A great business idea for a person who likes getting out and walking is a flyer delivery service.
This type of service delivers advertising flyers for local restaurants, real estate agents, grocery stores, and any other business that looks to the general public for their customers.
To help get you started, this article will discuss options to work alone or with others, what areas to operate in, how to price your services, and how to approach potential clients.
The first decision you need to make is what form you want your business to take.
You can do all the work yourself or operate with a partner or two where all of you are responsible for finding clients as well as delivering the flyers.
You might want to make an arrangement with a partner where one of you will do the delivery while the other concentrates on acquiring new business.
A more formal alternative would be for you to run the business and acquire the clients, and then direct employees to do the actual delivery.
As to the question of what area you will operate in, this may not be as simple as it seems.
Will you deliver to apartment complexes or single homes or both? You can usually deliver more flyers in less time at an apartment complex but many have a restricted access policy.
Before you approach any potential client you should have already researched these areas so you are sure of what you can offer.
Knowing what to charge for their services is what people usually have the most problem with, but this does not have to be the case.
Try to think about the whole thing as a series of connected bits of logic.
You need to charge enough so you make enough money to stay in business but cannot charge so much you will not get any clients.
You need to decide on an hourly rate you are comfortable with.
For the sake of argument, let's say it is thirty dollars per hour.
If you can deliver to about 190 homes in that hour than you know you need to charge about sixteen cents per flyer.
If you break every job down into its individual components and determine how much you need to make per hour, you should be able to come up with a pretty good idea of what to charge per piece.
Do not fall into the trap of charging too little though.
If you want to stay in business, you must charge enough to make a profit.
Once you decide where you will operate and how much you will charge, it is now time to approach potential clients.
Make up a brochure or a flyer describing the services you offer with pricing information included.
You may be tempted to leave this last out, but business owners are likely to make a quick decision whether to use your service and leaving out the most important item they need to know will give them a perfect excuse to say "no thanks.
" As in all sales copy, remember to discuss how they will benefit from hiring you.
They are not interested in what you do; they are only interested in how they will benefit from what you do.
With your sales literature in hand, and with extras to pass out, stop at every business that could conceivably use your service.
Start with local restaurants, especially ones with home delivery such as pizza and Chinese.
Real estate agents and grocery stores are also good since they are likely to need your service.
Contact chiropractic, medical, and dental offices, as well as hair and nail salons, day spas, even hardware stores.
Use your imagination and show each of these businesses how you can help provide them with the one thing they really want - more customers.