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Today the Internet is all of those things and more. And in about the time it takes to click your heels together three times, your favorite search engine can serve up potential customers, vendors, suppliers, associations, information and all the other essentials you need to run your business.
Does the advent of the Web negate the value of doing business the traditional way? Certainly not. Can it deliver in ways the offline world can’t? Just as certainly yes, as NASE Members and others have discovered. Here’s how Web-savvy entrepreneurs combine the wired and the real universe, making the best of both.
Finding customers and prospects
Even if you don’t have your own Web site, you can turn the Internet into an effective prospecting tool. NASE Member Robert Whitaker, who runs the export business Transcontinental Services Ltd., finds a world of potential clients by posting listings and business descriptions in appropriate places—for example, E-Expo USA and the World Wide Trade Center.
“We get a number of inquiries from our listings and then we investigate the companies that have responded, looking at their Web pages and checking out their testimonials,” he explains.
The company’s primary customers are businesses in developing countries that need concrete, asphalt, stucco or proprietary construction fibers. Making contact through the Web means major time savings for Whitaker, based in Lexington, S.C. In the old days, he says, “We stayed out of the country about half the time, looking for people. Now we don’t have to travel as much. And after being on the road for about 30 years, I’m glad to stay at home.”
Using the Web as a global billboard also beats the cost of traditional advertising, Whitaker says, explaining that a quarter-page ad in a trade journal could easily cost him $1,000 for a single exposure. “I’d get 300 to 400 responses and then send out a very costly package of literature and material, not even knowing if the parties I’m sending them to are legitimate businesses or kids doing a theme for a high-school project. On the Web, you can learn a little more about who they are, and it’s easier to identify potential customers.”
Bay Area NASE Member Lance Snead, doing business as Sir Lantz Magician & Balloon Artist, designed his own Web site and likens it to having a 24/7 salesperson in his employ.
“Through my site, I get two to four shows each week,” he says. “I have my name and links posted throughout the Net. If I had to pay a salesperson just $10 an hour, 24 hours a day, it would cost more than $80,000 a year. I’ve got to be honest—I get more than that from it.”
Snead has performed for corporate hotshots such as Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Intel as well as major trade shows. “Coldwell Banker hired me through the Internet, and the only reason I was hired is that I have a Web site,” he says.
He makes the point that the best Web site in the world won’t help if you don’t have the goods or services to back it up. But once it helps initiate the contact, the quality of your offerings will take you the rest of the way. After meeting with Coldwell Banker, for example, he went on to do quite a few events for the company.
“The Net is such a valuable tool for me now,” he continues. “I’d probably go bankrupt without it, even though I’ve got a good name and a good reputation.”
Locating vendors, suppliers and contractors
Just as potential clients can locate you on the Internet, you can track down those who offer what you need to satisfy your own customers. Gail Abbuhl of Goldsboro, N.C., uses the Web exclusively to locate the suppliers she needs to run The Goodie Basket Gourmet, which creates unique gift baskets for individuals and corporate clients.
“I found every one of my vendors via the Internet—and the Net increases my choice of vendors, allowing me to get the best product at the best price for my customers,” she says.
She also appreciates the speed of placing orders online. One drawback, she notes, is that she can’t see what she’s buying, although most vendors she works with offer samples for free or at minimal cost.
Whitaker uses the Web to locate vendors all the time, he says. And because of the medium’s speed, he can now answer his customers’ queries much more quickly. “If we have an inquiry about a product we don’t currently list, I’ll get on the Web immediately and see if we can put it together through our sources. For example, one of our customers in France wanted a particular length and denier of polyester fiber that they said they couldn’t find anywhere in the world. They asked us, as one of their suppliers, and within 24 hours I had a quotation on their desks.”
It’s just as easy to locate the people you need to do a job. Says Snead, “I did a big party for Coldwell Banker, and I needed some jugglers and stilt-walkers. I couldn’t find any who were reliable through offline channels, so I went on the Net, and after searching for a few hours I was able to locate people here in the Bay area.”
Online banking and loans
Major credit-card companies are fast adding online account access, and most banks are venturing into e-banking, allowing online bill payment, mortgage applications and the like. Some Web sites catering to entrepreneurs even offer online small-business loan apps. One advantage of Internet loan shopping is that the consumer can readily compare different companies’ offerings and focus on the best ones.
