Best way to get business…
At a local networking event, I had a guy who was new to business ask me what is the best way to get business and win over potential clients. That’s easy… MAKE THEM MONEY!
We are all in business to make money, otherwise, we’d run charities. Day in and day out, there is a certain threshold that a business much achieve profit wise in order to open the doors for another day. There is some variance to this but over extended periods of time, the goal is to always make more than you spend otherwise you go out of business.
I have a potential client that I’ve been trying to get “into” for quite some time, they never had time for me or answered my emails. I get it, I’m a small fry and they have bigger issues to contend with but recently I had a breakthrough. How? Well, I know their business very well (capability wise) and have send them some leads their way… I’m not talking about something I got from the phone book, I’m talking my own customer who asked about capabilities this company has. They have a project they need done and were looking to find a company that could help them with it. A “shovel ready” project if you want. I can vouch for both the potential client and my own CNCROi.com client and it’s a perfect fit. Of course, we are also part of this production chain so it’s more business for me too!
Generally, you do try to do everything yourself, but in the millworking world where this project came from, if you don’t have the machine, it’s best to be honest and refer the business to another one you trust. There is no point in trying to fake a capability you simply do not have as the headaches that can happen just aren’t worth it. You can’t fake the capability of a Thermwood CNC full-sheet router anymore than I can fake the dual laser source capability of my Austrian Trotec Speedy 400 flexx CNC laser! Reputations take a long time to earn and can be wiped out in one bad project rather quickly in the niches I’m getting into. It’s a remarkably small world and company owners do talk among themselves on a very regular basis even if they are competitors. At the end of the day, we are ALL trying to get into each others production chains.
So, I put both my client and the customer I’m trying to get in touch with one another, I then visited the customer whom I’ve been trying to get into the other day and guess what… they happily greeted me and discussed a number of projects that CNCROi.com can most certainly help them out with. How did this happen? I got them business and a client that they didn’t have to spend money or time trying to find and catch!
What if you don’t run a business… but looking for a job?
You do not need permission from any business to find them REAL projects. If you are looking for a job, the easiest way to get the attention of a business owner is to walk in the door with some project that they can handle, the hotter the deal, the better your chances! Resumes only show you what you know and have done in the past, they do not demonstrate ambition or success… anybody can fuzz numbers or take credit for other people’s work. If you are looking to be a marketing executive or sales, go out there before the interview, find some projects and then you have you’re in regardless of education or background. Even if you find nothing, the fact that you searched and tried with worth A LOT! You will know the key players, where the fit in the grand scheme of things and again, areas you can insert yourself into others production chains.
When I ran my 3D animation studio almost 20 years ago now, my very best sale person was a guy still studying Marketing in university, my worse? An MBA graduate from a prestigious school who kept bitching at me as to why he wasn’t on salary instead of commission during probation. The university student hit the phones and pavement, the MBA graduate developed policies and procedures to get business, writing down that he “will” do on what day, what demographic he was after and verticals he was trying to get us into. The student made money and helped my company tremendously, the MBA graduate only found one project that I have yet to be paid for almost two decades later. This is when I learned that educational credentials are worthless in sales. I myself have no formal education in anything CNCROi.com does, I use my university Geography degree to find customers using a GPS and remember to sleep every night thanks to my Biology degree.
