Unless an e-commerce company is transparent in sharing their sales details (this is probably very rare or unusual), you won't know the metrics needed in order to calculate it. I would think that the 2nd best thing is to hire a scraper or data entry person to collect the average item prices to try to build an idea for it. Sorry, that is the best idea or help that I can offer. Perhaps this is an opportunity for an entrepreneur to build this. :)

Enterprise companies approach sales for B2B a little different. There's a (1) structure and there's (2) talent. They can scale just because they can but they are also very wary of focusing their resources to the right people. On the other hand, companies who are at SME stage may need more effort in tapping into different audiences to get a higher chance of closed deals. However, ABM (account-based marketing) is a good way for both enterprise companies and SMEs to tackle the balance of resources and lead generation. If you need more help in structuring this for your company, you can book a call with me here on Clarify.

Hi - we have worked with a number of subscription box services. I have over 15 years helping startups in various industries and spaces. In terms of best channels it depends on the company. How long have you been in business? I would need more detail to give a proper answer but here are some avenues that might work. 1) I would do a big launch announcement and use a key influencer in the space to host it 2) I would send the launch news to the top tier media outlets in your market and in national markets 3) Put resources towards a great short shareable video that explains what the UVP of your service is 4) Find a journalists or writer friend and take them for coffee and brainstorm 20 different press angles for your business -- earned media is one of the best ways to acquire customers 5) Put effort into your content marketing strategy and specifically instagram -that's a great place to market to women. In short you need a combo of: 1)Earned media 2) Owned media (social channels) 3) Paid media - sponsored posts, boosting FB ads,etc If you're limited on resources focus on the first two as they don't cost you anything but your time. If you have the money consider bringing on a consultant or agency to help manage and execute some of your strategies. There are no 'best' channels - every service, ecomm and business is different so requires a different approach Good luck and if you want more info I'm happy to hop on a call.

I have to ask: Did you already develop your product? The best advice, which I love, is from Seth Godin. He said something along the lines of "Don't find customers for your product, find products for your customers." Always start with a customer you want to be in service to, and look to solve their problems.

Easy starting point. Run Adsense on your site for a month. After a month, find top 3 pages (most traffic + on page time). For each page, visit the page + hit reload 10 times, recording the Ad Google runs on these pages. Then once you have the most prevalent Ad for each page, trace the Ad back to the originating site. The replace Adsense on each page with the native Ad, which will pay you far more than Adsense. Check your numbers for a month + if your numbers (income/Ad) begins to drop, this means the Ad has saturated. At this point, turn on Adsense again + let it run for 30 days, then repeat the process. This is a dirt simple way to monetize your content at optimal levels. Be sure not to click on the Ad on your site, as this breaks the Adsense TOS + will get you banned from Google's Ad networks.

You can do whatever you wish with shares as long as the parties agree. If you have voting and non-voting classes of shares you can issue these for the cash investment. The question is... why would he? Normally non-voting shares have certain other characteristics like fixed rates of return or preference in the case of company dissolution. Other things you may consider would be issuing a debenture for the new money. This is a debt instrument so there would be no shares sold. You could issue a convertible debenture whereby the debt becomes equity at a certain share price in certain events, such as the sale of the company. It's up to your imagination as long as the other party agrees. Here are two videos I made that touch on this topic, one about how to use shares in deal making and another about using shares to raise capital. https://youtu.be/1EjKjSAd1F8 https://youtu.be/5h_ouZ-sUoU Just arrange a call if you'd like to discuss your specific situation. dave

I developed and published mobile apps as an individual for several years, and only formed a corporation later as things grew and it made sense. As far as Apple's App Store and Google Play are concerned, you can register as an individual developer without having a corporation. I'd be happy to help further over a call if you have any additional questions. Best of luck with your mobile app!

Well, when you have viral marketing, then it helps to spread the word about your business like wildfire on it's own. It's a self-perpetuating loop. So rather than you paying for advertisements, people will share your content or tool or something else because it's so cool or does something valuable for them. Imagine if Nike creates a Facebook video about some cool new sneakers they just released. If 10,000 people share that Facebook video on their newsfeed, then their friends will see it. It may be said to have effectively "gone viral" -- and can drive Nike's sales, leading to business expansion. In other words, if 1,000 people buys those shoes that wouldn't have otherwise, then this viral marketing just led to "business expansion" for Nike because they are making more sales that they would not have otherwise.

