Getting New Business Fast

Recently two business owners came to me in dire straits. The first, who
owned a dental billing company, had suffered sabotage by a disgruntled
employee. Clients deserted in droves when told, falsely, that he was being
investigated for fraud. The second, who owned a computer training firm, had
neglected to market for a year and had just discovered the delayed effect
of his omission. Both appealed to me: Help! We need more business fast!

Even in such circumstances, an existing business has assets that can be
exploited to drum up sales and cash flow quickly. Use your intuition about
whether to divulge your real situation to friends who might be moved to
help or put a bright face on your situation by, for instance, saying you're
expanding. Either way, consider these possibilities if a comparable
disaster befalls you:

* Leverage your loyal clients through testimonials and referrals. The
billing company's most steadfast client, a periodontist, provided a glowing
testimonial that the owner used to approach other periodontists. Similarly,
the training firm told their lingering clients that they were running
special summer classes and offering big discounts for every participant
from another company that they persuaded to sign up.

* Send direct mail to clones of your best clients. Construct a profile of
the kind of customer who had been most drawn to you in the past, and engage
a mailing-list broker to furnish names and addresses of individuals or
companies matching the profile. For the training company, that meant law
firms and accounting firms with more than 20 partners.

* Offer a trendy new service. What unmet needs of existing clients could
you satisfy? Invent new services or shift sideways to parallel services you
might not otherwise bother with. The billing company, which normally
concentrated on insurance reimbursements, now said it would also collect
overdue balances from individuals who had promised to pay out of pocket.

* Telemarket to new prospects with an irresistible offer. Bend over
backwards to prove yourself to people who have never done business with
you. Your offer needs high appeal, a low introductory price, and a
guarantee that removes all or most of their risk in trying you. For the
billing company, the inducement was the first quarter of service for half
price, and no charge at all if at the end of 30 days the new client wasn't
100 percent convinced that the change simplified their office routines.

* Sell your white elephants. Do you have inventory collecting dust in a
storeroom -- or property that you could quickly convert into salable items?
The training firm had proprietary manuals for each of its courses that it
could sell as add-ons for its other classes or consulting. It could also
license them to other training firms that hadn't gotten around to creating
their own products. Indeed, even if you're doing fine, you might have wares
you haven't bothered to sell in a while. Through online auctioner eBay and
its competitors, you might be able to turn your white elephants into
cash -- fast.