Small Business: 5 Ways to Find New Customers

The key to success in small business is a constant flow of work, generated by your customers. Getting your blackberry contact list loaded with good ones goes a long way to ensuring your success.

Sure, there are all the classic methods outlined in sales manuals, sales training courses and marketing classes. Contacting your center of influences, networking, direct mail, etc are all good ways of building your business. But here are 5 ways to find new customers that I’ve used with great success

Contact all of your prior employers that could potentially use your service and ask for a order.

Plain and simple.

Follow competitors trucks as they make deliveries.

I got my biggest, repeat client this way. I had recently started a catering business. I just followed a competitor's catering delivery person into the building and on to his final destination. Once he had completed his mission I introduced myself and asked permission to drop off menus and samples. The rest was history. Once they saw our work, and one secretary told another secretary and soon we were catering for every department.

Contact organizations that use your service often.

Your local chamber of commerce is always open to new companies trying their hand at a job. Our chamber was always having cocktail parties and working lunches. Since I was in catering, I knew arts organizations were fertile feeding grounds for contacts who can take you into their corporate environment. Once I got the job I worked the room like crazy.

You probably have a good idea who these organizations are for your type of small business. Make sure they know you exist and make the most of your time if given a chance.

Opportunism.

Another word for creativity in searching for prospects. Ask your current customers if they know of anyone who could benefit from your services the way they have? Think creatively.

Does a unit of your local government have a job out for bid? This is the exact way we took our one year old catering business up into hundreds of thousands in sales….by selling hot dogs at a local municipal golf course. It just so happened an 18,000 square foot clubhouse came with it!

Use your friends.

A family friend was at an event where a young lady stated she had just signed a contract to produce a $40,000 cocktail party. He asked if she knew of our firm (she didn’t). I got her name, made a presentation, and walked away with a job for Universal Studios that had a final bill of $53,000! Wow, all because a buddy knew we were hungry!

You need to exhaust all possibilities. Don't just wait for calls from the yellow pages. Have fun with the process and you’ll suddenly have a desk full of good, repeat customers… which is the key to any successful small business.