Met with Dan Miller today. I have to admit I was a bit concerned considering I was flying out to Nashville for a few days, and dropping a good bit of dough for a few hours of the guys time seemed a bit caviler even by my standards. I guess I was basically going "all in" with my business poker chips if you will, and it's sink or swim time, if you don't mind the mixed metaphores.
My first observation was he wasn't as tall as I'd expected he'd be. He was about 5'10", but not didn't look like he could leap buildings in a single bound,like the persona I'd made him out to be. Despite this, he really ended up giving me some excellent advice. Some of it was nothing new and earth shattering, after all I'd been following the guy for over a year, and have read tons of the same books he has. However, he did have a few really good nuggets, and had a number of suggestions for books, websites, and ideas to research.
Most importantly, he was able to tell me how I could make my company personal, and not just a cold corporation. There's basically two schools of thought out there for biz. development it seems. One says you get real slick marketing, throw money at google ad words, etc. and your clients are compelled by your persuasive marketing to go out and buy your product. The other school says it's all about connections, networking, and relationships.
I couldn't figure out how to combine the two with a engineering software program, so I was gearing up to do the slick marketing route. This left me with the problem that with maybe 120 potential clients, after I contact all of them and make say 20 sales, then what? His solution was to consider the clients as not a single thumbs up or thumbs down sale, but as a pool of potential. Dan suggested I need to establish about 30 close contacts with my pool of contacts, and instead of simply try to market to the clients, think of ways I could help them with podcasts, articles, etc, and send them useful info for their industry. In short, become one of acoustical group who also happens to sell products as well.
I've already made 3-4 good contacts in my sales efforts, and this approach seems to fit my personality much better, and take the pressure off of just trying to extract a sale. It also seems like an excellent long term strategy as well. When I start making my calls, it will be as much to form a relationship and find ways to help potential clients, even if that's not with my product right out of the shoot.
Anyway, I won't ramble about all the details of my biz, but I'll just say that going in I felt like I had a lot going for me but wasn't hitting on all cylinders, and now I feel I have all the pieces in place to go out and and making waves in the field. Just as importantly, this biz will serve as a model for future businesses, so even if it didn't pan out, I could switch gears, and quickly move in another direction.
I can't wait to kick off my new marketing campaign and launch my website. We'll be visiting family this weekend so I won't be able to work on the biz much, but next week I plan on hitting it hard and hopefully generating some sales in the very near future.
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