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TRUMP UNIVERSITY WEALTH BUILDING 101

Step 7: Capture That First Magic Customer

Now you are ready for the big time—capturing your fi rst customer! When
you do, everyone thinks differently about you and your business. You are no
longer a development-stage company. You are an early-stage operating com-
pany. You had your vision from the beginning. You went through the many,
and often, tortuous, steps in the entrepreneurial process, and now it is all

coming to fruition. Before your first customer, you were untried, but now,
that one customer brings everything together. Your credibility goes sky high.
I can recall vividly the exact moment in my first business when I captured

my first customer. An honest-to-goodness purchasing agent sent an order for
$2,700 to build a prototype for their company. Words cannot describe my
exuberance. I began to notice the change in my own focus. I was not starting
the company any more; I was thinking about how to fill this order and how to

capture more customers.

If that first paying customer is so magical, how can you capture him?
Brainstorm. Bring together a group of imaginative, positive, and willing
stakeholders and friends to help you invent ways to capture your fi rst cus-
tomer. Here are examples:

• Use “guerrilla marketing” to get your fi rst customer. This term refers
2
to using inexpensive, unusual, brash, and visible publicity methods to
gain a “huge bang for the buck.” Personally hand out brochures and

flyers; get referrals from friends, colleagues, or other contacts; spend
money on an effective marketing and advertising campaign.
• Customize the product for the customer with no obligation on her
part. Make it worth her while. Tell her that if she likes the product or
service, and places the order, you want to feature her testimonial in a
publication.

• Take the first order at the most nominal price you can afford. If you
have a retail store, discount 50 percent off the list price to the fi rst 100
customers. Offer a free trial for one month, with no obligation to buy.
Give serious guarantees: money back, no ifs, ands, or buts.
• Use the concept of the sales funnel. For every 100 possible leads that
go into the mouth of the funnel, if 10 percent are interested—and
only one becomes a purchase order—you have succeeded. If you can
improve your conversion rate at each step, you are on your way to a
real success.
• Harness your unstoppable personal power—whatever you have to do
to get that fi rst customer.

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