Credibility

I am picking out a very interesting discussion from my Group for an open discussion on our blog.

" What do you answer when a Customer asks this?

How can you commit quality of your service/product when your company is only a month old?

How do you setup your company's credibility in front of a prospective customer, when your company is only a month old and that customer is the first for any given particular industry vertical? "

A few suggestions that came up during that discussion were...

• Let them know you are knowledgale, but you will also do your homework if you dont have the right answer
• Ask for small projects and grow the business with time.
• Strong professional collateral illustrating your products/services benefits and value added preposition.
• Strong sales people who know how to approach prospects, preferrablly with a strong network of contacts and knowledge to the industry specific area you are trying to pentrate, (that will involve serious recruiting efforts or headhunting for at least one or two persons depends on your sales target quota, adding to them at least 1 presales engineer)
• A good product/service that can be positioned in a focused market and has a roadmap that will continue to enhance its benefits inreturn for a reasonable after sales expense the customer will bear later on.
• Market positioning in terms of pricing. if you want to compete, and already have a strong competiton in that specific industry focus, I suggest starting off with small and medium size companies whom are in demand for the product/services you have but are price sensitive to bigger brand names. Thus you would consider targeting the SME with a reasonable price range, target, sell and implement, provide high quality of service and then start expanding to target larger enterprises after you have accumulated the required experience and customer list.

I somehow feel that these things come much later. The basic things one can do at the start are...

1. Inform your entire network of people about what you wish to achieve through this venture.
2. Inform all prospective clients on what principles you would stick by through all times.
3. Inform all prospective clients on how you propose to deliver the product/ service and what milestones to expect in what time frame
4. Ensure complete transparency in all transactions with the prospective client.

At the end of the day the values a business can be built on remain constant...honesty, integrity, trust, quality, people, customers...

What do you guys think...