Strategies: Getting your first customer takes work
— -- It's finally happened. You've taken the big step and decided to go into business for yourself. You're hanging up your shingle and going to be a consultant, open that restaurant, begin a doggie day care center. You've talked to a lawyer, figured your budget, found a great place to work. There's only one thing you're missing: a customer!
In virtually every business, the first customer is the hardest to land. While the Starship Enterprise may go "where no one else has gone before," customers follow where others lead. If you're a consultant, prospects want to know who your other clients have been. If you're a dentist, you're going to get most of your patients from previously satisfied patients. And no one wants to go to a completely empty restaurant.
Whether you're serving consumers or other business, you've got to have a track record for prospective clients or customers to feel comfortable. What a dilemma: you have to have customers to get customers. But how do you get the first customers?
Don't despair; there are a number of tricks to snare that first one.
1. Give your product or service away. Whether you're creating websites or wedding cakes, you can offer your first customer(s) your product or service free.
This isn't as stupid as it sounds. Even if this costs you some money, it's probably cheaper than most other marketing activities.
Giving stuff away free is a popular technique with technology companies. In fact, there's a new book, "FREE" by Chris Anderson explaining why this strategy works. It creates brand awareness, gets customers used to your product or service, develops customer loyalty, and builds word of mouth marketing.
You can later charge these customers or continue to offer some level of free service and other levels of premium/pay services.
Remember, treat your free customers exactly the same way as if they were paying. Draw up a sales document, indicate what you're providing and what direct costs they'll pay (if any), and then specify that you are "waiving" your fee. Use this experience as practice to learn how to deal with paying clients.
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