Probably not enough information to answer this question here, but... 1. the new pricing models sounds like the monthly charge will be variable and unknown. Some buyers won't like this (eg if you're B2B, they won't be able to budget for your costs) 2. Have customers asked for this? Therein, may lie the answer to your conversion rate question 3. There is no rule that says you have to have one pricing model. Launch a secondary model and let the customer choose. You could even consider framing one as a decoy? Have to chat further if you're interested Jon Manning

Alessandro Daliana's comments are bang-on. It seems you were also asking about how to get your elder's to accept your ideas about change. It's difficult, especially when your boss always wants to see you as their child. How do you earn their respect and get them to listen to you the way they would listen to an outsider who seems qualified. I've witnessed a couple of strategies from next-generation people that you may wish to consider. 1. Leave the family business and prove yourself 'outside.' You can go work in another company to prove your abilities and then come back to the family business at a later date. When your parents see that others respect and value you, it's easier for them to listen. 2. Case-studies. Look for similar companies that are not local direct competitors. Demonstrate the strategies that they're implementing and why you should do them as well... as long as they make sense (See Alessandro's answer) 3. Experiment with other people's businesses. You probably have friends who own or run their own business. Help this person implement change and then demonstrate the results to your parents. If they see that you're capable of seeing valuable opportunities and others respect you for it, it can be easier for them to accept. Being a next-generation in a family business can be difficult. Your parents probably see the business as an extension of themselves and probably haven't put the effort and thought into a proper succession plan. Most entrepreneurs that I meet have the 'I'll just live forever' succession plan, until the day comes that they decide they need to sell. Cheers and good luck. David C Barnett

Market to your niche, talking about the same problems your beta clients signed on to get fixed. These are called "pain points" and are valuable language. Anyone in the situation will instantly pay attention to you. Note that I am saying you should talk about the problem(s), not the features of your software. People want to get out of bad situations, not buy features. Yes, retain equity. Once given away, it's difficult to recover. And it can easily be worth much more than the capital raised...which is meant for operating expenses anyway, not your personal use. If the beta clients have paid you for their involvement, then it would seem you've proven the economic viability of the solution. Either way, your next job is to filter for people having the same problem the software solved for your beta clients, and get new clients to pay for the solution.

Hi, I've got years of experience in sales and small business management. While not travel-focused, I may be able to help. Why are you so focused on a direct-sales approach? I know travel agents that frequently sell adventure travel products for operators. Have you properly analyzed all the sales channels available to you? Agents have relationships with frequent adventurers who rely on their input when making travel decisions. If agents aren't part of your sales efforts, is it because your margins aren't correct? Are you trying to fix a sales problem with a marketing solution? Let me know if you'd like to book a call. Dave.

Talent management companies will bill the client for their services including the salaries of the temp workers. They keep the employees on their payrolls and then send them at client side. This reduces the risk of the client, however the client shells out more money. In case of Talent agent, they will find the right talent for the client and will charge a service fee/commission. The employees will join at the payrolls of the client creating direct accountability of the client.

Hi, I work for a FinTech saas company and we A/B all over our website. Not sure if you have done this already, but do you have a clearly defined ideal customer (buyer persona)? I mean a vivid picture of what your ideal client is like? where they are located (if that's relevant), their buying pattern, what are the most come pain points/issues they need assistance with (i.e. how your product/service helps them), age group, social demographics... This alone will give you a lot of information on who to target, and how they would find your services in the first place. You can then start to create content around these audiences (compeling headlines, relevant lead magnet, ...) and serve these content to different segment of your visitors based on traffic source, or key demographics as explained above. Hope this helps - Loic

Realize you're trying to make a sale here. Meaning that your first job is to Stand Out. If you don't stand out, you don't sell. Every competitor of yours has a portfolio. It sure helps if you have several prospects, but even if you only have one that's OK. I once had a company create a custom production management role for me...one target, one customer, and a four-day turnaround. Suddenly I had 150 people and six supervisors reporting to me. They weren't "hiring", by the way. So go at this from your customer's perspective: what is it that would make THEM want to hire YOU? How can you Stand Out to them? I've had employers create custom roles for me four times, with zero competition. Throwing your application package in with the blizzard chasing Want Ads is a bad way to go about this. Targeting specific firms you'd like to work for, and knowing why, is much better. If I was in your shoes, I'd talk with Michael to get your strategy together. Tighten up on your message: who you want to work with, and why. How you can Stand Out. Then, if you want some unorthodox expertise on getting in front of the right people who have the power to hire you, talk to me.

