Publication number: ELQ-45021-1
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How to Grow A Services Business
Growing A Services Business Requires Selling Yourself
Introduction
The critical success factors for a product business are well known, starting with selling every unit with a gross margin of 50 percent or more, building a patent and other intellectual property, and continuous product improvement. If your forte is a service, like consulting or web site design, it’s harder to find guidance on what will get you funded, and how you can scale your business.
On the product side, once you have a proven product and business model, all you need is money to build inventory, and a sales and marketing operation to drive the business. With services, scaling the business often implies cloning yourself, since you are the intellectual property and the competitive advantage. You have no shelf life, so you can’t make money while you sleep.
Indeed, there are some success factors that are common to both environments. For example, both need to provide exemplary customer service, build customer loyalty, and provide real value for a competitive price. Here are the additional success factors that are really key to a startup with a services offering:
- Step n°1 |
Get your service out of your head and down on paper.
If you can’t quantify or document your service for repeatability and new employee training, you will kill yourself trying to grow the business. Even artisan-based services, like graphic design and writing good ad copy, have innovative processes and principles. Capture your “secret sauce.”
- Step n°2 |
Start with a service you know and love.
A successful services business, more than a product business, comes from a skill or insight that you have honed from experience. If you don’t have a high level of commitment and passion, you customers won’t seek you out. Now all you have to do is pass it to the many new members as you grow your team.
