Help on getting your first sale

[ChrisGoodfellow]

Making your first sale is a big step as a new business owner. It's something that's come up a few times on the forum, so we've created an 11-step guide to help you get started.

https://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/...ere-are-11-tips-to-help-you-get-started.1044/

Let me know if it's helpful or if there's something you think we should add

 

[The Byre]

You touch on the subject (telling a story) but in today's world, just setting up and hoping for the best is no longer an option - except perhaps an option to fail!

Even if you buy oodles of adverting, it still will not be enough. Not any more! All that strategic positioning and studying the market and having an online outlet, make a video, etc., etc., etc. was OK for a long time - but not today.

Emerson wrote, "If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon or make a better mousetrap than his neighbors, though he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door."

That may have been somewhat true in Emerson's day, but them thar days is over. And they're not coming back!

A good product needs an ecosystem of fans. That's right! Not customers, but fans!

And those fans have to be there before you start making any sales.

At the top of the piece, you (or someone) placed a picture of a food wagon. The implication is that you find a pitch, study the footfall, and start making and (hopefully) selling Jumbo Minty McFilth Burgers. That is (IMO) putting the food wagon before the horse!

The horse in this case should be people who are crazy for Jumbo Minty McFilth Burgers! That means giving away or selling Jumbo Minty McFilth Burgers at street fairs, holding Jumbo Minty McFilth Burger parties, anything and everything to give Jumbo Minty McFilth Burgers a fan base. Make a Jumbo Minty McFilth Burger short film, create (as you suggested!) a Jumbo Minty McFilth Burger story. Everything!

Then and only then should one (by popular demand!) launch a food wagon.

And by ecosystem, I mean Jumbo Minty McFilth Burger takeaways, eat there, make at home using your special Jumbo Minty McFilth Burger sauce and read your Jumbo Minty McFilth Burger cookbook and watch your Jumbo Minty McFilth Burger how-to videos (on a DVD at the back of the book and free with a six-pack of your sauce).

You are building a house for your fans and not everybody wants to come into the house through the front door. Not everybody wants to come to your food wagon. Let them in through the windows and the back door!

 

[japancool]

First time I started this business, it took me 2 weeks to get my first sale.

Second time around, it took me approximately 20 minutes - because I had stayed connected to my customers even during the time I wasn't trading.

 

[fisicx]

Even if you did everything in that article you still might not sell anything.

People think they can do everything themselves, UKBF is full of threads from people trying the DIY approach and failing because they aren’t marketeers. If you are good at marketing you can sell any old tat. Most people aren’t good at marketing.

 

[AllUpHere]

Concentrating on getting the first sale is a recipe to balls up your entire strategy. Think long term; the first sale comes when it comes.

 

[ChrisGoodfellow]

At the top of the piece, you (or someone) placed a picture of a food wagon. The implication is that you find a pitch, study the footfall, and start making and (hopefully) selling Jumbo Minty McFilth Burgers. That is (IMO) putting the food wagon before the horse!

In my defence (if it needs that) the free stock photo options aren't great!

Good feedback though, thanks @The Byre . What I love about the ecosystem building approach is that you can start, test and learn without making a huge outlay.

I also agree with @AllUpHere ; focus on doing the right activity and the results will come.

 

[The Byre]

The ecosystem approach is based on the changes that have happened within the film industry. Hardly any major films are released that do not have existing IP attached to them. Comic books, novels, a TV series, or even a video game will come first - then when there is an established fan base, the $100m film.

This is not because the film industry has run out of ideas, but because a giant project like a major movie release costing nine figures cannot and never could make all that money back in two weekends when you remember that the studio only gets about less than half of the box-office and without an existing eco-system one has to add about $100m in marketing, just to get noticed worldwide (c.a. $50m US and $50m Rest-of-World).

That means selling the merchandising, TV rights and getting as much as possible for product placement to make up the shortfall. One just hopes that the 'long tail' (pay-per-view, Blu-Ray sales, second, third, fourth etc. TV rights sales) will continue long into the future - perhaps indefinitely!

And each piece of IP has to deal with a different aspect of the subject. Dune - the book. Lots of detail. Background and motives are explained. But then there are prequels explaining things outside of the film and the book - Dune: The Sisterhood. No doubt, when Villeneuve has made Dune II for another $165m, there will be more films and books dealing with side issues - and thereby extending the IP into all kinds of new properties and directions.

The same applies to that catering wagon. Sauces you can buy, cooking books you can read, videos you can watch and then perhaps one day a restaurant you can visit.