I own a digital marketing firm. We have 8 strategists each focusing on a specific vertical. This allows us to bring in multiple areas of expertise to a single project with varying ideas and strategies. I don't believe in jack of all trades. I prefer to have people who can learn everything they need about a specific area in order to master it.

Three good starting points for you: To connect with corporate communications professionals, check out the 2017 International Association of Business Communicators World Conference in Washington, DC, in June: http://wc.iabc.com/ To connect with CSR professionals, check out the 2017 International Corporate Citizenship Conference in Boston in March: http://ccc.bc.edu/index.cfm?pageId=476 To connect with public relations professionals, check out the Public Relations Society of America 2017 International Conference in Boston in October: http://apps.prsa.org/Conferences/InternationalConference/index.html Good luck and please let me know if you need more assistance.

I would storngly suggest you to consider a 4th optinion which is much cheaper and with a higher chance of giving you return. I've personally used this strategy to start my consulting business from 0 to 12 clients in the first 3 months. Here's exactly what you can do. How You Can Generate 5 to 10 extra Trial Customers per week using Linkedin It is NOW the moment to leverage Linkedin’s full potential. In the future, this social network will start to get overcrowded (see Instagram and other ones that in the past were money-printers for the first ones who fully understood them.) How to leverage Linkedin to generate leads? 1- Use your personal account to post relevant content. Don’t put external links (if you really have to, write them in the first comment and tell people to look at it) as the post which includes them are penalized by the Linkedin algorithm that tends to make people remain in their platform. Use Quuu.co. if you want contents related to your niche posted every day on your account, but don’t expect an engagement from those. The best posts come from your stories, what you’d learned, and they give the hell out of value to your audience. 2- Select your target audience. Just hit the search button and look for the location, title/position, etc. where your leads are. 3- Optimize your profile. Treat it like a sales letter, but more related to your person. Firstly, write something eye-catching on your headline, for instance, “Contact me if you want to generate more leads for your B2B Business.” Then the first paragraph should be customer oriented (explaining the benefits of working with you/your company.) After you can tell more about yourself, and of your story if you’d like to. You can check my profile to have some inspiration. 4- Start with the automation. Download “Linkedhelper” (better) or “GPZWeb” (still good) to automate the following actions: - Profile Views. People will visit-back and see your “optimized profile” (see point 3.) And many times they’ll contact you. - Connect with 1,000 People, including a 1 line message (less-salesy messages get a higher-acceptance rate.) - Send a Direct message with an intro summary & calendly/ web/email link to everyone who accepts (better if you wait one day after they accepted your connection request.) ** MAJOR KEY ALERT** A high-quality copy of the message is KEY to succeeding. Try to stand out with humor or creative ways (thanks, Jon Buchan). I get five messages per day from people pitching me SEO services which go straight to the trash bin, while my messages, not to brag, get a very high response rate Reply to your messages, and watch the leads roll in! I repeat! Linkedin (and his automation) will soon get less effective as more and more people are starting to do it. So, do it now (the same applies to Facebook groups, see the third paragraph) and you’ll be ahead of 99,9%. Another thing, stick to the limits, check the Linkedhelper knowledge base for that. -- If you want support in implementing this strategy, just call me here on Clarity :-)

There are plenty of solutions for starting an eCommerce site with WordPress. However, the best solution for you will depend on what exactly you are selling. If you are selling physical goods that will be shipped, it's hard to beat WooCommerce. If it is overkill for your needs, you can customize it and reduce it to only the features you want. If you are looking for something much simpler, take a look at WP Simple Pay Pro. Easy way to integrate Stripe checkout with your site. Another simple plugin I would recommend is Plasso, https://plasso.com/wordpress. Although Plasso is new to the WordPress game, their payment solutions have been around for a couple of years. They offer hosted pages for your products or services which look awesome. If you are going to have subscription-based billing, I would recommend Zoho Subscriptions or Chargebee. They both offer hosted payment/checkout pages. If you have any questions regarding these or other eCommerce solutions, or need help implementing them into your site, give me a call and I would be glad to help :) -Matt Maker