The way I use to do this in Austin Texas... 1) Pull the property tax records for your county. Usually you can purchase a physical CD with data for a few $100. I use to purchase these every quarter, as #2 will change each time a property sells (tax data changes). 2) Lookup turnover threshold for your area. Last time I did this in Austin, 3.2 years was normal threshold where people moved. After the Houston flooding, it's anyone's guess how this number might work. Likely you'll have to come up with some other way to analyze data + I'll continue on about how I did this in Austin. 3) Start sending monthly letters to people who's tax bill address + property address are the same (owner occupants) providing them tips for staging their house for sale + providing coupons for local people to do staging work, like repairs + landscaping. Also include a coupon for using your site at a discount to list their property. Keep sending to these people, until they use your service (numbered coupon, so you can track them) or the property sells (property tax data changes). 4) There are many other strategies you can use with this data also. For example, properties with common tax bill addresses are rental properties. You can stripe these (organize them into buckets) like between 2-5 properties or 6-10 properties. Each bucket has a different marketing approach. All sorts of imaginative ways to market to these people. 5) I share this technique with every realtor I meet. So far no one has every used this technique, that I've told. You're welcome to call me to talk more about this, if required. I'm way out of Real Estate, so happy to share anything about this your like.

It will depend upon your relationship with the investor. If the investor have trust upon you, then you may pitch anytime, however, if you don't know the investor for long, then you have to follow a process. You may setup a call to discuss more.

This starts before you even hire your team. Know what your business culture and work ethic is, and then hire people who match that ethic. Technical skills application, product knowledge, operational steps: most of this can be taught on the job. Sharing your company's priorities can not. Once you have hired people who will fit with your culture, the rest becomes easier. Be clear form the start on how people will be assessed. Tell them how they, in their roles, can bring value to the company and the give continuous feedback, especially in the first 6-12 months. Also build a strong on-boarding plan (if you have employees already but never did an official on-boarding, you can start now an call it training instead). Train your team on: - the client base - the problem you are solving - solutions to the problem - why your solution is the best - your product - your team - your growth expectations. Doing all of this you will be developing partner relationships with your employees, making it easy to share both good and constructive feedback.

I guess it depends on what you're trying to do on LinkedIn. I meet people there with whom I do business. People follow me there because they have an interest in buying, selling and managing businesses and I publish a new article every week. I sometimes prospect for opportunities. I'll be in Tanzania next September and I was able to find a few people in my network from Tanzania and South Africa. I'm hoping to schedule some seminars while I'm in that part of the world. Back when I was working for a bank, I would load up my profile with information to make me more credible. I found that sometimes when I left messages for prospects, they'd look me up on LinkedIn to check me out before returning my call. It's a great tool and I've made money with LinkedIn. What I don't recommend though is making a bunch of connections and then spamming people once they become connected to you. I mean, who on Earth would like that? Arrange a call if you'd like to talk about your goals and maybe some of my experience on LinkedIn could help you out. Check out my profile here: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/davidbarnettmoncton Dave

