I think this is the hardest part of any business. The thing I've been focusing on when developing my business development strategy is trying to really understand my customer. Talking to as many people that I believe would fit my customer profile. Finding out where they spend their time, what makes them tick, what turns them off, etc. But also, really then using that profile to try and target where my potential customers could be. For example, one of my customer profiles that I'm targeting with my property maintenance and management business is people that are disgruntled with their current maintenance/manager relationships, but aren't quite disgruntled enough to terminate the support (or because they just don't have another option). In Chicago, many of the maintenance and management teams post signs at the properties that they manage as a marketing tool. So I've been walking around writing the addresses of properties with these signs (and taking note of the condition of the properties). I'm now working on using AI / Property tax records and try and identify the owners of these properties so I can send them email/marketing/call them to suggest that if they're unhappy with their current maintenance/management teams, or would be open to learning about another competitor, to reach out. It's a decent amount of work but I figure that rather than spending a ton of money trying to blast to a ton of eyeballs that may or may not align with my buyer profile, that maybe the manual elbow grease can get me more likely to a phone or email convo. I expect it'll need lots of follow up but again, I feel like it's a way to meet my target customers where they are rather than trying to blast my name into the ether and hoping someone that fits my customer profile sticks!
