The minimum tools for your climbing

To win corporate customers you will need the right tools depending on what stage you are at.

Let's get down to what's best for you.

Stage 1 - Starting Now, No Customers

  • An e-mail with your own domain [email protected]
  • A notebook/tablet/desktop with e-mail application
  • A cellular phone
  • A list with company names and phone numbers
  • About 10 sheets of paper and a Bic pen

Spend a lot of time elaborating your offer, i.e. what you will be offering.

Answer why prospects should buy what you offer and why they would do so from you.

Write down your answers and call as many people as possible on your list. Those who are not interested (90-99%) ask if you can refer someone who is.

Do nothing but call and talk to people. Send e-mails and answer questions that come in via e-mail. Go out and have your meetings.

As soon as you close the first customer, deliver 120% of what was sold.

Take some capital and invest in a new list, now more suitable, with a profile closer to the ideal prospects.

Repeat the process until you close the second client.

Stage 2 - With few customers, but not enough revenue

Add to the tools from stage 1:

  • A web page (your site)
  • A Linkedin account
  • A spreadsheet

Your web page must talk about the product. It should be simple and full of value. It should help interested people choose your solution with solid and specific arguments.

Remember, people don't buy a drill. They buy the holes it makes. Sell results.

Dedicate 1 hour setting up your Linkedin profile and invite people from your target market to join your network.

Write one or two useful articles and post them on Linkedin. Invite those people to comment. The goal here is to open up conversations with your target audience.

("Ah but I can't write, I can't invite, I don't know this, I don't know that...". Okay, I'll get a tissue and commiserate with your lack of self-confidence or laziness. Which one is it?)

Increase the volume of conversations. You need to reach 30 or more conversations with people in your potential market every day.

Put summaries of conversations into the spreadsheet. Access it from your smartphone in two clicks.

Improve your input product. Reduce the risk on the other side. Make it easy to buy. Break it into modules, create alternatives.

Goal: Get in. Close as many clients as you can.

Nothing will be perfect at that time. Your sense of loss of control will be enormous. But it's that or hunger.

At this stage: Sold 100. Delivered 110.

Stage 3 - With many customers, but not much money left

Add to the tools from the previous stage:

  • More thinking brains (partners, consultancies)
  • Capital to invest

It is time to "productize" your company and enter the journey of bringing your processes to scale.

Here are the biggest challenges for companies entering adulthood.

How to standardize processes, reduce costs, and create noticeable market value differentiators. How to stay lean, agile, and mobile while growing.

The more killer your flagship product is, the easier it is to find solutions. But for the vast majority of us, we will be competing for a share in an extremely competitive market with few differentiators.

It is where people buy price and demand prime service.

Here you sold 100. You delivered 100. There will be no other way.

It's time to take the magnifying glass and look at every corner of your organization, purge costs and create the atmospheric conditions for continuous value creation.

Extremely challenging but you are almost at the top of the pyramid.

Stage 4 - With ideal clients, lots of money left over

You have arrived there. It's time to reduce your risk. Dairy cows die one day. New companies and new markets are on your horizon.

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Maximum rule in all stages:

Talk to like-minded people and add value all the time, non-stop.

With your will, patience, and especially your faith, good things will come in profusion to you.

Stavros Frangoulidis
Stavros Frangoulidis
CEO of PaP Solutions ⚡ Let's connect on Linkedin too

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