• Categories
• Comments
• Archives

If you are trying to start a small business,my advice is go with the low-hanging fruit,which simply means pretend you are a monkey. Do you want to climb all the way to the top of the tree to find a banana? Maybe, but that’s only because some smarter monkey already grabbed the bananas on the lower part of the tree, barely had to even stretch their arms to get a great breakfast. Everybody has some low-hanging fruit and you would be crazy not to reach for it first.

This exercise is called “Who Do You Know?” and it works.

You aren’t seriously going to tell me you don’t know anyone who needs to buy a product you could supply are you? Basically, you review a guided list and discover how extensive your personal network really is. Do you know anyone who matches these relationships or occupations?

Family Members - These people are probably your closest connections,not only do these relationships and roles vreate product needs, these close contacts also have their own businesses and interests that quickly expand into a new web of potential connections

• Father
  Mother
  Grandmother
  Grandfather
  Brothers
  Sisters
  Aunts
  Uncles
  Cousins
  Girlfriend
  Boyfriend

Hobbies and Interests - This is a powerful motivating force forpurchases and specialty items, and even better almost everyone you know has a high level of expertise in some hobby or interest,unless they just watch TV all day. There are a lot more than this, but this is a great start.

1. Aerobics
2. Antiques
3. Art
4. BibleSchool
5. Bicycles
6. Books
7. Boys Club
8. Cameras
9. Camping
10. Fisherman
11. Girls Clubs
12. Girls Clubs
13. Golfing
14. Gymnastics
15. Handicapped
16. Hunting
17. Helath Club
18. Karate
19. Miniture Golf
20. Music
21. Painting
22. Pets
23. Photography
24. Religion
25. Scuba Diving
26. Sewing
27. Skiing
28. Soccer
29. Softball
30. Volunteers
31. Wine
32. Woodworking

Professions and Jobs - Most everybody has one unless they just sit around watching TV all day.

Accouting
Acting
Advertising
Air Force
Airline
Alarm Systems
Architect
Army
Auctoneer
Babysitter
Banking
Barber
Beauty Salon
Bookkeeping
Brooadcasting
Brokers
Builders
Buses
Cable TV
Credit Union
Day Care
Dentists
Dermatologists
Designers
Detectives
Diet Industry
Direct Mail
Disc Jockey
Doctors
Dry Cleaners
Electrician
Engineering
Entertainment
Eye Care
Farming
Film & Video
Fireman
Florists
Food Service
Furniture
Gardens
Gift Shops
Government
Grocery Stores
Hair Care
Handyman
Helath Insurance
Hospitals
Hotel
Income Tax
Insurance
Investments
Janitor
Jewelry
Lawn care
Leasing
Libraries
Loans
Lumber
Management
Manufacturing
Mechanics
Mobile Homes
Mortgages
Motels
Movie Theaters
Museums
Navy
Newspapers
Nurses
Nutrition
Office Machines
Office Furniture
Optometrists
Orthodontists
Pediatricians
Pedicures
Perfume
Pest Cintrol
Pharmacies
Phones
Pizza
Plumbing
Police
Pools
Preschool
Printing
Property Management
Psychiatrists
Publishers
Radio
Railroads
Real Estate
Rehabilitation
Rental Agents
Reporters
Resorts
Restaurants
Roofing
Sales
Satellites
Secretaries
Security
Shoe repair
Signage
Social Services
Sporting Goods
Steam Cleaning
Surgeons
T-Shirts
Teachers
Telemarketing
Therapists
TitleCompanies
Towing
Training
Transmissions
Trucking
Unions
Universities
Vending
Weddings

Yep,these are long lists but this kind of data mining of yourown big juicy brain can really pay off. Find out who you know explore those connections and see if it doesn’t give you an idea you can use.

How To Find Buyers For Your Imported  Products

The standard way to run a business is to select a product, find the market you can sell to and adapt as necessary to that buying population’s needs. But, you can escape the competition if you disrupt that process and work a better, less exploited angle. Why not go the opposite direction, find buyers, get their product needs and then get a product that meets their needs.

I am lucky in that I am easily interested in the details of other people’s occupations. If I’m at a party or a wedding, I am likely to engage the person next to me in a discussion about what they do. For me this is fun, but it is also away to investigate and find underserved markets. Toward this application,ask these people what kind of products they need, or that are popular that are imported,or difficult to find. A good friend of mine overseas, was talking about the popularity and low quality of the health pamphlets in local pharmacies. That kind of marketing intelligence is pure gold. He was actively looking for people that could produce pamphlets on a wide range of health topics, that he could bundle with simple displays and offer to local pharmacies.That’sexactly the kind of vacancy that you could never find out about without talking to your contacts and if you were in a position to move on it,could make you a killing,

If you meet a service provider or advisor like a banker or accountant, ask them what kinds of needs their customersare frequently seeking.My accountant has recently gotten into the insurance business, why did he do that? Because,he recognized that many of his customers had the need, but who wants to go out actively seeking insurance quotes? Nobody unless they absolutely have to. That’s why the TV is full of advertisements touting how incredibly easy it is to get a good quote.  Because they know you will probably go without insurance rather than seek out the unfamiliar market and try to navigate it on your own. An insurance product that meshed with small business needs and could be competently sold by a CPA means you have a powerful influencer advisor working for you.

