most likely to win over your target group. Then, once your material is ready, you want to get as much business with as little cost as possible - find out who will respond best to your initiative by trying out your package with test customers. Finally, send out your material, follow up if the potential order size makes that worthwhile and then sit back and watch the orders come in.
That's all great for the big initial push to get orders from new groups of potential customers. You'll have planned to spend the time and you'll have resources assigned to make this push. But what about when something goes wrong or doesn't quite work out and you need some additional business quickly to stay on target. Or what about a low level activity which will ensure that you keep getting orders as you go along and run your business. You need some on-going strategies which are more regular than the big push to get new orders from a new target group.
Once you have a base in a certain group, there are other, more efficient mechanisms available to get new orders than to contact new members of the target group with your targeted material. All of them involve building on your existing customers. That means they will only work for a customer-oriented business which has put in the effort to make sure the customers purchase and receive great value. These satisfied customers are your greatest resource for new orders and that's one reason why it's so important to keep them happy.
While they are a good resource for on-going business development, existing customers are also valuable when you decide to enter new markets and are looking for information, contacts and advice. At the beginning, you're stuck with defining your target markets and contacting those members on your own. Once you've been in business for several years and want to expand, you can count on a lot of satisfied people only too pleased to be of help.
The key to small business success in getting new business is your pool of existing customers. The bigger that pool grows and the happier they are with your business, the easier it will be for you to get new business, both quickly and on an on-going basis and the faster you will be able to expand into new markets.
