You are not alone. We talk to firms every day that are challenged by the current economic environment. Let me suggest a couple of things you can do:
- Come to a Bootstrappers Breakfast™ and compare notes with other bootstrapping entrepreneurs for the price of your breakfast. We host four a month, the next one is 9AM Friday March 27 at Red Rock Coffee (second floor) in Mountain View at 201 Castro Street. Here is the calendar of events.
- Sign-up for our “Getting More Customer” workshop next Tuesday. It’s goes from 8:15 to 1pm and includes lunch, you will leave with a 90 day plan and as part of the workshop we follow up with you four times–at two weeks, four weeks, eight weeks, and 13 weeks–to help you stay on track.
- Make a list of thirty people that you have enjoyed working with. Reconnect. Offer to meet for coffee or a meal. Suggest an event that would be of interest to both of you. Write an endorsement on LinkedIn for them to let them know how much you appreciated working with them. See what you can do for them and let them know what kind of firm constitutes a good prospect for your products or services.
- Contact firms that fell off of your prospect list and former customers and see how things have worked out for them. Perhaps you can help them informally, perhaps they are interested in becoming a customer (again).
- Give me a call or drop me an e-mail (see contact info for coordinates) to schedule a free one hour consult on your current situation. Depending upon where you are we can work through a map of the path from idea to revenue if you haven’t launched or spend some time debugging your sales process if you have and you aren’t where you want to be.
Update Sat-Mar-28 One thing that will help to give the discussion some structure is answering at least one of the following set of questions. I suggest this because these will be the kinds of questions I will be asking to understand where you are:
Don’t assume that there is one thing you need to do that will make all of the difference: it’s more than likely going to require a combination of things applied diligently for months.