Posted By:
Rieva
on
06-29-2009
Wouldn't it be nice if your business was growing so fast that your staff could barely handle it?
What if you got as much business in the first month of 2009 as you got in all of 2008? That's not a fantasy; it's reality for Richard Palarea's company, PA & Associates, as I read with fascination in The New York Times.
Palarea's company helps arrange freight transportation for businesses. His USP (unique selling proposition) is that he will go through a prospective client's freight bills and find ways to save it money. If the client implements his suggestions, the client doesn't pay him anything out of pocket — it just pays him a percentage of its savings.
He and his wife Juliette started doing this "almost as a hobby" in 1993. But in today's economy, with PA & Associates saving clients an average of 42 percent, it has become a full-time business, in some years making as much as $2.5 million.
Selling the service is still challenging, Palarea says. Often, the savings he can offer sound too good to be true. And shipping managers are worried that he'll make their jobs obsolete. To overcome these hurdles, he gets most new clients by referral, and targets a company's chief financial officer (so he can "sell" clients on the financial savings), rather than its shipping department.
If you have a business-to-business service, is there a way you can help clients save money?
Sometimes, entrepreneurs don't want to focus on money, as they think it cheapens what they offer. That was Palarea’s problem at one point. But in today's economy, he's learned there's nothing shameful about emphasizing the bottom line.
Try what worked for Palarea: He looks over the prospect's bills for free, so there's no upfront cost or risk to them.
Rieva Lesonsky