Yay, a question with some details! So the first thing I'd like you to think about is that despite "little business success" this business has somehow limped along for 4 years. How did that happen? Just enough cash coming in to get by? Loans? You need to find out how deep of a hole you're in, if any. That amount will have to go into your revenue target. You need a revenue target. Perhaps you didn't mention it here because you want to keep it private. But you need that number. It has to cover all the salaries, infrastructure, marketing, taxes, and profit. Yes, profit! That has to go in there or you'll never get it. If your goal is "as much money as I can get," you'll never get that, either. That target is a fool's errand. Set a specific target; achieve it, then raise it. You really want to get a handle on your money equation. Once you've got that stable, then you can increase the flow. From what you've shared it sounds like the odd lead comes in, you clamp down on it, and close one here and there. You need consistency. Here's the money equation to get that consistency: Unqualified Leads >> Qualified Leads >> Sales. We build this backwards, from the revenue you want. And I will share with you that the number one problem my clients uncover from this exercise is that they were beaten before they began: and they didn't even know it. They did not have enough leads coming in, nowhere near, to have a chance of hitting their revenue target. So you take your revenue target and divide that by the average $ value of a sale. You can do this in a more fancy way if you like, forecasting by service type. But for now let's keep the ideas straightforward. So you want $1M in revenue, your average sale is worth $100K: you know you need 10 sales to hit that money target. What we're doing is building back into an ACTIVITY LEVEL, so you know what you need to be doing every day to get there. This is what you measure your staff by. Without knowing this activity level, you'll do a little here and a little there but no consistent effort. It'll be "as much as I can" and as we've seen that's no target at all. So from your own experience as a decent closer you know your numbers. How many qualified leads (people who have need, budget, and personality fit to work with you) have you had to speak with to get one sale? Let's say the salesperson is OK but not amazing, and neither is the marketing (yet!). They can close 20% of qualified prospects, so that's 1 in 5. Simple math takes us from 10 sales X 5 = 50 qualified prospects. Over a year, that's more than 4 per month. Let's say, to ensure results, we make the target 5. So now you know: if your salespeople aren't getting 5 conversations with qualified leads every month, you're not going to make that money target. Now we know that for every good lead, there are a bunch of bad ones to weed through. These are attracted by your marketing--trade publication ads, SEO to website, YouTube videos to website, white papers, Kindle reports, paid advertising, whatever method of connecting with your target market you can come up with. Each will have its own quality level. The ratio of Unqualified Leads to Qualified Leads will be different. But you can build your funnel from the activity and quality levels of each lead source. Let's say for simplicity you're going to concentrate on only one. You have a trade pub ad for a free white paper on your topic, and in exchange the prospect has to provide their name, email address, and phone number. At first you estimate; after awhile, you'll have real data to put into your money equation. To begin with let's say the lead source isn't great but it isn't awful, either. It takes 15 leads coming in to get one good one. (A quick aside to explain further about how this could work: the white paper links to a YouTube video series which continue the qualification process; then they're invited to get on a group education call or webinar; from there those who know they're ready book a call with the salesperson.) So 50 qualified leads X 15 = 750 unqualified leads over the year(!) that you need to be bringing in under this example. That's basically 63 per month or 13 every working day. If your funnel has been producing a trickle of say 2 leads a working day (and I suspect even that would be high for you right now), can you see how you've been beaten before starting? How you had no chance of making enough money, no matter how vaguely the target may have been defined? This is your activity level. Once you've done this simple calculation, you know you need to build to those 13 leads coming in every day. How will you do it? What sources do you need to hook up to? Unqualified Leads >> Qualified Leads >> Sales. 750 >> 50 >> 10 (in this example. Every instance is different.) U >> Q is Traffic. Traffic quantity and traffic quality. How good is that lead source? Q >> S is Conversion. How good is your sales letter, VSL, salesperson? When you run your actual performance numbers against the planned estimates, you find out what to work on. Traffic? or Conversion? Remember, what other people are doing is measuring Leads >> Sales. Just those two elements. That's the equivalent of throwing something against the wall and hoping something sticks. They can't diagnose. They make all kinds of attempts to fix problems, but they can't see what they're doing and even if they do succeed, they don't know why so they can't repeat or duplicate the effort. So with that simple system in mind, the money equation, my answer to your question is: Don't go out there and blindly hire three guys to do some jobs. If they support your money equation, you know how they'll either get you leads coming in, qualify them, or convert them into sales, then yes. And you make those targets obvious to them. Not "as much as you can." One final note about speed. I call this the speedometer because with the money equation you see how fast you need to move to hit your money target. What if you discover there's no way you can pump enough leads through the system in time? Say you have a $50 product and you want that $1M. You're going to need 20,000 sales to hit that revenue target, aren't you? That's over 1600 sales every month. You may look at that and exclaim to yourself, "No way. We don't have the distribution channel to do that right now and I don't know how to buy into one yet." That tells you right away you shouldn't do this: you need to come up with a different way of making the money that matches the speed you can run at. When it's just you doing the closing, you have only so many hours in the day. I would concentrate on making your marketing incredibly effective at attracting, qualifying, and pre-selling prospects so that when they get on the phone with you they're ready to buy. If you try and tackle the whole job by yourself on the phone, it's too late. It'll take too long. In your question details, which again I thank you for providing and lead to me writing this detailed answer, I don't see a "strategy." I see "let me put some mechanical concepts to work" (a machine to try and generate some leads by conversations, a machine to try and intercept interested readers with content, and a machine to try and generate leads by organic internet traffic). But no cohesive spine behind them. No "this is how they'll work together." SEO can take a long time to work. Content needs to be in the right place for your target market to see it--you can churn out legitimately great content but if nobody sees it, what's it worth? And outbound prospecting often hits the wall with big companies (it's happened to me in the past year--voice mail hell with companies of 1000 people or more...computer-voiced auto attendants, no chance of live interaction...full VM boxes so you can't leave a message...no phone sales technique can work if you don't get another human being on the line). So you need a strategy behind activities, which maybe you do have but just haven't written down here because you want to keep it private. If you want my help in developing that strategy, you know where to find me. ;-)

