/biz/ - Business and Finance

>>4116

>Anyone have advice on how to approach a business without seeming desperate or like a fly by night operation?

IT infrastructure isn't something businesses buy because it's being sold to them. IT is a cost center, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is applied pretty much across the board. all you can do is make yourself visible when needed.

my first guess would be some kind of local advertising or setting up a referral deal with building managers. but you should be doing the footwork to figure out how these businesses are finding their half assed vendors in the first place.

>But I don't subscribe to the world as it operates now. I don't want to rent a storefront

pretty sure that's the norm for independent contractors. I wouldn't worry about bucking any trends in that regard.

>>4118

I'm not selling infrastructure. I've worked for companies that either supported larger companies too large to have staff to cover all their territory, or companies that grew too large and hired companies like what I'm looking to start.

In other words. Places like motel6 have infrastructure but no one that understands how to install, manage, or troubleshoot it. They tend to hire companies to manage it but those companies use systems like onforce to find field techs to make service visits. so that's 3rd party hiring 3rd party, and even then when there's an issue with the hardware (switch/router/ap/cable) they have to hire another company depending on the issue. I want to be that company, sending local techs to replace a failed device, fix a damaged cable, or work with their support company to test or do the above.

>my first guess would be some kind of local advertising or setting up a referral deal with building managers. but you should be doing the footwork to figure out how these businesses are finding their half assed vendors in the first place.

I have thousands of contacts and plan to just drive around and introduce myself and hand out a business card. But the part I have no experience with is 'closing' the deal. I'm trying to not put thousands of miles on my car, and ultimately wasting weeks, reaching all the sites.

My ideal goal is to make a sales call, offer some service free like a "we'll do an inventory and topology free" but I have nothing but horrible cold calling experience and trying to not ruin the business name before it gets started.

How they find the vendors? I have an idea that most deal with the franchise and use 'approved vendors' which like I outlined above they're not local and mostly manage remotely and hire random contractors for anything they can't do themselves. I can't work with these companies because I've already worked for them and they're what I'm trying to leave behind.

>>4120

wait, this is getting more muddled. so you want to go directly to something like a Motel 6, and sell them ongoing maintenance for their already installed IT infrastructure? what exactly is the pitch here and who are you pitching to?

>>4121

Really any motel or hotel. The reason is because they don't have a company to service their infrastructure, they all rely on service providers that manage the equipment to know how to troubleshoot and resolve.

Most of these motels are franchises, meaning someone bought the property and signed an agreement to use another brand and follow their rules and use their systems to get clients. Very few had any hand in building out the infrastructure. I've been to more than a few that get a cable isp and hire some kid to run cables to connect linksys routers all over. That's the owner that set things up, the majority today buy buildings with this stuff installed and no idea who installed it.

Like I said I worked for companies that did this for the 'previous owners' and they all drop off, cablers come and go. Even highrise hotels in NYC have engineers to handle 75% of the troubleshooting but have no idea about the cabling or equipment.

The pitch is going to be "our company has managed campus networks from layer 0 to layer 7 (cabling, switches, routers, and packet inspection for torrent/porn blocking or captive portals for TOS). while you may have a company that you send requests to make changes or troubleshoot, they're a national outfit with no one local. when you have an issue you wait days for them to resolve, sometimes even if you're totally down. If a piece of equipment fails they start an rma process or sell you a new one and ultimately outsource the field work to companies like mine. we can offer more, we can provide loaner equipment should something fail and need to wait for a replacement. we can come out and troubleshoot an issue without needing to schedule a time to work with your staff to be our 'eyes, ears, and hands', we can do heatmap surveys, tone and trace unidentified cabling, and give you a portal to get all this information any time".

If that's not clear than I think you're focusing on the industry more than the notion I'm here to figure out how to close.

In my previous ventures I always had a partner to make sales. I've never been able to talk to someone and convince them we're better because IMO sales people always promise the world and deliver 50%. I don't want to start out with BS promises to get a sale. I want facts and numbers and provide a value add service. I don't know how to close the sale without some extravagant lie that later gets passed on to the support staff to 'ease the tension' when things can't be delivered.

>>4122

my focus was initially more on the difficulty of selling IT as a whole. the close usually isn't the first thing a new business tries to figure out when they're planning out their sales process. but it doesn't sound like you're new to this so I may have preemptively jumped on the sense that you were putting the cart before the horse.

as for the pitch, that's a lot of technical detail for a non technical customer. customers generally don't care about how the sausage is made, they're just listening for how you're going to make their day better.

if you're completely new to sales it might help to go to youtube or one of those online courses to see if you find any of the ideas useful. it's not rare for a new business to have to systematically try various approaches before finding what works.

>>4122

Do any of these buildings install new wiring instead of using or removing the old ones? I can just picture a ceiling crawl space with five identical cable networks.

>>4128

I've worked with LOTs of real estate companies, NO ONE will redo cabling unless the existing doesn't meet their needs.

It's 'low voltage' so it's treated just like high voltage, places don't tear it out unless there's a need.

Which is why people are buying franchies like motel6 and using all the 20-40 year old infrastructure for as long as they can. "business 101"

Thanks for such a useful thread!

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>>4116

What I would try, and I'm not someone with good experience to back it up, is: Once you know who your target customers are and how you would help them, find a way to search online to create a long list of target clients. If there really is a good market for this then hopefully you would be able to find thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of businesses in the area that you think you can help. Collect the contact information from those businesses, get their email addresses and one or more pieces of personal information. For example this could be the name of the person and the name of their business.

Create an email template for a cold email, and leave two or three variables to replace (one for the name, and one for the name of the business for example). From your business's email address (yourname@yourcompany.com), start emailing your target clients with your cold 'personalized' emails.

In my opinion don't be too 'salesy'. Don't make it look like an advertisement, you don't need embedded html content in the email. Explain what services you think they might be having trouble with, introduce your company, explain how you think you can help, and then ask if they would be free for a phone/online meeting.

I can't guarantee that this would work. I made an app once for businesses and used this approach to find clients, and I booked a good amount of meetings doing it.

>>4120

If you have their phone numbers then maybe you can try finding out who would be the person who would make the decision of whether or not to use your services. Call once to ask for that person, or once you reach them have some quick explanation ready and just ask if they have any time over the next week for a quick meeting, no hard feelings if they don't. Then you have your meeting and try to turn it into a sale.

I hadn't finished reading before when I was talking about sending emails, if the work is more local then you can balance sending out more emails versus making them more personalized or calling them.

Seems like you are going to start a business and get income without making any investments. Nice idea, but I do not think it can be real. Or if it can, it might be complicated. Honestly, I would recommend you read a lot of useful articles dedicated to your topic. For example, this one is good enough to pay attention to https://otakoyi.com/blog/flutter-vs-react-native-in-2020.

Go to your local secretary of states website and open a LLC, get proper insurance. You remain anonymous use a lawyer as a register agent and a PO box as the address.

Fucking useless though

1. You did not even know this simple steps and had to ask 8kun

2. IT is over saturated with poojeets doing shit for less then pennies, ruppeies poopies what ever its called.

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