You have limit time and resources so you need to think what I call "FIRST DOLLAR" approach. If you look across different modes to sell and target there has to be a few that would be the optimal. Focus only on those first don't look elsewhere - put each next dollar of effort into these (or this one) until it's optimal then target the next bucket to attack until you get momentum to broaden. There has to be a few or one area that would harvest better or best results w you time. The idea here is to get the sales/revenue flywheel turning w focus or richest buckets of opportunity to create revenue momentum to allow you to scale. 1. Partnerships with those who sell into doctors - preferably similar Catagory (tech. IT. Time optimization. Software). 2. Work your customers and fuel the flames of referrals with those Dr using your product. Ask them "is there some one you can suggest that might also benefit from this?" A warm referral is sales gold. "Dr xxx suggested I show this to you". 3. hire college interns. Congrats on "going after it

Hiring is fine if you can afford the cash flow outlay now. Remember, no one will ever care as much about your business as you do. At this stage, a combination of base plus commission is likely to work best. You want that base to be just not quite enough for the hire to pay their monthly bills; ideally, you want them motivated to go get the sales. If you pay them enough to be comfortable, they will stay comfortable. So the base shows you are serious. However, it does not let them wallow in complacency...which they will be tempted to if you let them because it's not their business. You will attract better candidates because of the base. Make the commission hefty, say 30% of the project revenue. Perhaps 50% if the numbers work. The risk tolerance of commission-based salespeople is very close to entrepreneurs. This is important to keep in mind, because if the reward system doesn't keep them hooked, they will realize they could eliminate you as the middle man and keep all the money themselves--which accounts for high turnover in many commission salesperson-based operations. Also note that once you set a remuneration structure, it is dangerous to change it. Even alterations that result in the salesperson making more money than they were prior will cause some experienced staff to get angry and quit.If and when you do want to look at changing commission structure, have the salesperson/people participate fully in the process with you. So do your best to get it right this first time. Next time you touch it, there will be consequences. Develop a sales plan with your hire. The numbers need to support the revenue you and the salesperson have in mind. These numbers need to be believable and achievable, not pie in the sky. Each person has their own money tolerance, which is your belief of what is "a lot of money". Check for this: there's no point in hiring an individual who has a low money tolerance and thinks $500 is "a lot of money" if the deal sizes are $10K+ and on-target annual revenue for the salesperson is $200K. If you want to discuss your situation further and set up a specific plan that avoids the pitfalls and gives you the best chance of success, you know where to find me.

I've managed digital products (apps) from concept to maturity. My experience is with SaaS and apps, so it may or may not be relevant to your situation. I think the best tool for prioritizing features is to create a features scorecard in a spreadsheet and use that tool to get alignment with your team as to what features get what priority. Start with defining your business goals (e.g., get more revenue, increase word of mouth, reduce churn, increase retention, etc.). Then assess the resources you have (e.g., number of developers, designers, writers, customer support, sales, whatever your company has to "spend" to create any feature.) In your spreadsheet, create a row for each potential feature and a column for each goal and each broad category of resource (engineering, marketing, support, for example). Use a small numeric scale (0 - 3) to "score" each feature in each column. For example, a feature may not move you toward goal #1, so you would put "0" in goal #1 column. For the resources, do the same. To the right of all these add a column that subtracts the sum of the resource or "effort" scores from the sum of all the goal column scores. You can multiply these scores by a confidence factor as well. If you have a team, it's important to get their input on the scoring. This is not something you just show them and ask for approval. You have to involve them in a meaningful way. I can show you how to do that and point you to some examples you can use, if you'd like to give me a call.

There is certainly value in starting customer discovery interviews. And no reason to wait for the delay that creating a landing page and waiting to collect emails would take. I would just advise that you get clear on your hypotheses about who your target customer is so you talk to the right kind of people. Personas can be a good tool for capturing your assumptions about target customer. A key concept is the different between problem space (understanding customer needs and pain points with how they're getting their needs met now) and solution space (evaluating your idea for how to better solve those problems). You can go pretty far with customer discovery to understand the problem space. At some point, though, you will want to transition to soliciting feedback on some solution space artifact that represents your solution. A landing page is good for testing your value proposition and messaging. At some point, though, you'll want to transition to testing a prototype of your product (e.g., tappable or clickable mockups using InVision). I'm a big believer in testing with prototypes before you actually build your product. I've actually created a 6-step process for defining and testing a new product idea, which I describe in my book The Lean Product Playbook: http://amzn.to/1EYCUdP I've also given several talks that you can check out at http://dan-olsen.com/speaking/ Good luck! Dan http://dan-olsen.com

Interesting question, but I don't really see it as a "chicken and egg" type challenge. For a service startup business, you will still need an online presence. In the Lean Startup method we talk about MVP, the minimal viable product you can build to both test the waters and get paid. Why build a business that no one wants and therefore, no one will pay to use? So, a better approach would be to test the waters first with a few phone calls. Is there a need? Want to be sure? Make one hundred calls. Then let's talk. There are affordable ways to build a MVP.

