Effective & Respectable Business to Business Approach?

[Paint-Shield.ca]

My company currently operates a full service Auto Detailing, Graphic Design & Tinting shop in Edmonton, AB Canada. I have a fair amount of private sector business, and deal in a decent amount of word-of-mouth turn over. Our current pricing strategy is very efficient by our cities standards, and we are able to keep our prices lower than our competitors because we share our facilities with another company that doesn't interfere in our space or business in any way. We have much larger facilities than 95% of our competition and therefor are able to accommodate larger vehicles indoors, such a Tractor Trailers, 5th Wheels, Buses & RV's.

We have been discussing the prospects of expanding our business to include commercial & fleet clients as we feel our pricing and large accommodations can fit any need they may currently be having serviced at another shop, and be done at a more affordable rate. We are looking to approach commercial clients in the Auto Industry (New & Used), Municipal & Provincial Government Divisions as well as companies that employ multiple fleet vehicles (ie. Trucking, Construction, Taxi Cabs, Limousine, etc).

Do to the fact that our company started as a turn key operation and hasn't done any wide spread advertising we have built our client base one by one from numerous referrals and walk-ins.

How do we go about properly arranging a package or pamphlet? Contacting the right people in a given company? Setting up a meeting and presenting our company and product in the most professional manner possible without appearing intrusive, pushy or unprofessional?

We are a very customer oriented operation and our plan is to remain in business and continue expanding, hopefully throughout our province in the next 5 years, so burning bridges or making a bad first impression is not a misstep we want to make.

How have you or your company approached other (larger) companies to listen to your proposal for business to business work? What are some of the pitfalls to watch out for when taking this next step?

We feel that by branching out and approaching other businesses we can show our exemplary service and pricing, and eventually not only have said business as a customer of ours but their individual employees as well.

Thanks in advance for any advice! : )

[Paint-Shield.ca]

So yeah, over a week and no one has any ideas, tips, anything. Seems like maybe the blind leading the blind.

I know in most industries, businesses must work directly or indirectly with other businesses. Why do all these 'entrepreneurs' have so many threads about their twitters, or generating web traffic and I can't receive an actual response in regards to a legitimate business practice that is used daily by companies large and small all over the world?

Or is there the perception that people on this forum do business but they just talk business and the ones actually generating a cash flow are too busy to post on the forum? I would have thought a website geared towards small business entrepreneurs would have had multiple experiences to share in a practice that I'm sure is going on all over your town/city as we speak, but maybe not so much on your twitter.

[rogercbryan]

You're asking to complicated of a question. Simplify it and people will respond.

[Paint-Shield.ca]

How do you suggest I simplify it? I have given a general rundown of my business, and it operations. I've given a view point on the direction we would like to go. Then I asked a few questions about peoples personal experiences and what their companies approach would be given my position.

Granted there is some fodder that could have been left out, but I assumed having more information was better then having less for people to formulate a valid opinion.

Okay,

If you have a company that offers, a service needed by many companies big and small, and your service can be equally as good as you competitors, and offered at a lower rate with a quicker turn around time, what would be your approach for contacting these other businesses in hopes of forging a business to business relationship with them?

[rogercbryan]

If you have a company that offers, a service needed by many companies big and small, and your service can be equally as good as you competitors, and offered at a lower rate with a quicker turn around time, what would be your approach for contacting these other businesses in hopes of forging a business to business relationship with them?

This is much better - What you are looking to do first is to find your competitive advantage. You've outlined that you are going to compete based on price and timeliness. Now you need to do your market research. You need to find out what 2-5 of your competitors charge for the exact same service and what their turn around time would be. The easiest way to do this is to call them and pretend to be a potential customer. Get a proposal from them and then compare it to you service platform. In doing this you'll be gathering the information you need to create your marketing platform.

Once armed with all the information you can layout your competitive advantage in your marketing message. Like: "Industry Surveys show we charge 25% less then the industry average and can deliver our service in half the time". So you have your competitive advantage laid out, your marketing platform developed, your marketing message created, and you are ready to move on to actually marketing your service.

Now you need to decide what your medium will be: web advertising, phone solicitation (not telemarketing per-se) , direct mail, newspaper, or any other. Develop a good ad copy and start marketing.

Question: Who will you market to? Well, this depends on your industry or service. You can buy a list from someplace like InfoUSA or PostCardMania (I get a discount... so let me know and I can hook you up). This is based on what you are providing.

I hope this gives you a little guidance on how to get started.