In the area of entrepreneurship, I often seek out advice from people with more experience than me. Naturally, I give their opinions a lot of weight since being a new entrepreneur, I can’t really counter their advice with experiences of my own. A dilemma arose when I found that I was receiving conflicting advice from my ‘circle of experts’.
The topic of controversy was sales strategies. I wanted to know the best ways to generate sales for a new business. The first expert told me to use the direct mail and cold calling methods. “Sales are a pretty much a numbers game”, I was told. “You make X number of calls from which you can expect to book X number of appointments, leading to the final result: X number of contracts. Typically the conversion rate is around 10%, which can vary depending on the industry, the quality of the leads, etc.” I was eager to apply this new knowledge but doubts began to surface when I spoke to the next expert. Read more »
Tags: business advice, entrepreneurship, sales strategies, starting business
A recent encounter I had brought to light the importance of effective communication. It also demonstrated how easily a simple problem can become complex when we use an ‘inflexible’ style of communication. The incident happened at the local post office between two sales associates and me. A few weeks ago, I signed up for a P.O. Box for my company. As is often the case, I misplaced the receipt a few days later. Several hours of searching the house was unsuccessful and I finally admitted defeat.
So off I went to the post office. I told the two associates my dilemma and that I needed another receipt for income tax purposes. The sales associates were not impressed. I was met with comments like: “We don’t that”, “we don’t just randomly print receipts”, and “it’s the customer’s responsibility to take care of their receipt after the purchase”. I wasn’t too happy either. I replied with comments like: “How complicated can it be to print a receipt?” and “why can’t you just give me something in writing?”. Read more »
Tags: communication, marketing, sales
There was a great article in the Financial Post a few months back about the importance of defining a target market when selling a product or service. An entrepreneur will sometimes try to sell a mass audience because their product or service is so ‘revolutionary’. There are several problems with this approach: Read more »
A survey is a great market research tool with many uses: evaluating customer satisfaction, discovering areas for improvement, and even testing the level of interest for a new product. It is an objective way to gather and analyze responses. Customer satisfaction is particularly important in this day and age. Disgruntled customers no longer just share their frustrations with their close circle of friends. Now, they also go on Twitter, Yelp.com, and YouTube and make their complaints public. Read more »
Tags: complaints, customer satisfaction, market research, marketing, online surveys, starting a small business
Keeping costs down in the first year or two of operations is crucial for any new start up. Since new businesses typically have small revenue streams, they need to stay lean, especially in the first year or two of operations. This is why having a ‘virtual office’ can go a long way in keeping administration costs down. What do I mean by a virtual office? It means essentially outsourcing all functions of an office from the phone number to the civic address to where you hold your business meetings. Read more »
Tags: entrepreneurship, lower administrative costs, starting a business, virtual office
At the last networking event for Edge Networking, we invited Patrick Depriest, an Internet marketing specialist to give a presentation on search engine optimization. The full audio presentation will be available shortly on our website. In the mean time, here is a summary of the key points he presented.
There are 5 key factors that determine how well a site is ranked on Google: Read more »
Tags: lead generation, search engine optimization, seo
I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I have failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
- Unknown
I ran into a friend of mine a few weeks back. The last time we had talked, he was still finishing up his PhD program in Political Science. As he explained, since our last discussion, he had grown tired of academic life. He put his doctorate on hold and wanted to get some real work experience. The tricky part was finding a related job in his field. Teaching jobs were hard to come by and the current recession definitely didn’t make things easier. Read more »
Tags: entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, failure, perseverence, success
A few months back, I contacted a leading association for small and medium businesses to inquire about becoming a member. The person on the other end replied that she could meet me in half an hour to give me a presentation on how everything worked. I was so impressed by this level of service that I brought my checkbook to the meeting, ready to sign up. However, about an hour after our meeting, I walked out of the coffee shop, blank check in hand, and somewhat disappointed. So what happened? Read more »
Tags: marketing, sales, selling
I’m perhaps exaggerating just a little when I say ‘zero cost startup’, but the cost of starting a business has gone down drastically over the years, especially when it comes to IT. Many of the things that used to cost a fortune before is now available for free or even a small fee. Here is a list of free / low cost tools I’ve used or am planning on using in launching my startup. Read more »
Tags: cost savings, financing, saving money, startup, Technology
The power of color struck me recently as I was wandering the aisles of a local drugstore looking for a particular product: the Starfrit Chopper, a great a little kitchen aid that saves hours of manual chopping and slicing. I had a good idea in which aisle it might be. But as I almost walked past one of the aisles, I caught a bare glimpse (through my peripheral vision) of a color combination almost halfway down the aisle. I looked directly this time and started walking towards the product to read what was written on the box. Sure enough, it was the Starfrit Chopper. Read more »
Tags: branding, color, corporate identity, marketing, starting a business