I would make sure to have a "one sheet" for your pricing already created. If you're okay with a discount rate and equity then have that as an option. When you pivot to discussing compensation it becomes as easy as " for compensation for this projects here's a link to our page/PDF for startups. As we outline there we take pride in our work and like to pay our staff on time so we don't work for just equity but do have special rates for startups who designate a portion of equity."

I founded one of the first independent app development studios just as App Store went live in 2008. In addition to building this successful indie studio, I've helped dozens of companies launch successful apps on App Store and Play Store. Congratulations! Ten thousand downloads a day is a great start. It shows that you've found a sweet spot in the market that has a sizable potential user base. Unless it's a paid app, however, there's nothing monetizable in downloads themselves. App engagement after download, on the other hand has inherent value. If users are indeed engaging with your app, there are dozens of ways to generate revenues from that. Also, you can use that engagement to create content that is shared socially to increase downloads, return visits and longer usage. I've work with app owners like you to make enhancements that ensure engagement, user content creation and sharing. Call me if you want to discuss how to do that.

Find out what your target market values and wants before you set up any kind of lead capture page or differentiation content. Anything else is complete guesswork and virtually guaranteed to be completely off target. Get some information interviews with members of your target market. Do this by phone. You can't automate it or do it by email because it's too slow and easily ignored. Plus, if you use an online survey, the responses are limited to the choices you give them and that is an approach which is too leading. You want the truth, not to confirm your own biases. If you want help in this department, let's talk.

The quality of the photograph and the words you tag the photograph with are keys to success on Instagram. Along with the link to your URL of course. Be selective and post only the most beautiful and interesting unique images and use the best and most relevant words for tags for the search function. Also have a consistency in the images you post. It takes time but eventually you will attract Instagram users who will follow you and share your posted images and links.

Answer your own questions by talking to your target market. They'll tell you. If you won't do this now, what chance do you have to succeed? You'll have to talk to prospects if you want to make sales--do you think they'll just come to your door because you put up a shingle? Ask your target market. Sure, some will talk to you and some won't. Who cares about those who won't? Five conversations with your target market will give you enough correlation to tell you what direction to head in. Should take you a few days, tops. This has to be done live, by phone or in person. Not by email--they'll never get answered. If you're too chicken to do this now, you're not ready to get into your own business. Now as to the other part of your question, which is the money. Every one of us has a money tolerance. That's your level of what you believe is "a lot of money". Your customer has a different belief of that that figure is. You will block your own progress with that belief you so dearly and unconsciously hold... that say "$500 is a lot of money". Many buyers, including myself, believe that if something has a low price, it can't be very good. We're interested in quality, not a low investment. Work on your money tolerance. It is NOT easier to make a low ticket sale than a high ticket sale. As a sales trainer, I used to say it was just as easy to make the high ticket sale as a low ticket sale...but from experience, I can now say it's actually easier to make the high ticket sale. The buyer psychology is that the high ticket buyer has money...and they just give you some. They aren't anxious for the thing to work; they're not desperate. The low ticket buyer is nervous, and is desperate for the solution to magically work right out of the gate. They probably have to steal money from somewhere else to pay for you, and that makes them even more desperate. But the money tolerance thing is up to you. It's your belief more than anything that will determine your outcome. If you believe "$500 is a lot of money," you won't try to get the bigger ticket sales. One big ticket sale can eliminate the need for dozens of low ticket sales. Think about all that time you need to invest in prospecting for, qualifying, and closing each customer: the time requirement is no different despite the price. But you'll probably have to get some experience to figure this out for yourself. You'll seek your own level. There's nothing wrong with low ticket sales; just be clear with yourself that this is the game you've chosen to play. And you could choose to play at any level.

