6 Steps to Land Initial Clients for your Startup.

Starting up a service/consultancy startup? Have no clients or big references?

Nice.

Don’t have deep pockets? Can’t afford costly marketing and advertising?

Even better!

I was in the same position 11 months ago when I left my corporate job and finally agreed to satisfy that long ignored itch to start something of my own.

I am Aayush and I am the Founder of Social Cutlet, a marketing and branding firm in Bangalore. I am a Computer Science grad and have no formal business education.

No inspiration, no abstract advice, I am going to talk about actionable items you can do to land your first few clients and start collecting logos and testimonials for your website.

“You need to fake it to make it.”­ I would partially agree with this.

Here’s the meat:

1. Make a list of all your skills.

I’ll take the example of how we began Social Cutlet. I had made up my mind that I wanted to start. I sat down with my Co­Founder and we both penned down our respective marketable skills.

When you pen them down, you begin to understand what to offer and what to deny.

Being a startup, on many occasions you’ll need to get out of your comfort zone if the pay is good.

If you offer services A-­D and the client asks for E, say yes, go back and do your homework! You never know what your startup’s competencies may turn out to be.

Eg. We used to write content for marketing and landing pages only. A client asked us to do write an investor’s pitch. We accepted the challenge, took it up and completed the assignment successfully. In the process we also learnt what exactly do investors look for and got direct feedback of our content presentation from their investors. Sweet deal!

This allowed us to broaden our horizons and understand the industry pain points.

See if you can fill them up. Bigger the problem you solve, more the money you make.

Note: Beware of saying yes to services that you think you would not be able to handle at all, politely deny and offer something you can do that might fix the pain.

Eg. We do designs and explanar videos. We were approached to make a 3­D animation

video. We were not confident and had no idea how to do it. We politely denied and offered them a 2­D animation video with a fraction of the client’s budget.

2. Research the market you plan to penetrate.

When you are entering the service industry, your skills can sometimes be applied to a lot of fields. You don’t have to leave any of them but it’s good if you start by diving deep into one from your list and get to know it better.

Eg. ​Services like marketing and branding are applicable to all industries. We saw the restaurants sector as an untapped market and planned to focus on it.

This helped us to learn the dynamics of the sector and to know where and how clients look for services.

After researching our competitors for pricing and services, we began cold calling and emailing restaurants and requesting appointments. A lot of them didn’t even reply to our emails and calls.

We got a few appointments and we went with our presentations.

This helped us to get the initial feedback of our services and pricing.

We had to change the price range and even the service packages. But once we did them, by of course beating our competitors on price points and showing clear value for money, they bet on us. We have not looked back since then.

3. Identify the dogs and the elephants.

Once you have understood the pain points of the market and readied service packages, look deep, analyze those skills and identify the dogs and elephants.

The services that make you less money but are sold like hot cakes are called dogs.​ They are your bread and butter. But you can’t make a business on top of them alone.

The services which are sold less often but make you a tonne of money are called elephants​. Now these are the movers and shakers. But you can’t wait until you get them as the clients initially may not trust you enough to buy these from you.

Your best bet is to bundle these together in packages and serve at a great price point.

This will help you make a great portfolio and gain invaluable experience!

Strike a balance and the money will love you more.

Eg. for Social Cutlet, services like email marketing proved to be the dog and Social Media marketing, as elephant.

4. Get some bling.

Hmm, now that you are all set and ready to fish some clients, get some bling!

I mean business bling.

I know all these don’t define your business but your clients see what they believe and the First impression IS the last impression!

Do not be too closefisted while spending in getting your image right. The first thing clients see in your business card is not your name, but its sheer creativity. Same goes for everything else on that list.

When they know you are confident about your company and what you do, they will have confidence in you and would more willing to open their wallets.

If you do not have the money to spend on the bling, get less of it but do not compromise on quality! Kaching!

5. Cast a wide net.

Now I know you are offering gold like services! But your future clients need to know that. It’s perfectly OK to cold call them and get appointments. You do that to get initial feedback and set an acceptable price range for the services you offer and probably to get a client.

But let me tell you, in India, first you don’t get a lot of such opportunities and when you are the one knocking their door, they instantly value you a lot loss. They also possess much more bargaining power that can pound your prices into the ground.

The best thing to do is be strategically present where they look for when they want services that you offer.

You may already know some of these:

• And my personal ace, listing portals!

This point itself deserves an article of its own, I’ll not go into details here.

6. Adapt, Improvise, Overcome.

Now, this point is the core of entrepreneurship and has taught us more in 1 year than any other experience I ever had!

Client feedback is the best teacher in the world! No mentor, no uncle can give you a better feedback of your services and current trends than a paying client.

You sat down, brainstormed and created a seemingly cocaine ­like service for your industry. Great!

Believe me, each one of your competitors thinks that way!

The company that survives and munches bigger portion of their market each month is the one that adapts to the market response and improvises different strategies continuously!

We began as a company that offered a certain set of services, because that’s what we thought would be great. But as we moved ahead each month and saw a handful of receipts and a diminishing bank account, we knew that there’s gotta be something else.

By asking questions, noticing trends and working models for our industry, we figured out the sweet spot.

It doesn’t mean we can sit back and relax now, trends would change soon and the money would move somewhere else. To win as an entrepreneur is to notice trends before they happen! And believe me, if you are in it full time, you’ll see them!

When you don’t have money, DO NOT give up, carry that sly smile and dig down to research! (Or give me a call. I’ll take you for a coffee and try to shed some light.)

If you have reached so far, you are deeply invested in whatever you are doing. I respect that. You have taken the first step to control your future.

All the best!

Best,

Aayush.