Best to start with your target outcome. Is your target to generate more income or prestige or just contribute. Start with your target + work backward. Also, niche/topic of your training is important. For example, if your topic relates to (or can be related to) WordPress, then you can go on the WordCamp circuit + you're done for life. I've been speaking live... geez... my first live talk was in 1974... The way I go about this is using Meetup + targeting other conferences, in my niches - LAMP Stacks + LXD + High Speed WordPress Hosting + Super Foods. Fill out speaker proposals, till you book a few speaking Gigs + then you can easily speak at the same Gigs (conferences) in the future + as time goes by, you're ability to write speaker proposals that get you booked will refine + become far more productive. Tip: Speak for free. Monetize on the backend. In other words, use the Dan Kennedy model, where I spoke on the road for one year (1994, as I recall) + the result was a company generating $1Ms/year every year thereafter.

Yes, it depends on what the goal is. If the company needs the money to grow, for example, then the company would issue new shares and the money would go into the company. Your ownership would be diluted but you'd own a smaller piece of a more valuable company. You also need to consider what the investor thinks is going on. Does he believe that he's 'buying in' to your company so you can 'cash out' in part. Or does he believe he's helping to fuel growth? Watch this video I made on this topic a few months ago.. https://youtu.be/1EjKjSAd1F8 If you'd like to discuss your specific situation, just arrange a call. Thanks David C Barnett

Here's your big challenge. The movers + shakers are busy working, so likely you'll only have people on your site which... aren't working... aren't movers + shakers... have free time to network... The best way I've found to make connections with great people is to contact them about an interview. So change your site slightly to a Podcast where you interview movers + shakers. Call up a niche player + ask them to divulge all their secrets, likely you'll hear uncontrolled laughter followed by a click + dial tone. Call up a niche player + ask to interview them + they'll likely tell you all their secrets. It's all a matter of how you position yourself. On a side note, I've contacted authors of books I've read + enjoyed... just out of the blue + asked if there might be some way I can assist them... as a thank you for their great book. This has netted me an impressive Rolodex (that term dates me) of people in the business stratosphere. Another trick I've used to meet people, is to track where they'll be speaking, then submit a speaker proposal to the same event. Then I can end up in the green room with them + make a connection.

I am certified in Sports Admin with focus being on the High School Athletic Departments and also with National Alliance for Youth Sports (NAYS) as Certified Youth Sports Administrator (CYSA). I also spent 12 years in Europe (Germany to specific) as a member of the US Army. Seven of those 12 years were living in a local German community. I would advise that you understand and make sure you have a grasp of the demographics of the area. First and foremost to understand what the families or community is looking for. As I stated earlier, having lived in Europe you'll need to understand that the equipment/playing field needs generally tend to be totally different. In the US a full MGC is usually bought for a school, a middle class or above residential community, or a financially well off family in a well to do residential community. It is a sad but factual statement that many underserved communities of color either don't get equipment as such or the equipment is in a state of disrepair. Most MGC's are an amalgamation of a multi-purpose basketball court, tennis court, floor hockey rink, and five-a-side soccer cage. MGC's I will say are quite common on US military posts especially in Europe where American children may not otherwise have access to certain courts. I have seen price ranges from $20,000 to $50,000 Intermediate Schools (7th/8th Grade) through High School MGC's are Multi-Purpose Track and Field Stadiums, Multi-Purpose Football Stadium, or some are the cross-section of both where you are starting out at a bargain basement end of $80,000 and upwards. As far as installation goes most companies either offer or have some sort guidance on installation. These are quite expensive acquisitions so I would advise the professional route when it comes to installation. Please feel free to contact through clarity with any follow concerns...…..

No, but you do need it fleshed out to a degree of believability. And that depends on who you're talking to...how easily they can pick the idea up and run with it. A programmer is likely to do this better than a banker: they can probably take the concept and mentally build it out, whereas the banker probably can't. Now comes the money part. Again, this depends on who you're talking to. How money-savvy are they? A programmer might love the idea and instantly know how to flesh it out. That might generate enough excitement to make the sale happen right there. For the money-savvy, something's missing though...a whole lotta something. Where's the target market? How do you intend to reach them (ads, traffic, signup)? What business model would you follow (paid third party ads, paid membership, freemium, etc.)? If all you have is the basic *technical* idea but no market analysis, the money-savvy will probably leave it alone. Given that you didn't provide more detail, you probably think someone is going to steal your idea. Most people are too busy to steal your idea. I've written about this here: http://www.salestactics.org/sharing-new-business-ideas-trust-and-ndas/ As you haven't given more info, it's tough for me to tell--at least in my opinion--whether your idea has legs or not. I guess you could PM it to me if you want. Otherwise, I could help you figure out that marketing side to sell it to the money-savvy type of person.

