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Skip Perfection and Go after the Easy Sales First

Guest post by: Janis Pettit

Article Overview: If you are still at the early stages of building your small or solo business and you’re struggling to get clients, what you need now are easy sales that generate cash flow. Cash flow will allow you to pay your bills and invest in growing your business

Skip Perfection and Go after the Easy Sales First

If you are still at the early stages of building your small or solo business and you’re struggling to get clients, what you need now are easy sales that generate cash flow. Cash flow will allow you to pay your bills and invest in growing your business.

You may think that you need to wait until your website is perfect, your marketing materials are perfect and your products and services are fully developed, but going for perfection will take time, is almost impossible to achieve and it will shut down your cash flow. The most successful entrepreneurs will tell you that it’s more important to put your products and services out there, take action and get a few clients into the pipeline. Even big companies (think Microsoft) don’t strive for perfection, but for “good enough”.

Your potential clients need their problems solved now. You’re the expert and you can help them even if your solution will get better over time.

There are many ways to go after easy sales. One approach is to host a get together for your local network of friends, colleagues and business connections. Make it your own personal social networking event. Do a brief presentation about the problems you solve and how you do it. Then ask people to take action. Either give them an incentive to sign up for your services right away or tell them they will be rewarded for sending referrals your way within one week after the event. Initially, offer the simplest, easiest solution you have. Don’t try to initially sell your most complex, high priced solution. Just get then buying and into your client funnel.

Another is to offer some very low priced entry level products, like e-books, reports or videos. Get people onto your mailing list and offer them a one time up sell into a more expensive option.

Invite people who follow you on social networks or who are in your local networking groups to a free tele-seminar. Give them good content then give them a limited time offer to purchase your product or service. Offer them a simple easy, no brainer purchase that will allow you to show that you deliver on your promises.

Finally, consider speaking to people who already serve your target market, but who don’t offer what you offer. Explain how they could endorse your product or service and you will give them a percentage of sales. They can increase their sales with little effort. This is a simple joint venture and they will need to trust in you and your product to agree, so let them sample it for free, or try it out on one or two of their clients if that’s a possibility.

Getting some clients in the door, even at a lower price than you will charge once you’ve ironed out the kinks, will give you experience and confidence. Then you need to get great testimonials from these clients and post them on all your web pages and marketing materials, at which point you can raise your prices a bit. Also ask these initial clients for referrals in return for a referral gift that they will find enticing.

Taking action is the key. You can have cash flowing into your business in 30 to 60 days. Don’t wait!

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  What’s Wrong with Sore Losers?
  Perfectionism is Highly Overrated

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Related Forum Posts
Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing
Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz] I second the request...
Re: e-Commerce and e-Payment providers - When I came back to Japan in 1999 I sometimes used to ask my students if they would buy anything on the Internet and at that time most thought it was too risky. I'd encourage them to try by using well known sites such as Amazon.co.jp and also pointed out that using a credit card on a reputable site was safer than using it at a restaurant. I can't remember the last time I had that discussion or when the "tipping point" occurred in Japan. To answer your other question, I use Paypal for several reasons: 1. Brand familiarity 2. Easy to use 3. Free to withdraw 50,000yen+ to my Japanese bank account - a huge benefit (but maybe other systems also offer that...?) 4. Easy to cancel subscriptions On the down side, their transaction fees are quite costly, they are difficult to contact and when disputes arise you can sometimes lose even when you can prove via your tracking service that the disputed item was "delivered" to the customer's address!
Re: Domain name sugestion - Hi Anelly, Support-Box.com sounds very good to me. Easy and catchy.
Delegating - Good info and interesting list. Easy to see how the authority or power is slowly passed to the person - the secret would be knowing WHEN to move to the next step. I like to avoid people who are stuck at the #1 level. Chris


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