Automate as much as possible. Payments ? Slap a stripe checkout form (unless you happen to be in a country where Stripe is still not supported) or Paypal for others.
Onboarding: Make it as easy and smooth as possible for clients to get started after signinup. Show them exactly where and how to start.
Documentation & FAQ: Create tons of it. If a client has a question, thy should be able to resolve it through your documentation for the most part. Don't let little simple questions to come to you EVERY time.
Setup a Support Ticket system and only answer via emails/support ticket for questions that cannot be resolved via your documentation. If a client is not aware of documentation, point them to it before answering the same question again and again.
Get a decent smartphone and answer the tickets/email through that. You could even do it sitting at your desk or during lunch break
If you absolutely need to schedule phone calls, schedule them during lunch break and find a relatively quiet place where you can talk. If not quiet enough, tell the client that you are travelling and they may hear background noise. As long as it is not a screeching train, clients won't mind specially if you already told them.
Hustle. Do whatever it takes to get the first few clients except illegal activity of course. You may have to cross a few lines at work (lying about lunch plans etc) but I personally think those are reasonable to do.
exactly this, kinda. https://onlyusedtesla.com/ I make like $100/day and have 1 online dealer who pays me $500/month. I do all the support on FB messenger. I am working on a better FAQ (have to hire a subject matter expert) on used tesla cars. I launched the MVP using WP, now gonna up the product stack to some new VueJS. I fooled a lotta people using WP for validation. I accept Stripe or Paypal. Main thing is im making money, may not be much but still. I have a google voice number for phone calls.
I charge $100 / sold vehicle. Dealer and private owner. I need to grab market share then flip it to $100 to post an ad. Dealer just uploads XML (SFTP) file then i import and publish using a WP import plug in.
Is everything manually handled at this point? How do you collect $100 at point of sale? I guess specifically, how do you force the seller to give you $100?
Right now i send them a stripe form. Some pay via paypal. Its all manual. I just started testing $150/sold vehicle. I'm just trying to figure all this stuff out. I don't have all the answers. One guy was like, eBay charges $125 if sold then i was kinda shocked he was comparing my site to ebay, I told him we can also do $125/sold vehicle.
Right now honor system ( customer emails me or pings me on FB messenger) "I sold my car can you please delete my ad?" I ask for the money.
i have not figured out a way "how to know"
I follow up with customer.
I do plan to charge up front.
Really? oh damn i didn't know.
marketing wise:
A lot of luck i guess. i got lucky when this guy from green car reports wanted to sell his tesla ( i didn't know) then he's like im gonna write about this and will mention you. I listed his used tesla on my site and sold it, and he saved money. Link to his article here:
I hired a copy guy for the content ( he's good and gave me title tags)
I hounded users on FB and this tesla motors forum until they banned / changed my profile setting so i can't message private owners to list with me. Then i set up new ID and changed tactics on getting for sale listings from private owners( they have a forum page for it)
Great advice. This is pretty much what I did when working on https://ipinfo.io on the side (now fulltime).
For support tickets I use and highly recommend helpscout - it's cheap, and works well. The android and iOS apps need some work, but it's possible to do basic issue management from mobile.
Regarding payments can you recommend a simple API over both Stripe & Paypal out of interest (or would you just implement both using their respective APIs?)
I know Paypal has its Instant Payment Notification API, were they ping your server once a payment has gone through, I assume Stripe has something similar.
I was just wondering if there's a simple API, that can handle payments through both Paypal and Stripe etc.
The fact that Paypal keeps most of their fee if you have to issue a refund does suck, but that is a separate issue: the interfaces are both very straightforward.
I actually had a problem with PP. They can freeze you without notice at anytime (something todo with risk exposure). So now Im sticking with STRIPE. Unless the customer insist. Yeah STRIPE api is super easy for integration. I get my money in 2 business days. 2.9% fee+30 cents P/transaction.
Stripe or any merchant bank for that matter will freeze funds, or extend rolling payout intervals if your refund and chargeback metrics indicate a need to hedge against your losses via refunds and chargebacks. Stripe is pretty up front about it: https://stripe.com/docs/payouts#payout-schedule while PayPal buries it in the click-wrap TOS. Maybe that's why people get totally unglued when PayPal impounds their funds. PayPal Capital has also been known to solicit loans to companies that had their funds impounded...we just swiped your cash, can we loan it back to you for an extra charge?
I am currently working on a side project with recurring payments planned, and I'm planning to use Recurly (https://recurly.com/) for that, which supports multiple payment gateways.
As far as I understand recurly charges $100/month on top of other fees. So even if you aren't selling anything, you still pay $100/month, which is quite a lot if you're starting out without any customers yet?
Yeah, I had the same thought initially. I still decided on it, since it is basically the only expense I have in the beginning and the first 2-3 customers would cover the cost of that. I've also integrated other subscription services in other projects in the past, and I'd rather pay that fee for 3-4 months and get rid of that headache. If I don't acquire any customers in that time span, I think I have more severe problems than a small monthly payment.
Also don't panic about not getting to email fast enough. I used to be worried about a 12-hour lag until I asked the question (on Fog Creek's old Business of Software site) and was told that most people would love it if they only waited 12 hours for a response. Now I just check my email once or twice a day.
Some things B2B require actual phone calls. At my last job, I'd go out to my car in the parking lot to take/make calls.
Now that I'm at a different gig where I take the bus to work, it's more difficult to find a quiet spot to talk. Sometimes I find myself talking to prospective clients in the stairwell :-)
All in all, you'll find that most businesses are quite accommodating as long as they know you will respond. My mantra has become "when in doubt, Communicate."
I second Calendly. We at Reamaze use Calendly to schedule our demos to customers, and I strongly recommend you do the same too for demos / phone calls.
All of codegeek's points make sense, especially automation, getting a good helpdesk (we can hook you up @ https://www.reamaze.com), and hustling. I wouldn't worry too much about perfecting documentation, unless it's an integral part of your project, like if you're heavy on your customers using your APIs.
Customers initially are going to be hard to come by, so every single potential lead that lands on your site and contacts you are extremely important. Always follow up on customers, as soon as possible. Keeping up a good rapport with them especially those that are using your project, would help immensely when time comes to get them to do some co-marketing with you.
Onboarding: Make it as easy and smooth as possible for clients to get started after signinup. Show them exactly where and how to start.
Documentation & FAQ: Create tons of it. If a client has a question, thy should be able to resolve it through your documentation for the most part. Don't let little simple questions to come to you EVERY time.
Setup a Support Ticket system and only answer via emails/support ticket for questions that cannot be resolved via your documentation. If a client is not aware of documentation, point them to it before answering the same question again and again.
Get a decent smartphone and answer the tickets/email through that. You could even do it sitting at your desk or during lunch break
If you absolutely need to schedule phone calls, schedule them during lunch break and find a relatively quiet place where you can talk. If not quiet enough, tell the client that you are travelling and they may hear background noise. As long as it is not a screeching train, clients won't mind specially if you already told them.
Hustle. Do whatever it takes to get the first few clients except illegal activity of course. You may have to cross a few lines at work (lying about lunch plans etc) but I personally think those are reasonable to do.