Your first customers almost never arrive because of advertising. They turn up because somebody who already knows you remembered what you do at the right moment, or because another self employed person was booked solid and passed on a job they could not fit in. That is unglamorous. It is also how most new businesses in this country get going, and it is why somebody who has just registered as a sole trader with £300 spare should think hard before handing all of it to an ads account in week one.
The first ten jobs are a completely different problem from the next hundred. You have no reviews, nobody can check your track record, and you do not yet know how long the work really takes you. The first customers you win will also be the ones you learn on, which is awkward and unavoidable. Here is how we would go about getting them, roughly in order.
Where First Customers Actually Come From
Start with a list of names. Not a marketing plan, an actual list in a notebook or a spreadsheet of every person who could either hire you or put your name in front of somebody who could. Most people assume they will scrape together twenty and then find they get to eighty once they include old colleagues, school parents, neighbours, the bloke who serviced the boiler and the woman who runs the unit next door.
The first customers of a new business tend to come from five places.
- People who already know you personally. They are not buying your expertise yet, they are buying the fact that they know where you live. That is a perfectly good reason to hire somebody.
- The firm you used to work for, if you left on decent terms. Read your old contract first. Restrictive covenants are common and approaching clients you worked with can breach one, so check before you pick up the phone.
- Other people in your trade who are full. A joiner turning down two enquiries a week would far rather pass them to somebody he rates than keep saying no. A surprising number of first customers arrive this way, and they arrive pre-warmed.
- Suppliers, merchants and wholesalers. Counter staff at a builders merchant hear who is looking for a sparky before Google does. Same goes for an accountant who keeps getting asked to recommend a bookkeeper.
- Local groups. The community Facebook page, the village WhatsApp, a chamber breakfast, a market stall for a Saturday, the parish magazine that costs £15 for a quarter page and goes through every letterbox in the postcode.
Your first customers rarely cost money to find. They cost nerve. Telling eighty people you have started something is harder than paying somebody to tell strangers for you, which is exactly why so many new owners skip it and wonder why the phone is quiet in March.
The Announcement Most People Never Make Properly
Picture a self employed gardener in Derby who posts: after eleven years I have decided to go out on my own, wish me luck. Forty likes. No work. The post did not fail because of the algorithm. It failed because nobody reading it learned what he does, who he does it for, whether he covers their street or what they are meant to do next.
The announcement that wins first customers is specific, slightly boring, and tells the reader exactly what to do. You will send it once as a post, and then individually to perhaps thirty people, which is the part that actually works.
What That Message Should Say
- What you do, in the words a customer would use. Not “outdoor space transformation”, just “garden clearance, fencing and regular maintenance”.
- Who it is for. Householders, landlords, small offices, whoever.
- Where you cover. Name towns and postcodes. People need to know if you will come to them.
- What to do next. A mobile number and a sentence giving permission: “if you know anyone who needs a hand, send them my number.”
Sending that to people one at a time feels like begging. It is not. You are giving a contact useful information they can act on, and the ones who respond become your first customers rather than a vague well-wisher who forgets by Thursday. Expect most to say nothing. Two or three will reply with work, and one will forward it to a friend.
Why Free Work Rarely Produces Good First Customers
The advice to do a few jobs for nothing to build a portfolio is widespread and we would mostly avoid it. Free work attracts people who want free things, and those first customers are often the slowest to answer the phone, the quickest to change their minds and the least likely to recommend you to somebody who pays.
If you want a reason to discount, give one with a date attached. A launch rate of £180 a day until the end of February, going to £240 after that, tells a customer two true things: you are new, and you are not cheap forever. It also gives you a clean way to raise your prices without a difficult conversation.
Better still, trade for something other than money. Ask for a written review and the names of two people who might need the same work. That is worth more to you in month three than the £60 you knocked off.
Subcontracting Is Not A Step Backwards
Plenty of new one-person businesses spend their first six months doing day rate work for a larger firm while they build their own list. There is nothing second rate about it. It pays the bills in the months when your own enquiries are thin, it gets you on sites and in front of people, and bigger contractors can become your first customers in their own right rather than just a stopgap.
Two cautions. Day rate work tends to be paid on 30 or 60 day terms, so it is not fast money. And if it grows to be your whole income, you no longer have a business, you have one customer who can end it with a phone call. We would keep an eye on the ratio and start protecting at least a day a week for your own jobs once the work is steady.
Make It Easy For First Customers To Check You Out
Everything above ends in the same moment. Somebody hears your name, likes the sound of you, and goes looking to see if you are real. Your first customers will search your business name, your trade plus their town, or both, usually on a phone, usually within a minute of the conversation.
Set up a free Google Business Profile on day one, with your service area, hours and a handful of photos of your own work. Ask every happy customer for a review on it. Then make sure there is somewhere to land that answers what you do, where you cover and what it roughly costs, because a profile with no site behind it looks thinner than one with. If building that yourself is not something you fancy, it is what we do: see small business website design and what an affordable website actually comes to each month.
Pricing The First Ten Jobs
Nerves make people quote low. Then the quote becomes the price, the customer tells a neighbour what they paid, and you spend a year unwinding it. Work out the number properly before anybody asks.
Take what you need to live on, say £2,200 a month. Add the costs that exist whether you work or not: van, fuel, insurance, tools, phone, accountant. Then be realistic about chargeable days, because 20 working days in a month is not 20 billable ones once you account for quoting, invoicing and the job that gets cancelled. Set aside something for tax on top. Only then do you have a day rate, and it will be higher than the figure you were about to say out loud.
Charge your first customers that rate. If they say no, you have learned something real about your market, which is more useful than a cheap job. And get the invoice out the same day you finish, with payment terms on it. The gov.uk guidance on invoicing and taking payment from customers sets out what has to be on it and how long a customer has to pay.
Keep The Record Side Boring
Open a separate bank account and run everything through it, even if you are a sole trader and not legally required to. Photograph every receipt the day you get it. Keep a simple sheet of quotes sent, jobs won and jobs lost, because after your first customers have come and gone it is the only way to see which of those five sources is actually producing work. Three months in, that sheet will tell you to spend more time at the merchant and less on Facebook, or the other way round.
A Thirty Day Plan For Winning First Customers
- Week one. Write the list of eighty names. Set up the Google Business Profile. Decide your day rate using the sums above and write it down so you stop improvising.
- Week two. Send the specific announcement to thirty people individually. Ring five former colleagues or trade contacts and ask directly if they have overflow.
- Week three. Visit two suppliers in person and leave cards. Join the two busiest local community groups and answer questions in them without pitching.
- Week four. Ask every one of your first customers for a review and two names. Chase anybody who went quiet after a quote, because roughly a third of them simply forgot.
Thirty days of that will not fill a diary for the year. It will usually produce enough work to keep going, which at this stage is the whole job.
So Where Do First Customers Come From?
From people, nearly always ones with some existing thread back to you, and from the gap between what somebody needs and who they happen to know. Advertising can widen that later. Early on, the thing that moves the needle is being specific about what you do, telling enough people, pricing it properly and being easy to check up on when your name gets mentioned in somebody’s kitchen.
The eleventh customer is a marketing problem. The first ten are a conversation problem, and you can start having those tomorrow.