Do you want to get your first customers?
When you are getting your first customers, it is very difficult.
Getting from zero to one is way more difficult than getting from fifty to one hundred.
When starting your business, you likely found a specific target market that likes your product/service OR you found a specific target market and developed a product/service specifically for them.
However, often businesses run into difficulty after their initial launch and finding the reality of demand in a target market they have chosen.
It could be the difficulty of finding early adopters who are willing to take a risk on your product/service when you don’t have a long track record.
Or it could be the difficulty of having an extremely competitive market and convincing your prospective customers to leave your competitors and buy from you instead.
Whatever it is, getting your first customers is the most essential building block to generate enough revenue for your business to start preparing to scale, hiring staff, and eventually capturing a large market share locally and internationally.
Getting the right first customers is important to propel your business on the right trajectory.
With the wrong first customers, your business won’t grow.
To make sure you are pursuing the right first customers, it is important to study potential target markets to see which one meets the most of your ideal customer criteria and then to validate the interest of these potential customers by talking to them and getting them to buy.
In addition to finding and selling to the right customers, time is your most valuable asset because you have a limited amount of money to cover your expenses and the longer it takes for you to generate enough sales to cover your expenses, the more likely you are to go out of business.
However, if you immediately, upon opening your business, make large recurring sales that cover your expenses with ideal target clients, time is no longer your enemy and you can take your time to make the right growth decisions without the clock running towards your bankruptcy.
When time is not your enemy, it is important to make sure your customer relationships are developed well and you can check in with your customers on a regular basis to learn more about their needs, how your product/service is satisfying them, and possible requests for product/service improvement.
Strong customer relationships are built by listening to your customers and considering their suggestions and feedback seriously. Also, these strong relationships will help increase your customer retention because you are regularly checking in with them.
After helping our clients get their first customers and making sure they have a strong cashflow, our clients have reported benefits such as:
“When I started building my business, I had found a specific target market and I dedicated myself to studying that target market to find out their needs and main problems which I then later developed a service specifically for them. Now that I have my first high ticket customer, I feel that all the hard work has been worth it and I’m looking forward to growing more.”
“The initial launch of our first product was not easy at all, we went through many difficulties. I think it was because we were new on the market and did not have a track record. However, we, eventually, with the help of SalesStrategy.ca, learned the principles and strategies that we needed to drive our product sales and significantly grow our business. We are very grateful to the whole team for that.”
“It took us a long time to get our first customers. We knew we were in a very competitive market, and companies were offering similar products (and they already had a good reputation). The most difficult part was finding customers who would take the risk of buying from us (who were unproven) and not from the competition (who were proven). It was a pretty bad scenario where we invested time and money into our product, but couldn’t sell it. Fortunately, we found SalesStrategy.ca who helped us correct the mistakes we were making, get our first customers quickly, and grow much faster than we could have done ourselves. We’re happy we did that otherwise, I’m not sure we would be in business today! ”
“I don’t like taking risk. So when I decided I wanted to start a business, I knew that I needed to learn how to get leads and sell first. I decided on SalesStrategy.ca because I wanted to study and learn all the possible sales options available. After working with SalesStrategy.ca, I learned a much more than sales – I learned how to grow my business with minimal risk such as things like the importance of studying the different markets in which our product fit, validating the interests of our potential customers in order to meet their needs, and actually getting presales before heavily investing in operations. Now that my business is up and running with customers, I’m happy I took the time to invest in learning sales first.”
“We had to work very hard to try to convince our customers that our service could help them solve their problems. The simple fact of being new and not having a good reputation made the job difficult for us at the beginning. Thanks to SalesStrategy.ca we clearly understood the steps to follow to get our first clients and scale our business. We focused on demonstrating the quality of our service and that is how we achieved our first sales. We also learned from SalesStrategy.ca that the key to earning a good reputation, continuing to sell our service, and staying in the market is to constantly work on continuous improvement. We simply followed their recommendations and started getting sales.”
Working with SalesStrategy.ca to support you in getting your first customers is a great way to:
- save time by learning how to validate your target market and get pre-sales.
- start generating revenue as fast as possible.
- learn how to identify leads who are willing to take a chance on you in order to outperform your competitors.
- accelerate the growth of your business and boost your sales.
- identify who is a good potential customer and who is not in order for you and your team to save time.
- learn best practices for retaining high ticket customers and increasing their order sizes.
- learn how to use your current customers to improve your product/service quality and get referrals.
Are you working to get your first customers? Do this first.
Operations: Delivering Your Product/Service To Your First Customers.
When you are delivering your product/service to your first customers, it is essential that you do it right.
Not only do you have to deliver at a high level to make sure you get a good testimonial/review, but you must also build a relationship with your first customers to get their buying preferences and delivery preferences in order to make sure that you are prepared to wow other customers in that specific target market.
Either way, whether it is you or an operations manager in charge of this, it is important that they not only deliver well, but ask the right questions and develop the right kind of relationships with your first customers.
Keep in mind that the way you serve and gather information from your first customers is often different than how you will serve your future customers.
We have worked with numerous clients to teach their operations team the principles and strategies required to serve their first customers and set up their business for success (without wasting time and money).
If you or a team member is the operations manager, we recommend to start with the Solopreneur To CEO Course to make sure your business is serving your first customers the right way and is building your business foundation for future success (and not bankrupt).
Sales: Getting Your First Leads and Closing Your First Sales.
Before you get started, you must first ask yourself:
- Are you planning to conduct all the sales efforts yourself including generating leads and closing sales?
- Do you have time to increase your sales efforts internally with you managing an internal sales department?
- Do you have little or no time at all and need to hire an experienced self-managed salesperson or sales team?