business-plan, customer-development, team, bootstrapping, hardwareSuppose someone decided to build a team of engineers and launch startup. It would be a hardware engineering startup targeting traditional engineering tasks in manufacturing.
How would one start to find any kind of customers to deal with? E.g. If I as a person would need job I could post a resume to a job website, post an ad into newspaper, go to headhunter, read job posts, etc…
What can a startup (especially hardware engineering one) do to get into contact with prospective clients?
You can contact with companies working in the area of human resources. Obviously, this would have a value .
Another possibility is to use sites like linkedin , or even the google.
There is a chance to get in touch with startups in the same segment , thus increasing your network of contacts .
Be sure to look also at universities . I think it’s a better alternative : new people , wanting , seeking opportunities.
There are a few options that you can utilize to find the type of clients you are looking for. However, some of these options will depend heavily on where you are located.
One option is to do the things you mentioned in your post, job boards, advertising locally, head hunters… These options will be a good start but may not offer many positive results in the global community.
Another option will be to join any meet up groups related to hardware or software (as they often overlap). What you are looking for are “maker” groups, go to these meet ups and get to know the people there. Try to find out who they work for, which ones are worth your time, who is looking for people etc.
Check out http://www.meetup.com/
You can also try startup groups in your local area as they may be good connections in terms of finding clients, maybe directly or indirectly through references.
It may also be good to try and find if there are any tech conferences in your area that you can afford to attend, these are fantastic for widening your network and will be benefiting in all future endeavours.
Check out https://www.eventbrite.ca/
There are also Slack groups dedicated to all kinds of things that may be useful to you, here is a site that lists some great Slack groups that may be worth joining…
http://www.sitepoint.com/best-slack-communities/
Remember, whatever you choose to do, make sure that you have a solid value proposition to show people. Your question was very vague in terms of what value you can offer to your clients (this may have been intentional) but make sure that when you talk to someone that you can get your value proposition across clearly and concisely in the length of an elevator pitch.
Best of luck to you,
-RB
Since you are a start-up your “juice” and resources are limited. To get your name out there for potential clients I’d suggest you attend manufacturing trade shows and simply doing cold sales calls.
So, I’m assuming you’ll have the product ready and your real question now is:
How to sell it and start making money, right?
Ok, let me try to answer it following your train of thought:
How would one start to find any kind of customers to deal with?
You need Marketing. That’s the short answer.
Now comes the longer one:
There are two basic types of marketing – Inbound and Outbound. The focus of each is different and they involve different strategies and techniques.
1. Outbound marketing involves getting your marketing message to the largest number of people possible through advertising, cold calling, direct mail and other techniques such as attending events.
Take cold calling for instance, what you could do is take the list of FORTUNE 1000, and mark all clients you would want as a customer and start calling them offering your amazing product!
Of course there are techniques to improve your rate of success, but this would be beyond the scope of this question…
Ok, just one tip:
You can easily find their names on Linkedin/Google. Now you need to figure out what the e-mail pattern of the company is FirstName@company.com or First.LastName@company.com . With this new info in hands you’ll write an e-mail to the right executive with just one thing written on it: “Your package will arrive tomorrow morning”.
This “package” need to have something to get his attention.
You’re in the hardware business, right?
So, why not send a 3D printed prototype to him along with a business card of yours? At the back of the business card you could write something like: Just need 15 minutes of your time to explain how this little toy can change your industry in the next 5 years.
Now you got her/his attention and s/he has your contact details.
Do it like 50x times per week and in two months you will have contacted 400 prospective buyers.
I guarantee you’ll have at least 20 meetings scheduled by the end of the quarter.
2. Inbound marketing is a strategy that focuses on attracting customers, or leads, via company-created Internet content, thereby having potential customers come to the company rather than marketers vying for their attention. This type of marketing tries to make it easier for customers, who are already actively looking for goods or services via the Internet, to find what a company offers.
In other words: You are the first link on the firt page of Google. People who are trying to buy what you sell will find you, and because you have provided so much value on your website, they will fill a contact form.
For many people, Inbound Marketing is “better” than Outbound. I would say they complement each other.
Now let’s go to the second part of your question:
What can a startup (especially hardware engineering one) do to get into contact with prospective clients?
As you see, you have two ways to do that: in Outbound marketing, you’re going after the customer - using cold call or sponsoring events. Using Inbound, at the other hand, the customers will come after you willing to give you their contact details.
With that in hands all you need to do is, well, answer them back.
You can try hardware accelerators. I don’t know if this is a good fit for your business/development plans, but those accelerators can help you with the next step. One more option is to look in those accelerators websites and their lists of mentors, to find some one that in your filed and try to contact him. I guess that mentor in accelerator will be interested to hear about new ides and maybe to give a good advice.
http://alphalabgear.org/mentors/
http://makeinla.com/mentors/
And there are more, just google it.
Good luck with your project.
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