Would you hand over 100% of your paycheck to your investment advisor? In this scenario, you're being asked to invest your time instead of money but really, it's the same question. I've done several of these types of 'time investments.' Most have not worked out, one might. I'm not too worried though because most of my time that was invested was 'extra time.' I basically traded some of my leisure for an opportunity to be part of something that might hit pay dirt. These deals can be fun, but I don't think it makes sense for most people to work full time on them. It would be like putting 100% of your paycheck into your retirement account and finding money for groceries elsewhere but with a lot lower chance of paying out one day. Dave

The first thing I would focus on is building up a loyal audience so you have a targeted group to market to. On instagram the key when selling is to not be to overtly obvious that you are trying to sell them when you first start a page or you will end up loosing followers if they feel like they have just walked entered a sales page so to speak. Focus on brining value to your followers and potential followers by having HQ content #1 not just a bunch of product photos and #2 is being consistent with your posting (should be posting daily) and interacting with your audience. It is Social media, so if there is a lack of direct contact/engagement with your audience you will see a lack of sales and targeted leads. Good ways to do this is to have photos/videos of customers using your product so that people can imagine themselves using it as well. Influencer marketing is also a great way to both get followers to your page but also drive sales using someone else's audience that is in a similar niche. This is just a few ways to make headway on your account, hope this gives you some ideas. :)

Looks like you have a problem. Based on what you've provided, you made the SaaS before confirming there were buyers for it. Biggest mistake I see in SaaS. Second is trying to sell by Demo (features presentation) and believing that's going to work. Better find some buyers. I'm not seeing a demographic. Industry, size of company, department the SaaS best helps, who the stakeholders are that are involved in the buying decision, budget, problem(s) solved by the SaaS and so on. Those are the things you'll be able to use to estimate the market size. Right now you need customers. What pain points do they admit to having that your SaaS fixes? When you get some customers, what are the commonalities? Do you have some already that you can look at? Then you can tune your marketing to point at the type of companies, people and problems buyers admit to having. That's the key, though: they must admit to having the problem. If you don't have that, if you don't know why people would buy your SaaS, you're in real trouble. And I'm not talking about what YOU think. I don't know how many times I've gotten involved with a market, or started in on behalf of a client, and discovered the issues I thought would be important meant little to real buyers...and the things they valued were a stark surprise to me. If you want help with this process, you know where to find me ;-)

What you are seeing is a pattern for a business that is experiencing a cash flow issue and ultimately will go out of business as suppliers will move them to prepayment or COD. One solution to protect your business is to accept a credit card for payment of the invoice within 7 days and let them manage their cash flow challenges behind the scenes with their issuing bank. The other option is to offer prepayment and if they are not in position for that then I would no longer sell product/services. Sometimes it takes one supplier to force the inevetible, but you have to protect your business and resources as well.

With WordPress this is fairly easy to handle both COPPA + FTC + Facebook (along with other Ad Network) requirements. Write up your boilerplate text for all your disclosures. Write a wp-cli script to inject all the various documents as individual named posts. Some of my clients have me go one step more + actually generate a boilerplate footer with a menu of all these items. Since this is in script form, you can also run it against any existing site + if... say... your TOS post is missing, then add it. If you only have one Website, just search for COPPA boilerplates.

Since cashflow is an issue, here's my advice: * Get the rewards from someone else. * There's no need for you to pay for these perks. Find partners in complimentary fields, and approach them with the offer that you will connect them with your buyers list (a very valuable thing) in exchange for their rewards. When it comes to Cost of Customer Acquisition, this could be an incredibly smart thing to do from the reward provider's viewpoint. They get access to proven buyers in the related field for whatever their rewards cost...and they can figure out how to make money and Lifetime Customer Value from that pretty quickly (some from your list are going to buy from them...CCA = $X rewards...LTV = $Y bought... LTV - CCA = margin per customer.) "It's not magic, it's math!"

PayTrust or PayPal provide payment systems + enough documentation to use for taxes + reporting. Also, they both just work... all the time...