Starting a business can be one of the best things you ever do. Whether your work is your passion or a way to use your skills, becoming your own boss could make a better income and be an incredibly rewarding life achievement.
Of course, it can feel quite daunting at first when you find yourself with your new fledgling venture but no customers. Also, when you are itching to start impressing your clients, it can feel a bit demoralizing when you don’t yet have anyone to work with. However, once you get the ball rolling and have some active pitches out there, things can quickly become busy, and soon enough you will find that your business is growing in popularity. With all that said, the key thing to do in these early stages is to start putting yourself out there.
Identifying Potential Clients
The first thing you need to do is identify the types of businesses and people who would be most interested in your business. By this, we don’t mean in general terms (for instance, you may think ‘small businesses’ may be interested in your accountancy services or web design, or ‘marketing companies’ may be interested in your copywriting), but to look for the names of these businesses and gather as much information about them as you can. Therefore, make sure to identify clear targets.
Social media can be hugely useful for general research, particularly platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn. When you have a business or person in mind, make a contact list. If you don’t have actual contact details for the people you want to target as a result of your initial research, you can use services like theemailfinder.co to help you find email addresses you can use for your pitches and grow your client and customer list.
Prepare Tailored Pitches
While it may be tempting to send out a bulk email announcing your presence to everybody on the list you have made, you are more likely to get good results if you tailor your pitches to each recipient. You can use a template email if your services are not especially bespoke, or write a new email for each person, but make sure you have added some personalization to each message you send. For instance, mention how you found out about the recipient, or a specific thing about their business that you think makes you a good fit to work with them.
Follow Up
People are busy, and while emailed pitches can be effective, it never hurts to assume some will never get opened. Because of this, it can be a good idea to follow up with further emails or calls – as long as you are not pushy or spammy.
If your offering and messages are good, it shouldn’t be long before you begin finding people who are interested in your new business, so keep pitching and reaching out!