Visiting flea markets is one of my favorite ways to get ideas. You can see a lot of shoppers quickly and really get an understanding about what they will plunk down hard cash for, at a wide range of price points.

Take a look at the attendance figures for trade shows to find an expanding market. According tothei Trade Show Week article about 2007 trade show attendance, the consumer trade shows are hurting but motorcycle shows, specialty recreation shows (like snowboard shows) and pet industry shows grew like crazy.

Get to know your local retailers and find out who they are buying from. That’s the 2nd best ways to find a wholesaler (the best way is linked).

Sticking with your online business is a good idea. Immediate success is unlikely, so always be aware that most of your efforts need time to work. This is one of the biggest advantages of online advertising, although even the instant feedback of paid search takes time to refine and develop. If you are losing money or not making your expenses, you might decide that it’s time to make changes to your plan or even take a break for a while and try to come up with some new ideas

Even with individual customers you should explore the opportunities and be patint but only up to a point. If you are importing a product and think that it’s perfect for a major store chain, you will almost certainly not be able to sell to them right away. It will usually take many meetings with buying agents, both local and regional. I have a friend who was in that position recently. The endless process of getting approval finally turned him off, and only a few months later he saw a nearly identical product for sale in his targeted chain store. Somebody stuck with it. Somebody else.

One way to handle this is to continually reassess your prospects and your customers. You should take stock of your business annually and try to project your income and profits for the year ahead. Don’t beat a dead horse and don’t romanticize your abilities, if the projected profits don’t work out to be enough tomeet your needs, you may need to change your approach or look for another source of income for a while (a job).

No need to be subtle here. While there are other intended audiences for a blog (staff, media, other bloggers) and all of those are important, the audience that corporate bloggers are usually trying to connect with is current and prospective customers, because they believe that’s the best audience to affect the bottom line. That’s not really true but we’ll cover that on some day that isn’t my first day. Right now, you have a problem: nobody reads your corporate blog. Here’s several tips to increase your blog’s readership that you haven’t thought if.

1. Communicate more (and more briefly) on your business website.

Most of have a website and then have a blog about the website. The blog works great as a easy publishing tool, allows you to communicate without the normal hassle of updating a website. Your ecommerce website has been carefully designed to attract visitors and convert them into paying customers. Some things are too important to leave to only the blog (a demo of the new upcoming website, or heaven forbid, a fraud alert) so you occasionally have to add a new informational page to your business website. Instead, get in the habit of running those communication pieces through your blog. Using a demo of the new website as an example. You would confine the necessary updating to your site to one line of text on the homepage or in your header

“New Design for WholesaleWidgets.com coming soon. (Hurray!) Check out the blog for more details”

The blog is perfect for these kind of communications, but is often left out of the loop, because blogging isn’t part of your IT staff’s core responsibilities but updating the ecommerce web site is. Change that now. It’s a dumb mindset that probably no one is truly attached to. If you want the blog to be important enough to be a part of your customers’ habits. You must feed the blog with information that makes it important to your customers.

2. Tell Your Mailing List About Your Blog

This is really important and most don’t do it. See, I’m a simple guy and I have simple thoughts. I say to myself that if I want someone to read my blog posts and learn more about the company, the best candidate to do that is someone who is already reading and appreciating my communication. Hmmmm, where do I already have customers that do that? On your mailing list of course.

If you haven’t done it yet, give over a choice chunk of your next newsletter to informing them that the blog exists. If you have interesting material on the blog that would still be of interest to your customers, highlight that in this article. Going forward, make sure that the blog is promoted in every newsletter, this promotion can just be a line (”Details about our new green laser pointers. Check out the blog!”)

3. Give your readers incentives to visit your blog.

I’m not kidding, pay people to be there. Give them blog-only coupon codes with shipping discounts or a free item. If you’ re in a B2B niche like the wholesale industry, promote your customers in blog firendly ways–create a post about a customer, and the first five commenters win a fun sample item from that customer. My favorite way to incentivize the blog reader is with recognition. If your readers are end users, when they win a contest, try to get a picture or a statement from them. If your readers have their own business, let them win a link to their company from your blog.

4. Get your customers involved in the blog.

Blog posts aren’t really supposed to be articles. The end goal is to establish a conversation with your users.

Send an email to customers that comment on your blog, to establish a relationship. This will bring more comments. Ask the most frequent commenters to create a guest post on your blog. Run a fundraising drive for a local charity through your blog, and warmly recognize all your customers who contribute. Blogging is a common enough activity, that you should be able to find customers with blogs of their own, add them to your blogroll.

Honestly, the hardest part of a blog is the beginning when no one is reading it. But, stick it out, find ways to ask your customers to read it, and you will profit from it. The longterm payoffs, especially in terms of customer loyalty are well worth it.

Other Great Blog Posts on This Subject:

Six Essential Questions for the Business Blogger 

Old Media and New Media Working Together