In the process of combining his first and second mortgages, magician Lance Snead pitted two online loan companies against each other to see which would give him the best deal. “I got a good faith estimate from one and sent it to the other, and vice versa,” he says. “Every time I talked to one of them, my costs went down.”
Of course, the fact that a company has a Web site is no guarantee of its responsiveness. NASE Member Philip Goosic of Tempe, Ariz., an independent small-package delivery contractor for FedEx, found online shopping a disappointment.
“I shopped for a truck online and put three applications in with different leasing companies,” he says. “I only got two responses—one company I never heard from—and in the end I went to the source I’d been dealing with locally. It took too long for the online companies to respond, and there was no personal contact. If someone had called and said, ‘We’ve got your application and we’re interested in your business,’ I would’ve hung on longer. But a week went by, and then I got a letter rather than a phone call. Personal contact means a lot.”
Gathering facts
Not every piece of information you need resides on the Internet—yet—but the Web is indisputably the fastest, most comprehensive, easiest-to-access library in existence.
“We go on the Web to check out different countries’ economic forecasts,” says Whitaker of Transcontinental Services Ltd. “We look at the ones that identify road construction, port construction, and housing and commercial building expansion, then concentrate on those markets to identify people who are involved in supplying the construction industry and try to contact them.”
Information searches that Whitaker says used to take days can now be accomplished in minutes: “If someone asks me a question and I don’t know the answer, I can do a global search on the Web and come up with the answer within 10 or 15 minutes. I’ve got valid information to put on their desk right away.”
Goosic appreciates the fact that on the Web he can quickly gain information about competitors: “It’s handy to go online and verify what the competition’s doing, to check out their fees and services. Information that was difficult to find before, that required several phone calls to specialized people, is now easy to get. That’s priceless to me.”
Building solidarity
Self-employment can be a lonely proposition—especially if you don’t have a ready-made community of other entrepreneurs to turn to. But now the Internet offers opportunities to network nationwide, as well as to discover like-minded others who may be in our own back yard.
No matter what kind of business you run, chances are good there’s a site that caters to people in your line of work. If not, plenty of Web sites for the self-employed offer opportunities to network, post questions and learn from each other. And if those don’t satisfy, why not build your own page?
One of dozens of independent delivery contractors for FedEx in the Phoenix market, Goosic wanted to create a means of information exchange between contractors. About a year ago, he and his brother-in-law started the Independent Contractors of Phoenix, which meets monthly. The two are now working to create a Web site so contractors nationwide can network with each other.
“We’ve found that communication between us has been to our advantage, and that’s why we’re starting the Web page,” he says. “That will be a great tool because then we can learn from others’ example—what they did to avoid mistakes or how they corrected them. We want to open it up so there’ll be more information for everyone.”
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Is the Web Safe?
Although more than half of online households now feel safe using credit cards on the Web—up from just 15 percent in 1998, according to studies by Forrester Research Inc.—lingering suspicions about safety and privacy remain. But you shouldn’t let those worries prevent you from enjoying all the Web has to offer, any more than you’d avoid leaving the house for fear of real-world crime.
“You should be concerned but not paranoid,” advises e-commerce expert and speaker Daniel Janal, the author of
Risky Business: Protect Your Business From Being Stalked, Conned, or Blackmailed on the Web (John Wiley & Sons, 1998) and other books about the Net. Online as well as off, he advises, use common sense and take a few simple precautions to protect yourself.
“Most sites are perfectly legitimate. There are some fraudulent businesses out there, some scams, so you need to be wary, but the overall majority of your shopping experiences are going to be positive,” he says.
The No.1 means of perpetrating Internet scams is through e-mail, Janal advises—so don’t respond when you receive messages promising things that sound too good to be true. Just hit the delete key.
Use a credit card for online purchases: “Most credit-card companies will limit your loss to $50 if there’s a problem or wipe out the fee entirely as a matter of goodwill,” says Janal. Don’t use a debit card, which in the wrong hands amounts to a blank check.
When asked to provide information online, protect your privacy, but consider who’s asking the questions and why. “I don’t think your hackles should be raised unless they ask questions involving your credit card, your Social Security number or personal information like your mother’s maiden name,” he says. “If it sounds like someone’s prying and trying to get too much information, that should send up a red flag.”
---M. C. W.
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Mary C. Weaver is a freelance writer and editor living in Knoxville, Tenn. She writes frequently about small business and technology.
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