Our newest endeavor!!
Selling online services to offline businesses – services like creating websites, promoting websites, and helping businesses with their internet marketing needs.
I’m the sales lady and my husband is the techie guy! He gets the work done and I find the people who want it. We’re an awesome team if I do say so myself.
Our first step in starting this new adventure includes cold calling businesses to see if they are in need of a website. I’ve been taking the good old phone book and starting in a specific niche. Take a few moments to search for each business online to see if they have a site – not only does this tell you who has one and who doesn’t, but then you get to see what is the industry standard in your area for sites. Then, I call and briefly (very very briefly) introduce myself and tell them what I do and ask if they are interested.
I DO NOT shove websites down their throat. If they say no, I DO NOT try to convince them that they absolutely must have one right now. Every no brings me closer to a yes. Every time I meet with someone, it’s more experience I’m gaining toward the *big sale*. Just that one rule takes so much pressure off me – I don’t have to think of the perfect sales pitch or the right combination of words that will magically win them over. I’m going for the “lowing hanging fruit”, the ones who know they need a website and are ready to get one right now.
We’ve been doing this a few weeks now and there are a few lessons I’ve learned already:
Have a dedicated space.
We flipped around our living room and our homeschool room. That way, our living room now doubles as a home office and who ever is working on the business can go in there and shut the door for some peace and quiet.
Put together a terms of service and a price point package.
We’ve sort of developed the price point packages along the way but it would have been easier to talk with people and have prices to hand them. Sometimes, people do the site work on a quote basis, but you can at least put a *starting at* number in there. The Terms of Service would have avoided some hard-to-work-with people, although not avoid them altogether. Look at other web designers sites to see how they are wording their terms and modify to fit your needs.
Develop a consistent schedule.
When you work at home, it’s so easy to just decide to do some of the other things that need to get done to keep a household running. It’s tempting to run errands like getting the car fixed and grocery shopping during the day when everyone else is at work. But, this IS your work right now. Be dedicated and you will see results sooner.
Take very good notes while you are on the phone.
My goal is to make 200 calls per day. WOW!! That’s a TON of calls! I can’t tell you how many times I have talked with someone and they tell me to call back in such-and-such minutes and I talk to the next person and they say to call on such-and-such day – 10 calls later I’ve forgotten who said what and I didn’t think I needed to write it down because I would remember! Yikes!
Follow Up.
Adhering to your schedule will really help with this – but if you tell someone you’ll call back, make sure you DO! If you tell someone you will send them something, make sure you DO! If someone says to call next week or next month, you have to have a system in place that will remind you to do that and help you to make it happen.
One of the ways we started to get business was to approach friends and offer our services for free. They get a nice website for free and we get to start developing a portfolio to show other people. We just ask that they get their site hosted with us at an extremely low monthly rate. Once they are happy with their site, they will inevitably start recommending us with that ultra-powerful ever-coveted Word-Of-Mouth recommendation to their friends, colleagues, clients, etc.
There is definitely lots of money to be made on the internet, of that I have no doubt. But, doing business in the offline world is still multiple times more lucrative than the internet has been up to this point.
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