It's that sticky place for small businesses. It's that point where the owner has plenty of work to keep him/her busy, but he/she isn't quite ready to bring on more help. The business is reactionary. The appointment calendar is booked for the near-term, but beyond the next month or the next quarter or the next contract, business is uncertain.
This is such a common problem for small business owners that I want to share what my strategy is for getting a company to the next stage.
To give the context, I just started with a small company called Epimedia that does contract work for other companies. Epimedia writes software that makes hardware work. I am now one of four full-time employees of the company. All of the contracts up to now have come from word-of-mouth. Every year has seen more revenue than the previous year, but the work can be exhausting as we continuously work at our maximum capacity. We enjoy the luxury of high enough revenues that I can focus some attention on proactively finding new business. The following is an outline of what I plan to do to find new business:
0. Be sincere
As I mentioned in
a previous post on relationship-based sales, I greatly value my credibility. As I go out to find new customers, I will do so with sincere intentions of helping these people.
1. Inform all of my contacts of the services that I offer
I'll send simple, individual emails to customers that I worked with in previous positions (I used to work at National Instruments and Tektronix) and let them know that I can now help them to automate/control their hardware. Thankfully, I've invested some time over the past several years to build up my LinkedIn network, so it won't be hard to inform my former coworkers about my new services. In my case, I have friends that are selling for National Instruments and Tektronix all over the US.
2. Meet new people
Locally, I am investing effort in the startup/entrepreneur/angel investor community. (My services are especially relevant to companies that are developing prototypes of new products.) I'm involved with several meetups and social groups to give me a chance to connect with new people. I'm setting up Starbucks meetings with every person that shares interests. (Note that I'm not specifically looking for people that can hire my services. I'm just as interested in meeting with people even if the topic is just discussing good business books.) All relationships are valuable.
3. Identify fertile new ground
I live in New Mexico, but I'm not limited to New Mexico. In many ways, New Mexico is a mature market. I am researching other parts of the country that are showing increasing economic activity. I'm especially interested in good places to live that are expected to grow over the next decade. Rather than fighting for market share in a mature economy, whenever I can I'd like to hitch a ride on a growing city.
Once my list is narrowed to a manageable number of cities (3-5 for me... more for other people that don't mind living in hotels...) I'll identify a list of twenty top-priority accounts. To generate this list, I'll reference Hot-Startup lists, Best-Companies-to-Work-For lists, Fastest-Growing lists, etc. I'll reach out to my contacts in those cities and explain my intentions and see what I can do to help them while I'm there. In the case of my sales friends in those territories, I'll offer to introduce them to any new accounts. I'll send them summaries of any meetings and try to help them find new business.
I'll schedule my trips to coincide with entrepreneur meet-ups and volunteer as a presenter.
While visiting different cities, I'll work my LinkedIn extended network to find alumni of my alma mater (BYU). As long as I am forthcoming with my intentions (I'm interested in finding contracts in their city and would appreciate any insights to the business climate) I expect that I'll be able to get appointments and make some new friends.
4. Recruit new talent
There is kind of a chicken-and-egg puzzle when growing a small business. You can't grow without finding new business, but there is a limit on how much new business you can take on. While I'm making connections to find more work, I'll simultaneously reach out to universities to identify the best candidates to hire. If we could find a lot of business potential in a particular region, I'd be interested in opening a new engineering center and recruit locally there.
This is what I plan to do for at least the next year (probably for the next decade.) I've tried to be specific enough to give you ideas of what you can do to grow your business. Are there other specific things I should do to find new contracts? Share your advice in the comments!
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