Product-based business costs are generally higher than service-based business costs. Product-based businesses need ingredients/components, packaging, workspace, product photos; service-based businesses do not. Product-based businesses are generally more heavily regulated than service-based businesses. Shipping, returns, etc., add expenses that service-based businesses do not generally have. Generally, can get services to market faster than can get physical products to market, so speed to market is a differentiator.

Decide what kind of life you want BEFORE you choose the type of business you want to have. Be self-aware. The type of business you start will define your lifestyle, and whether you are happy in your lifestyle will define your business. If you make the products you sell, your product-based business can make a location-independent lifestyle more challenging. Research your market thoroughly. Whether product or service, don’t offer any product in a market you have not researched.

Building a product-based brand is fun and edifying. Seeing people love your product is satisfying. A physical product can be pictured on social media, making it easier to market than a service. Building a tribe around a physical product is fun. Brand ambassadors can boost sales.  Producing products allows you to explore your creative side and tell a great story. If you properly scale a product business, especially with right price and distribution, you can make tons of cash.

Sell a product people want to buy. Don’t just sell a product that’s awesome. Sell a product the market needs and wants. KEY: Don’t make a product, and then find a market for it. Find the market that wants a product, and make the product for that market. Research your market. What are the laws? Can you get supplies? What are your costs to manufacture? Who else is already doing it? Who else is making money selling similar products? Can you duplicate their processes successfully? Have enough money to make and sell the product, and a business plan to create cash flow as quickly as possible.

Establish a business structure and open a business account. Corporation? LLC? Give your business shape and form. Get Quickbooks or other tools to help you track your money. Set your mind to account for every single penny. Know exactly how much it costs to make your product, then price it to maximize your profit margin and make the most money. Join a trade organization or networking groups where you can learn, grow, and be supported in a community of like-minded peers.

Search the trademark office database (www.uspto.gov) and Google to ensure no one else is using the name you want to use. Do not use a brand name that someone else is using. Don’t infringe on someone else’s trademark. File a trademark application to register your brand name(s). You may wish to hire an attorney for this. Reserve brand name as a domain name and set up your website there. Reserve your brand name on all social media outlets, even ones you don’t plan to use. Put your branding there.

Find your target market BEFORE you create a product. Find a hole in the market you want to serve, and create a product to fit that hole perfectly. Don’t make a square, only to discover that everyone wants to buy a circle! Narrow your market down to a specific, well-defined, narrow niche. Clarify your brand message. Be consistent and proactive. Read The Fortune Cookie Principle by Bernadette Jiwa. People do not buy products. They buy experiences. They buy you.

Once you have an audience, you can sell anything. Build your audience. Use social media to engage your target audience. Build your tribe by educating and entertaining. Decide whether you want to sell your products wholesale, retail, or both. Wholesale involves selling to other stores, who then sell to consumers. Retail is you selling direct to consumers. You can do both wholesale and retail, but this will increase your costs. They are two very different animals. Decide which social media outlets will be your core marketing channels. For products, Facebook and Instagram are likely best. Publish a marketing newsletter regularly, one to wholesale buyers, one to retail (consumer) purchasers. Use a blog to attract traffic via search engines and create a diary of your brand journey.

There are several ways to sell products. You can set up a website and sell direct to consumers.  You can sell products inside a Facebook group, or you can use Facebook and/or Google ads to reach buyers. If you wholesale, do trade shows or use sales reps or distributors to sell to buyers.  You can visit local stores that cater to your demographic, and pitch to them. You can also set up a business model that sells exclusively on Amazon or Etsy, or another online marketplace. You can open your own store, and sell your products there, or you can do popups. The kind of lifestyle you want will help you define how best to sell your products.

YOU are the only thing about your business that no one else can copy. People love seeing the “real you,” and learning about your life and why you do what you do. People don’t buy what you produce. They buy why you produce it. Telling your story leverages the power of you. Use the power of video to brand yourself as the leader of your business. Share your story and daily business journey. Spotlight your team members. Use www.helpareporter.com for low cost PR. Seek opportunities to be physically with your customers so they can know, like, and trust you. Document on social media.

Personal relationships are the lifeblood, not only of your life, but also of your business. Nurture and treasure them. Seek out like-minded colleagues for joint opportunities to create new lines and sell more products. Possibly collaborate with other product producers locally at popups and other social events. Use your blog and newsletter to spotlight people you want to connect and build with. Share their links. Cheer people you want to collaborate with. Move toward their inner circle, request introductions. Don’t be shy. Make stuff happen.

As you mature as a leader, and your business matures, you will see opportunities to grow and expand. It’s different for everyone. You first must know what you want to do. Do you want a global brand? Or do you want to stay local? Depending on your goals, you’ll expand or not. You can add new lines of products to grow, discontinue lines to stay small. One way to expand is to develop brand ambassadors and/or relationships with distributors who can sell more of your products. Remember that growth sucks cash, so don’t grow faster than you can handle. Some people may prefer to “stay small and keep it all.” After growing a product brand, you can start a service-based business teaching other’s how to do what you did. Stay true to your personal life goals and decide whether to expand or not based on them.

Door-to-door marketing is a canvassing technique that is generally used for sales, marketing, advertising, or campaigning, in which the person or persons walk from the door of one house to the door of another, trying to sell or advertise a product or service to the general public or gather information. People who use this sales approach are often called traveling salesmen, or the archaic name drummer, to “drum up” business. This technique is also sometimes called direct sales. A variant of this involves cold calling first, when another sales representative attempts to gain agreement that a salesperson should visit.

With the realization of telephone “Do Not Call” lists it is becoming increasingly more difficult to connect with consumers and business people. An emerging trend is the deployment of very professional, highly skilled door-to-door canvassers to drive product sales and brand awareness.

Coordinating, training and motivating these teams to produce results are at the very core of Fulcrum’s proven capabilities. Fulcrum has the knowledge and experience required to implement these programs, such as best days and times to canvass, who will sell the most product; male, female, young or mature and what geographics and demographics respond best to door-to-door marketing. Put Fulcrum’s experience to work for you and avoid the costly mistakes of trying to manage these programs in-house.

Hire and Train Door-to-Door Marketing Team

If you’re in charge of hiring people, that typically means that you’ve found success in Door To Door Marketing yourself. You know what it takes to be great, but now you’re stuck with an entirely new problem. How do you find others who will be just as good (if not better) and will stick around and grow into important influencers invested in the long term growth of the company? A great D2D sales company is a great recruiting company. So what does that greatness look like?

First off, you need to realize that you’re not going to hire a superstar every time. If you think you have found one, be careful. It’s not hard for someone to seem golden during one interview and you don’t want to be fooled.

Even if you think the candidate does have a lot of great experience working in the field for other companies, you have to realize that success doesn’t always translate. What worked for them at previous companies probably won’t work as well for you. In fact, their success will probably make them stubborn; after all, what reason do they have to follow your approach when they’ve figured out their own?

It’s also possible that the rep’s previous company might have had much better-developed training and selling systems than you do, and that system was the key reason they killed it. If you’re not developing a competitive system, what does that communicate about your company? The more dialed-in you are about a rep’s success, the more likely you are to attract and keep strong performers.