These are some great questions. As an entrepreneur, growing and scaling my business has been both a challenging and rewarding task. I'll answer both your questions separately: 1. How should you decide which business idea to pursue? Your decision should take into account both personal factors and should have regard to your environment, your market and your resources. From a personal perspective, choose an industry which (1) you are passionate about and (2) you have knowledge/experience in. This will considerably reduce your risk of failure. As a startup founder, you will find your job to be extremely challenging and the only way to succeed is through resilience. If you are not passionate, you will easily give up. Having the knowledge and expertise of your industry will not only give you more gravitas but also save you lots of time in research and understanding the wants and needs of your customer. From a larger perspective - ensure your business solves a problem that is large enough to build a profitable business out of. Here is a non-exhaustive list of questions to help you get there: 1. What is your intended customer base? It is harder to target a broad and general audience - try to establish a niche customer base which needs your products and/or services. 2. What problem does your service/product solve? Identifying a problem and providing a solution is the heart of every innovative idea. 3. How can you add value to the product and customer experience? Your customers need to gain benefit from purchasing your goods/services. 4. What are the most unusual characteristics of your business which will give you competitive advantage on the market? Establishing yourself in the market means you need some advantage over your competitors to attract their customers or new ones. 5. Have you researched your competition? In what ways do you feel you can do better than the competition? You need to know who are you facing to understand your market share, and how can you provide better solutions. 6. Do you have access to all the resources you need to launch the business? This includes funding, manpower, premises, equipment etc. 7. What is the size of the market? Do your research! 8. What would it take to create a minimum viable product and test it on the market? You don’t need a finished product to launch, start small and test your ideas. 9. What will it take to make profit? You need to have at least some estimated financial projections as to what you need to spend and what you need to earn in order to break even and then make a profit. 10. Is the problem you are trying to solve on the top priority list of the potential customers? Important consideration to see whether your products will sell. 11. What is your business model? How do you plan on charging your customers, how do your competitors do it, can you create additional revenue streams? 12. Is there a potential for growth? Think in the long term, can you scale the business further? 13. What are the possible roadblocks you are likely to face? You should attempt to find a solution for each problem you can think of. 14. Have you chosen a business name? Make sure that your name is descriptive of the branding and targets your customers. Ask people their input - choosing a name is an important matter as it will affect the rest of your branding. 15. Have you looked for your business name online? Ensure that no other business can be confused with yours. Ensure that the domain name and all social media accounts for your business name are available. I hope this answers your first question. 2. How do I decide which direction to invest my energy in and how can I develop my idea further? This will come to you much more clearly once you have found the answers to your first question. Ensure that you are spending your time in a way that produces results. Your first goal is to bring your MVP, to test it amongst customers, to learn from feedback and then to improve your product. Repeat this formula until you reach product market fit. I hope this helps - please don't hesitate to get on a call with me if you'd like to drill this down further.

I don't have a great answer if you have a limited budget and time, but I would focus on 1) Building a social media strategy with an incentive plan attached to spark engagement. 2) Create a "hit list" of companies that fit the profile and ask them to participate. Not sure how many companies you'd need for the beta but this select list could have special privileges and guarantees such as free or reduced cost when it launches. 3) Check out launchrock.com. For $5 per month you can build a acquisition website and get free promotion to their audience which I think is 200K+ people. Not sure the demo of those people though. 4) Rent a list of contacts in your target market, perhaps through a trade publication that caters to your audience, and send an email (or series of emails) asking for their participation and telling them why they should participate and what they will get for it.

One is a SERVICE. Services sometimes have issues with profitability when scaling. You end up managing people and profit margins stay the same or decrease. The other is a PRODUCT. Products generally scale better as the cost of product remains more or less the same (COGS). Many people start consulting and build a product later. You can also do a productized service which is a mix of both.

Don't even think about monetization yet. You want to focus on first starting to capture this month's traffic - even just 1% - as email subscribers who you can continually message and Market to. Once you have someone as a subscriber, you can now email them a dozen times over a few weeks promoting your affiliate offer, increasing the chance that they'll convert -- after all, who is more likely to convert? Someone who just read a post or someone who opted in and received a dozen trust building emails promoting a product? If you have an email list built off of this traffic you could even promote multiple products over time! If you have three compelling offers, you can pitch all three in sequence, with breaks for education and information. You're right to want to monetize this audience. First and foremost: you want to capture this audience as subscribers to your email list.