Go Paperless and Grow-David Durick, gotoBilling.com
On Tuesday, we heard from David Durick of gotoBilling, www.gotobilling.com. This business experienced a 307% volume increase during the recession so I sat down with David to get his insights for other small business owners.
Here is the rest of that interview and more of David’s tips:
What kind of marketing and publicity activities have helped GTB grow quickly and why?
The Web and feet on the street. Even though we are a completely Web-based application and we market 
using the Internet, we have many independent resellers. That’s gives us a huge advantage to market and sell two different ways.
That I think is the key to us having grown quickly. Having both channels of sales maximizes our exposure to potential customers. One way is they find us on the Web and by word of mouth from existing customers. The other is by personal introduction and prospecting by our independent sales people.
What tips do you have for other entrepreneurs who want to go paperless?
Research, Research, Research. And it’s pretty easy now with the Internet and Google. I recommend any entrepreneur or businessperson periodically take time to search the Internet for products and services that can all be provided via the Internet.
Our suite of products, for the most part, helps a business go paperless with their payments, accounting, invoicing and contracts. For other products like phone systems, you can go Voice over IP and the list of things you can do completely paperless or virtual is growing as more and more companies provide you, in essence, a complete virtual office.
Is there anything you would like to add?
I think there’s a mix of things you have to do to be successful. One is to make sure you are looking at what the competition is doing from a feature and pricing standpoint and be on good footing to compete.
Also, you can charge more than the competition if you have a superior product or service that’s not being filled. From there it’s a bit of working on differentiating what you do and then market, market, market and keep marketing.
Our experience is that we have the best little product that no one knows about. If we could reach every business in the U.S. this year and pitch what we have, we’d have half a million customers.
We know it’s all about getting to your potential customers no matter how you figure out how to do it.
If you are in business then you have to prove there’s a need for your product or service.
From there, it’s about getting exposure to more of your customers. This may seem simple, but it really boils down to that. It might take a lot of testing, trying and playing with different channels and ideas, but really, that’s it.
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Thanks David! That’s great advice! For more information about gotoBilling, please visit www.gotobilling.com.
And if you have questions about your public relations and SEO copywriting efforts, please let me know here or at www.rembrandtwrites.com. I’d love to hear from you!
June 18th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
I agree, more and more people are wanting to go paperless with their businesses, and are always happy to have an opportunity that helps makes their processes easy and organized (such as online storage of scanned documents). It’s just so much more convenient.
I also agree that they do need to really research. It is important to know what you need and make sure you find an application that has functions and abilities that are required. Not every program fits every business. There are a lot of places to look, but it will be worth it to take your time and make an informed decision.
June 19th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Thanks for the comment! I agree with both of your points. I think we are part of a revolution of how you do business by doing it all paperless and electronic and all online in the cloud with the web. It’s an exciting time and really just the beginning of a new way to do all your computer/business remotely.
You are right, there are plenty of other companies offering great products in this same realm. Our zero-to-nine blog at gotoBilling was designed to be a great forum for reviewing, interviewing, and talking about a lot of these other companies and their products. Basically another great resource for business to have where we can share some of the web’s best tools and products out there.
June 20th, 2009 at 7:16 am
I send all my invoices via email with pdf attachment if possible. Works well and saves paper - what could be better. Many of my customers are asking for direct deposit of payments too.