Rekiya, a chartered accountant had a great career, for 15 years, in a leading financial services firm. Since launching her own consulting outfit 6 months ago however, finding client business has been tough.

She’s been offered advice by well meaning friends, relatives, former colleagues and associates. Many recommended calling old school mates, past acquaintances, with whom she’d lost touch etc.

However, as always happens, people may know and like you, but if they do not have a “felt-need” for what you offer, they are unlikely to buy from you!

But they’ll often be polite when you call, and even promise to get back to you. People are like that. Especially when they know you. They wish you well and so will try to be nice.

But rarely will they respond with the urgency – and interest – that a total stranger in need of your solution will!

And that’s what happened to Rekiya, 6 months after starting up…

Many who’d promised to link her up, or invite her to deliver services/products to them, had not called.

Yet they’d made her send them thickly bound hard copy proposals, explaining her offer. Putting that together had not been cheap!

A few who had called back, and asked her to carry out projects for them, were yet to honour invoices she’d sent in, weeks after she’d handed over.

If Rekiya was a friend, and she asked my advice on what to do, the following is what I would tell her:

The situation was already telling on her cash flow, which still came mainly from her savings.

And her morale was dropping at approximately the same rate as her bank balance. Plus, she wondered what alternatives she could pursue.

I would waste not time in saying…

1. Forget About Marketing to Those You Know…!

Why?

That’s because I believe every start-up needs to spend less time trying to win over established contacts as clients.

Don’t get me wrong. I do not mean don’t go there.

Instead, I suggest spending less time looking that way, and invest more time, effort and energy setting up systems to attract NEW people with potential interest in what you offer.

People who never knew you before, but who are looking for your product or service.

How do you do this? Here’s an example of a simple zero cost strategy you can use:

When one is on a tight budget, creativity in getting things done without spending becomes a priority. I learnt that the hard way during 10 hard years of struggling as an entrepreneur in Nigeria.

So I began to call people’s bluff.

If someone demanded a proposal, I asked him/her for an email address I could send a PDF document to, that I called a “Generic Proposal”.

Basically, it was a document I’d prepared with my desired target audience in mind, based on many past conversations with prospects.

It often contained the information and details that addressed most of the key questions and issues a serious prospect would raise.

If the person demanding the proposal insists I sent it on paper, I often take it as a good sign that s/he is not really interested or ready.

Why?

Because the kinds of solutions I offer mostly require use of PC and Internet technology.

Any prospect averse to reviewing my offer using that platform is not likely to make a good client. 10 years out here have shown me the foregoing is often right.

2. Aim for Those Who Do NOT Know You…!

If you belong to the old school, you’d probably imagine the above stunt got me in trouble.

But guess what?

All serious prospects I’ve related with NEVER raised any issues!

They readily supplied their email addresses, and I sent them my PDF “Generic Proposal”. A few then went on to hire me (to develop a Web Marketing System for them or build a custom Excel-VB app).

In this way, I virtually eliminated the expense I used to incur on printing paper based flyers and other promotional material for my work.

That left me with more money in my pockets to fuel my car, pay for my Internet connections etc.

Using my Internet connection, I diligently churned out educational articles targeted at potential buyers, which got republished to various platforms e.g. Facebook and Twitter.

Most times, those write ups are discovered by people who have NEVER heard of, or read about me before. Total strangers. Quite often they’re searching via Google or other engine.

Then I turn up, and they read my piece, and decide to make contact, to ask me questions about what I wrote, and how I can help them.

Typically, they would have clicked a promotional link or two that I subtly inserted to one or more of my products or services sales page. And that would have gotten them hooked.

Next thing I know, the person calls my mobile, and asks “How much for…?” After I reply, s/he says “Please send me your account details so I can make the payment.”

Then I do that via email or phone text message. Suddenly, the email alert arrives on my Blackberry. Sometimes ALL of this can – and does – happen in a space of 4 to 6 hours from first contact, to payment.

Actually, as I write THIS article, it just happened AGAIN, this time with a Farm CEO from Jos, in Nigeria’s Plateau State.

He just paid for the Mini Monthly version of my Poultry Farm Manager software, less than 4 hours AFTER first contacting me on phone.

A total stranger!

Question: How come he was so quickly convinced to buy?

Answer: The mass of useful educational information I’d made available online, alongside my sales information made all the difference. I’ll explain more about this in a future article.

For now, it’s worthy of note that selling to friends/relatives can often take MORE effort and time…and will usually be LESS profitable!

The above approach works quite well, and will save you lots of stress, while putting PHYSICAL cash, with fat profit margins from happy buyers, in YOUR pockets!

Final Words: Even if your solutions are not IT related like mine, you CAN still employ this approach successfully.

Why?

Because in today’s world, most of your likely clients will be people who use email and have Internet connections, computers and smart phones with powerful features and functions.

If they really want your solution, and you offer to send them a link to a relevant page on your site, they will NOT insist you print out and sent them a paper based version.

If they do, it could signify a potential waste of time.

You have been warned!