Topic

How to get customers, business by business

The advice 'get more customers' is useless until you say which business and which buyer. An IT provider sells to office managers who already have a part-time IT person. A recruiter sells to a hiring manager with a job that has been open for a month. A copywriter sells to a founder with a launch date. The first email is different for each, and so is the offer.

Each piece in this section picks one kind of business and works through the same questions: who buys and what triggers it, where to find those people by name, what to offer first, what the first email looks like, and how to follow up without nagging.

They are separate from the trades pages elsewhere on the site, which are about contractors and local service businesses. These cover professional services, agencies, creative work and freelancers.