Are you waiting?
Get on the phone, get on email, get on Twitter, get on with it! Tell people you are now in business. No, I’m not worried that you don’t have a perfect website yet. I’m more worried that you don’t have any customers, or you only have one. I’m not worried that the timing is wrong, or the economy looks tough. Zane will tell you Today’s the Day to Start Your Business.
Know your target and go find them. Get past your existing network. If you are providing service to small businesses, know exactly what kind of small business, what size, and where to find them.
Go get in front of your target people and ask them questions. Learn all about them. Find out what their problems are, what their needs are. Do NOT presume to know what their problems are, even though you are in the business of selling your solution. Each and every business is different, and even if they weren’t, each small business person thinks they are different!
So you want to go in armed with a list of questions to start discussion. Let’s say you are a social media person, working with small local businesses. Start asking about their current customers. How to they listen to them? What tools do they give customers to give feedback? Are they able to currently reward their fans? How do they know what the larger community is saying about their business?
In order to develop a list of questions like this, you’ll need to know not only what you offer, but also what your customers DO with what you offer. I wrote an article about this: Communicate: Ask Better Questions..
So quit waiting. Get going!
[Photo of a new business in Alva, from my Flickr.]
This article is part of the Small Biz 100,a series of 100 practical hands-on posts for small business people andsolo entrepreneurs, whether in a small town, the big city, or inbetween. If you have questions you’d like us to address in this series,leave a comment or send us an email at becky@smallbizsurvival.com. This is a community project!
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Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.
Asking questions is exactly what one needs to do. Even ask your peers questions as I pointed out in my blog post at
http://TheSmallBusinessNanny.blogspot.com
We should pool our posted questions and create a resource for newbies and veterans in business.
Oh and don’t forget that a press release is a very good thing when wanting the public to know you are open for business!
Thanks,
Jay
Thanks, Jay. Your blog title is certainly attention-getting!
Tiffany sent this comment via our contact form:
Questions are asked on the highway leading to success! In addition to asking your customers questions to learn how to better serve them, I recommended to my spouse, who is a newbie at entrepreneurship, that it is advisable to research his competitors! Ask the right questions to create a competitive edge or to offer a better value for your service or product! Both customer and competitor are wonderful resources for getting going in your business, especially in the right direction.