I grew up on a farm raising sheep and selling the lambs every spring. We started raising them when I was 8 years old and built the flock from nothing. We started out small with about 10 sheep, and grew to over 60 the next few years. Starting out, however, nobody knew of us so we didn’t have any type of reputation to bring people to buy from us. We had to start out selling lambs cheaper than most other people just to get our name out there. Once we had lambs that were winners, word of mouth brought more people to us and as people started talking our name got out there. Over the years we’ve had lots of winners and regular buyers that come every year. We grew the business and got a reputation for having good lambs to the point where we actually made a good profit off of them. At first we couldn’t sell lambs for more than $150 dollars because nobody wanted to spend money on lambs that don’t have a good reputation for winning. After a few winners, we sell them for at least $300. So over a couple years, we doubled our prices and got more buyers. We never did any advertising; it was all word of mouth but it worked for us. By selling them cheaper but still good quality, we had to take a loss the first couple years but made up for it after a few years. Even though this isn’t a typical sales job, it has probably been the best experience I could have asked for growing up.
By gibsonam1
BoweryJE22 3 thoughts on “Starting Out with an Unknown Business”
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You’re right, building a reputation is so important in becoming a successful start up company. Without that good reputation, your company will not survive. I think it is awesome that you have had an experience where you can see the start up process take effect and flourish.
Marketers will agree, though it may make them sad, but work of mouth is everything. Seems like every other type advertising gets a conversion rate between 2 and 10%, whereas good word of mouth seems more like 80%.
I’ve had a similar experience with the company I started. When you start and advertising company, you are trying to get your customers’ names out to as many potential clients as possible. The problem that arises is that people are skeptical of your ability to do this when they have never heard of you. Slowly but surely we were able to prove our worth to these companies, so I understand what you are talking about when you say it was difficult to get started.