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9. Contact your local Small Business Administration/Library about consulting or teaching classes.
While the Small Business Administration will not pay you for your services it is still an excellent way to get your firm’s name in front of a targeted audience. After all, these prospects have come to hear your views and gather info on your area of expertise. Once you’ve gathered contact information be sure to follow up with a thank you e-mail and basic info on your services. Be sure to follow up that e-mail with a phone call to make sure they’ve received and read the e-mail (some e-mails are never read because they wind up in spam). Caution: While the SBA encourages the private sector to create workshops that educate new business owners, they can’t endorse any one company and frown on too much self-promotion during workshops.
A relatively new function of your local library comes in the form of Small Business Workshops. Be sure to ask for the person booking the business workshops for the library. Here’s the great news. Most have a budget to pay their instructors which can range from $25-150.00 per hour.
10. Contact your local/trade business newspapers or magazines about offering discount coupons to prospects.
Because I promote the San Francisco Business Times and Crain’s Chicago Business at my workshops, I’ve managed to build a wonderful partnership with both publications. Offering coupons serves several functions.
A. It adds value to your product/service
B. It keeps you firm’s services/products in the fore front of a prospect’s mind
C. The publication will often give you a certain percentage off your subscription making it virtually free (SF Business Times deducts several weeks off my weekly newspaper subscription for every coupon they receive with my name on it. So far the subscription has cost me nothing)
D. It’s a great direct mail stuffer and makes tossing your information in the trash more difficult.
11. Post on www.Craigslist.org and other free on line postings
Check on www.craigslist.com for prospects looking for services. While most of us use Craigslist to post a free ad, many of us forget to mine the ads listed for prospects looking for services. This makes these leads warm instead of cold. And yes, while many of the postings request to not be contacted by companies, many of them don’t mind at all. Why? Think about it. If you’re looking for a telemarketer and have posted an ad for over a month without much luck and you receive info on an affordable alternative, would you toss the info? Consistency also has to play a role in generating business on CL because you can’t post once and expect to get a ton of leads.
12. Search job postings like www.monster.com for leads
Leads come from many different sources and while many companies that post are looking for employees, it doesn’t hurt to send information on your services as well. Decision makers have become more flexible when it comes to finding the right person to handle projects. And while they may want to keep everything in-house, sometimes it’s just not feasible or practical. In which case hiring an outside contractor makes more sense.
13. Contact prospects outside of your area
This tip has become more and more important to my company’s well-being over the last few years. As small business owners we’re not taught to think in terms of international or multi-geographical sales. Often we’re aware of the potential only after we figure out that people outside of our city or state are willing to pay for our services. After the recent economic downturn more than 50% of my new clients were from outside of the Bay Area (California was one of the hardest hit economically).