Finding potential clients

[Kenni]

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I’m starting a business in consulting small businesses on how to use and customise technology to be more productive. I’ve been attending lots of small business meet ups but haven’t had any luck in tempting anyone to give my services a go yet.

Does anyone have any tips on how to find potential clients?
Would anyone be willing to let me help them if I offered my service for free?

[GuestMember]

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I read this a few times Kenni thinking what you could do and each time I got stuck, so this might be good advice. I wondered what ‘technology’ meant. Maybe you need to define that more tightly. Even if you cover the whole gamut, perhaps only mention a specific area first to ease people in? So I was thinking, could I use Kenni’s offer to improve social media streamlining? Or does he mean, say, using mobile technology? Collaborative working in the cloud? Apps? Devices? “Be more productive” sells the benefits. “Technology” – it could be anything? Even machinery, inventing, tooling… Does that help?

[Kenni]

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I agree that “be more productive” is too non-specific to sell the benefits of what I can do. I think the problem is that I haven’t figured out a succinct and appealing way to describe what I want to do. And perhaps what I want to do is not specific enough itself.

What I would like to do is to get to know how an individual business is currently using software (cloud based, apps, websites, spreadsheets, databases etc) in their business. Then I would see what steps in the business’s process are time consuming, repetitive or error prone. Then I would implement any quick fixes (coding small bespoke scripts, customising software with macros, or using existing features of software) or suggest more involved fixes (such as switching software ecosystems or creating custom apps and websites).

The benefit of all this being that the software a business is using would fit their needs better than before and save them time and effort.

Does that make it clearer what value I think I can deliver? Do you think this sounds like an appealing service? Is there a better, briefer way to describe this?

[Dave Gillen – Former FS Concierge]

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“What do you do @Kenni?”
“I have a consulting service that I guarantee will save you an hour or more from your work day if you’re a business owner”
“Really? How do you do that?”
“I analyse your work day and software and identify the most costly and repetitive hitches and streamline them. An hour a day works out to a $14,000 saving for the average business owner.”

You might give away a few freebies to start but that’s cool. You’ll get some results on the board and start to learn which businesses you can save the MOST time, and begin to target them specifically, with results/testimonials/case studies in hand.

Good luck!

Dave

Dave Gillen | LinkedIn

[GuestMember]

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Good advice Dave.
I have a very specific productivity problem you might be interested in to get you off the ground Kenni. It sounds like it might be right up your street. It’s regarding de-duplication scripting for Google Sheets. Manual would be a pain and the basic deduplication script Google offers cannot cope with my more challenging use case. Could also explore CRM versus the spreadsheet as I’m bootstrapping and keeping costs down and CRM looks awkward – I can show you why.

Perhaps you could PM me through my profile and we can explore whether a solution is possible as well as feasible ROI for what you’re wanting out of it. I like helping people get off the ground. In fact, it’s what my business is all about.

Just so you know, my policy on testimonials is to write an honest review but if I haven’t got anything nice to say (unlikely, of course), to not say anything. By being upfront about this, I manage any indebtedness I might feel when someone has invested time, regardless of outcome, without risk to the person offering the freebie who has also acted in good faith. I hope that sounds fair.

[chopesandbro]

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I agree …give away a freebie.

Reading your post im unsure of what your selling.

But that may be just me…lol

Dumb everything down and start small and build.

Simple fact is…not everyone is on the net and word by mouth still remains the ultimate business marketing strategy

[Author]

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