Business Practice: Texan IT-Service Strategy

Posted by admin on Nov 8, 2009 in Business Practice | 0 comments

In a recent conversation with a friend who is starting to sell his hosting services big time I was reminded of some business advice I got from a Texan entrepreneur. We had met at Texas A&M University where he was giving a guest lecture on entrepreneurship. He made it big by selling pre-built websites to Texan farmers in the 1990s.

When it came to selling its services he was not very successful at the beginning. He and his team went to many IT conferences to present their unique system of having a pre-built website where the content of the individual farmers are just inserted through a standard mask. The more conferences they visit the more money did they lose and the less sales did they make. It did not take long until they were seriously considering closing down their business. But quitting was not an option for them and so they decided to completely overhaul their marketing and sales strategy.

From that moment on they started to go to agricultural fairs for fertilizer or tractors. Their idea was to be where their customers would go instead of where their competitors would be. In essence this sounds very straight forward but I guess still many companies are not doing this. Today, the entrepreneur owns and runs one of the largest web-design and hosting firms in the United States being market leader in Texas and several other (agricultural heavy) states.

The example of the friend of mine sounds like a good implementation of this advice. Offering hosting services they are actually not going to HostingCon or similar events but rather focus on conferences where developers meet up.

The advice is very straight forward and simple to implement. Next time when you think about how to spend you marketing / sales budget think of this advice and what that would mean for you. Make sure you leave a comment on what you think of this advice and how you would use it.