I'm struggling a bit trying to figure out how to market my services better. Briefly, I provide two services:
1) Custom line-of-business software for small to medium businesses. Examples:
* system that automates project mgt reports and customer invoices for an oil and gas contractor
* system that manages the rental portion of an ag-industry irrigation company
2) Automating financial reporting from a bunch of different data sources. Examples:
*an IT services company has about 8 different databases that perform various functions for their clients. They want to know the costs associated with each system per-customer compared to revenue per customer. They also want to know how much employee time (and cost) is spent on each customer
I'm working hard to get out of the self-centered approach to marketing (Everyone out there thinks like I do and has the same needs as I think they should have), but being a technical person, this is hard.
The clients that I do have already knew what they wanted. They were just looking for someone that could help them do it. "I'm looking for an MS Access developer that can..." Most people, though, don't seem to be like that. Lets pick my Business Intelligence reporting client...They were frustrated that they couldn't easily gather all the information they need to run their business automatically. I met them by asking what was involved in becoming a partner. We met, I showed them a couple examples of what I do, and the CEO said, 'hey, we have this report that we need automated, can you help?'
There's another thread on here today that talks about finding your customers on Twitter by offering 1-sentence fixes to the problems they post. My problem is that I don't really know what they would be talking about. I did look up "[HASHTAG]#pivottables[/HASHTAG]" and congratulated a few people that said that they learned how to use them. One of them favorited my tweet and said, 'thank you.' I'll try to continue that conversation. (people that use PivotTables are probably a prime candidate for my service ... pivot tables need a data source, and Excel is not that great at aggregating a whole bunch of data sources and prepping the data so that it can be viewed in a pivot table)
This leads me to an underlying assumption that I make when I read things like what MJ did in his limo business - he became the best out there by knowing his customers and responding to what they wanted. I still feel (at 41) like I'm the awkward teenager that doesn't know how to be well-liked by people (which I feel is necessary in order to build a business that is well liked).
I know this is a bit of TMI, but these underlying assumptions about myself are keeping me from forgetting about myself, focusing on my clients or potential customers and what they need. It also stops me in my tracks when I hit a roadblock - when no one responds to a blog post I wrote, I think, 'well, they must not like me.' (crazy, I know, but its where I'm at currently)
I'd love your input.
Thanks
--Jon
1) Custom line-of-business software for small to medium businesses. Examples:
* system that automates project mgt reports and customer invoices for an oil and gas contractor
* system that manages the rental portion of an ag-industry irrigation company
2) Automating financial reporting from a bunch of different data sources. Examples:
*an IT services company has about 8 different databases that perform various functions for their clients. They want to know the costs associated with each system per-customer compared to revenue per customer. They also want to know how much employee time (and cost) is spent on each customer
I'm working hard to get out of the self-centered approach to marketing (Everyone out there thinks like I do and has the same needs as I think they should have), but being a technical person, this is hard.
The clients that I do have already knew what they wanted. They were just looking for someone that could help them do it. "I'm looking for an MS Access developer that can..." Most people, though, don't seem to be like that. Lets pick my Business Intelligence reporting client...They were frustrated that they couldn't easily gather all the information they need to run their business automatically. I met them by asking what was involved in becoming a partner. We met, I showed them a couple examples of what I do, and the CEO said, 'hey, we have this report that we need automated, can you help?'
There's another thread on here today that talks about finding your customers on Twitter by offering 1-sentence fixes to the problems they post. My problem is that I don't really know what they would be talking about. I did look up "[HASHTAG]#pivottables[/HASHTAG]" and congratulated a few people that said that they learned how to use them. One of them favorited my tweet and said, 'thank you.' I'll try to continue that conversation. (people that use PivotTables are probably a prime candidate for my service ... pivot tables need a data source, and Excel is not that great at aggregating a whole bunch of data sources and prepping the data so that it can be viewed in a pivot table)
This leads me to an underlying assumption that I make when I read things like what MJ did in his limo business - he became the best out there by knowing his customers and responding to what they wanted. I still feel (at 41) like I'm the awkward teenager that doesn't know how to be well-liked by people (which I feel is necessary in order to build a business that is well liked).
I know this is a bit of TMI, but these underlying assumptions about myself are keeping me from forgetting about myself, focusing on my clients or potential customers and what they need. It also stops me in my tracks when I hit a roadblock - when no one responds to a blog post I wrote, I think, 'well, they must not like me.' (crazy, I know, but its where I'm at currently)
I'd love your input.
Thanks
--Jon
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