Business Mentor NY – a program of Empire State Development

Program Update

Mentees and Mentors,

We appreciate your interest in mentorship. Please be advised that after March 31, 2024, the Business Mentor NY Program will cease to operate. However, you can continue to access mentoring services by contacting Entrepreneurship Assistance Centers in your area at esd.ny.gov/eac-directory to obtain one-on-one counseling with your current business idea or small business.

If you would like to continue offering pro bono mentoring services to entrepreneurs or small business owners, please email us at nylovessmbiz@esd.ny.gov with your core business skills, experience or education and your preferred service area.

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Do I need to spend a lot of time and effort on website in the very beginning?

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4 answers

If you don't have a website, how are you advertising what you do? There are many social networking platforms and perhaps these will suffice until you have time, energy, finances to develop a functional website.

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The answer is: it really depends. At the beginning, the primary function of your website is to: A) Establish credibility (they're professional enough to have a webpage), B) Eliminate unneeded objections from making a sale (allows prospects to research you and acts as a sales / presentation aid) and C) Help funnel new prospects into leads through contact forms, basic local searchability, etc.

For most people, the answer is going to be: yes invest in your website, as much as you can, right away. If your business is primarily b2b and direct sales oriented, then you can get away without putting major effort into the website IF you are a real pro on the phone and in person at giving an amazing presentation, establishing credibility and trust, in this case take those funds and invest them into your basic sales funnel. Most people don't have this skill set right away, and need the extra help to land clients. If you're B2C then you definitely need to have the website up as fast as possible.

As an example, I do a lot of web development for clients, which entails creating websites for them in most cases. However, when it came to my own website it kept getting pushed off and pushed off and pushed off because the work load kept increasing. I had a basic site for a while, then took it down, then never got around to getting it back up and still managed to grow. However, I was able to get away with this because of an extensive direct sales background to eliminate any credibility objections and honestly, I probably even still lost out on major growth by not having my website up. Had the website been put up from the start at the same quality I produce for clients, I could have potentially closed twice as much - all I did was make it harder on myself and my process. Plus the web developer not having their own website in order is just about as comically hilariously bad as the mechanic who works on custom amazing cars and drives a beat-up car.

Bottom line: if you're in any business model other than one that does a lot of direct sales AND have extensive cold calling experience, then YES you should invest as much as you can into your website at the start. Even if you're in a direct selling type business that's heavily lead oriented, you should really STILL invest as much as you can afford up front into the website. You're just hurting yourself otherwise.

For $500-$1,000 you can get a pretty functional, professional looking site that covers the basics and servers the basic functionality. That's probably where I'd start. More sophisticated than that can wait until cash flow / lead flow appropriate.

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