The experience was awesome. Selling to people face to face is was so rewarding, I can hardly describe it. It made me despise adwords and the like. I know I still need to embrace online marketing, especially since my business is entirely dependent upon traffic, but right now I'm pretending like online ad networks don't exist.
I only picked up 3 customers from the boat show, but last weekend I went to an auto swap meet 3 hours away that had hundreds of cars for sale and picked up another 62 customers. We had a much better booth this time around with custom T-shirts and excellent fliers etc... I hit the ground running and was selling HARD all day. It was so awesome. There were people who would have spit in my face if no one was around and other people who were falling over themselves to buy a listing. I had one guy chasing me down because he lost my card and wanted another one so he could send me a check.
My advice is sell in the real world if you can, don't let the haters bother you (because you WILL have haters) and go far beyond your customers expectations.
I had been working with a web designer/developer in Cebu for over a year at that point, so I mentioned that to my boss. After a few small paid projects, they were impressed enough to sign a contract for ongoing projects. I asked my guy in Cebu if he knew any more developers, and he found 3 more. I formed an LLC and with one customer, we were in business.
2 months later, I got an email from a former classmate of my boss who heard about our service, and he needed a website updated, and the original web design company was too busy to get it done right away. In the course of doing that project, we had to contact them to get the server login info, and when we told them what our company did, they hired us to do web design for them.
It's been like that for the last few years, just getting more clients through word of mouth. We now have 8 clients, mostly web design companies who outsource projects to us, or clients they refer to us for content creation, data mining, etc. The team is up to 10 now. We still have that first client, though.
EDIT: Forgot to mention that in all this time, we never got around to building our own website or placing ads. We really don't need to since we get as much work as we can handle through word-of-mouth, and it will be difficult to scale while maintaining high quality.
message me: info-at-orioneweb-dot-it
What I found helpful was introductions, and in this case, even introductions made through a cold call.
I'd been pounding away for weeks, signing up free accounts and begging people to actually use the service, or tell us why they weren't when they said it was something they'd like. I was also sending a lot of e-mails and making a lot of calls to hand-researched groups I thought would make good customers (like your product, it's fairly niche).
I'd get blown off, blown off again, and then when I finally made the call, they though the idea was dumb and we were doomed to failure (gulp). But they'd make an introduction to somebody who was on our side of the country, and with their name, good will and bad predictions, we ventured forward. That introduction has proved invaluable, as that connection, which itself took 3 calls, 4 e-mails and showing up at their office, has been a relentless cheerleader for us, going so far as to give us a shout out at an upcoming panel they're moderating in front of our target customers.
So, personal introductions ... by any means necessary. Hope that's helpful.
* We are, indeed, getting paid, but there's an asterisk for another day
Although, if you are solving a true, acknowledged pain point they will likely offer to pay right then and there (these situations are very difficult to come by!) so be mindful if / when you make an offer to let them use it gratis.
At CollegeJobConnect, we help companies connect with undergraduates for internships / full time jobs. When speaking with some HR departments that "just didn't get it", we'd say: "ok, but why don't you try it for free for the time being then" - after they jumped on and saw how they could tap into job-seeking undegrads, it clicked.
I eventually got savvier about the strategy than "target one SERP at a time using pages handwritten in notepad."
Naively, I'd have thought that more text = less conversions.
Or is the text there to make it more SEOed?
You are correct. If you ever get time travel, please tell 2006 me the news!
patrick, check your inbox back in 2006, you have a message waiting
It goes through the process of getting your first customers in detail. It jives with my personnel experience and some others I see on this thread.
Key point: Go through your network and find a way to get introductions to folks in your target market. Be creative on this. Once you've got an introduction leverage it to get more e.g. "Do know other folks that you think would be interested in a solution like this? Could you provide their contact info?" etc. Repeat.
How can you be building to a target that you haven't spoken to yet?
Cold calling is going to be a hit and miss affair at the best of times, it's even harder when you're trying to pitch a product that no one's ever heard of.
The best thing I think you can do is pound the pavement. There'd be dozens of schools in your immediate area; organise a meeting and see them personally for a demo. It'll be time consuming, but at least you will have their undivided attention.
That first real customer, that first real transaction, was a beautiful thing.
http://ai.redsymbol.net/2010/09/boostrapping-your-business-w...
This may or may not be a great fit for you, but it's worth checking out.
It lent us some credibility and gave us something to talk about. It always makes businesses/institutions feel much better if they know someone else has already taken the risk.
Our first PAYING client came a few weeks later. During the process, we were pretty open about being early stage and surely got paid less than what we probably should have, but the openness plus the credential made them comfortable enough to pay a two person bootstrapped company and we were off and running.
One of many stories...
I had an application I had written for my own personal use. I was talking to a guy who asked how I did something. I told him I had written this program. He said "I'll pay you $200 for a copy of that." So I took a weekend to add copy protection, and accepted his check. Pleased that I actually had a commercial product, I then spent the next couple weeks putting together a web site advertising it as a product and things went from there.
After the presentation, we had 2 businesses ready to cut us a check and 3 that later signed and the others provided us valuable feedback and references.