New Venture Lab: Equipping Christian Entrepreneurs

Question

I find myself really struggling right now to maintain an even level of sales.  My work seems to come in chunks and by the time I'm finishing up, I have to jump back into sales mode and it always takes me a month or two to rebuild enough momentum to bring in more sales.  I'm not sure if you can help or not, but any advice would be appreciated.

Answer

What you are wrestling with is the classic dilemma of a small owner/operator that is both selling the service and delivering the service.  It is very difficult to do in a balanced fashion that allows you to even out your earnings potential.  All small business owners need to pay close attention to maintaining a consistent sales pipeline, but it is particularly difficult for an individual owner/operator.

I am assuming you are doing some level of advertising such as online and printed yellow pages.  The good news is that there are other avenues through which you can generate a more consistent flow of leads including the following:

• Purchase qualified leads - Lead generation and marketing companies have considerable expertise in advertising, marketing and lead development and will generally sell highly-qualified leads of prospects that are ready to buy for anywhere from $25 each for shared leads to $60 each for proprietary leads.  That amount may seem high, but it is the market rate for prospects and is usually a pretty good bet given the cost of your own sales process.  If you are a tradesman such as a handyman, electrician, plumber, etc. check out ServiceMagic at www.servicemagic.com.  Another example is VendorSeek at www.vendorseek.com.
• Purchase lists - If you would prefer just to buy a list and work the list yourself via working the telephone or email, you can buy list from companies such as infoUSA at www.salesgenie.com or US Data at www.usdata.com.  The lists are much cheaper each and are generally subscription-based services, but you need to qualify the customers yourself, which will take time away from delivering your service.
• Referral networks - Another method of boosting sales is to share leads and referrals with other service providers that are in your field, but not competitive with you.  For example, if you are an electrician, tap into the local realtor network, home inspector network, plumber, carpenter and construction network, etc.

The key issue is to maintain a consistent flow of leads that will lead to a consistent flow of customers and that this lead process is managed by someone else so you can focus on delivering the service in order to maximize your earning power.