| Business Ideas, Tips and Hints |
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Previous: Get print ads noticed by Janet Attard Businesses and consumers alike often consider that the risk of dealing with a new, small business far outweigh any benefits they may derive, particularly when there is a lot of money involved. One of the ways to overcome that resistance is to take small steps toward getting your customer familiar with you and the quality of your products and services. One of the simplest ways to do that is to give key prospects a free sample. Software programmers who sell their programs on the web often make available demo versions of their programs that will work for a limited time. People interested in the program can download it and try it for a short period of time to determine whether it meets their needs. Other programmers give away simple versions of their products to get people to purchase the versions that have highly desirable add-on features. If you worry that free samples will result in more tire-kickers than real customers, develop a low-cost, but desirable product or service to sell to your target market. Be sure the product or service is top quality. Once you've gained the customer's confidence on a small sale, it will be easier to reduce concerns about placing big orders with you. If the client doesn't bite on the first attempt to trade up to bigger and better sales, don't forget about them. If you have qualified the customer in advance and know there are good possibilities for additional sales, stay in touch on a regular basis. Send them news clippings, press releases, product announcements and anything that will help build your case for being a qualified and reliable supplier to their company. More: How Free Giveaways Can Help You Get You All the Clients You Want Posted by Janet Attard on May 12, 2008 at 8:54 AM | Comments (8)Comments It is very important that you do not skimp on quality when starting your business. Especially with a low-cost service or product. Posted by: Mark on May 12, 2008 at 5:37 PM That's one of the very effective strategies I tried. I am a programmer and closed most of my contracts by developing low cost softwares, gaining their confidence and giving away free software for them to try. The tendency is for them to want more of your products but of course not for free. We also sold most of our food products during trade fairs and we made big sales by giving free sample to our customers. Posted by: Daemon on May 12, 2008 at 8:56 PM Yes, as mentioned by Ardian, this may not suit all business. High value items can not be given as a sample. For our line which involves after sales service of the product, we offer every now and then Free service camps. But many clients limit thier involvement with availing of the free service and nothing more than that. If at all they come back, it is after a few months or so, claming that machine is not working all right again, and since we serviced the last time, we are only responsible for the presnt problem also! Posted by: Mani on May 13, 2008 at 1:10 AM Every industry and business is different. As the previous comment, it works, but not for everyone. It is very important to give prospects the opportunity to "test" your products, but sometimes services are more difficult to give away. Posted by: Jacqueline Camacho on May 13, 2008 at 2:44 PM I have developed a software. I would wish to work with it on full time basis. Am wondering, if I give free samples, it may bog me down since I can't afford to give free support at the moment. Posted by: Tom on May 23, 2008 at 2:14 AM I have developed a software. I would wish to work with it on full time basis. Am wondering, if I give free samples, it may bog me down since I can't afford to give free support at the moment. Posted by: Tom on May 23, 2008 at 8:25 AM There are two ways you could handle the support issue for free or limited feature software: Outsource support, or (the less expensive way) set up short video demos showing how to use the software step by step. You might also want to set up a forum for answering questions, and use your lunch hour or after work time to provide answers. Once you start making sales, then you'd probably want to look at outsourcing support for at least a litle while so there would be someone available to take calls from paying customers. For a useful way to handle conversions from limited-version software to paid, check out esellerate.net, too. Their system works successfully for some software authors I know. Posted by: Janet Attard |
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Copyright 1999-2012 by Attard Communications, Inc. and by the individual authors. |
I think that this is very smart, but not for all businesses.
Posted by: Ardian on May 12, 2008 at 3:08 PM