How I'll grow my business

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

Relationship-Based Sales for Non Sales People

Everyone in every role needs to sell.  Even if just getting coworkers, friends or spouses to compromise with your ideas, you can benefit from some simple sales techniques.

I never intended to be a sales person.  I was so annoyed by the mall kiosk sales people that trick their potential customers that I used to even doubt the value of sales people at all.  Sales people were (in my mind) people that sought commissions at the expense of everyone else.  Though I still think that some sales people take that approach, I've very much enjoyed the last three years that I have spent as a sales person.  I want to share some basic insights that have universal application even to people that aren't paid on commission. Similar to my topic from a previous post, the best opportunities go to those that are comfortable talking with others and

Career options are like flocks of girls

Disneyworld crushes
As a teenager I discovered a phenomenon that seemed unique to flocks of girls in public places.  From thirty feet away, any group of girls my age was appealing.  The larger the group was, the less closely  I looked at any one of them.  I once chased down an all-girls marching band at Disneyworld, completely infatuated with all of them.  Only after chatting up the whole group and verbally committing to spend the afternoon with them did I realize that not any one of them was actually that cute.  (Shallow?  Yes.  But then again, what else are you supposed to build a relationship on during spring break at Disneyworld?)

Late in my college years, I found that girls en masse are not the only ones to exhibit this phenomenon.  Career paths are very similar.

How to find the keepers... after the jump.