When you start a business, you will only be able to make your margins if you keep your customers keep coming and are happy. The more customers you have, the more the returns. To get more customers coming, advertising is the way to go. Using electronic, print, audio or visual media will get the word to many people, a good percentage will convert to client and depending on how you handle your business it will determine how many of the converted will come back. If you do not have some lose cash, advertising on the above may choke your business to death.

All hope is not lost though. If you do what you do well, you will not need to spend even a coin to advertise. All you need to do is to satisfy your client and they will come back and do more than that spread the word. I was walking in the CBD and I met 2 different ladies in two different streets. One was stopped by a stranger and asked ‘where do you do your hair’ and the person who asked went ahead to ask for the hairdressers contacts. The other was more or less the same as the above just that the matter in question was the dress.

I have done business for close to 10 years now. In the 10 years I have had to make very hard decisions. There is a group of friends who all work for a local bank. Every so often they organize weekends out of town after their Saturday half day shift. The first time they called, my driver fell ill and I decided to play driver for that day. Destination was Embu. My patience was tried and it was that which made me respect and appreciate even more every driver who would go out and come back sane. The things they go through just because client has ‘paid’ We went to Embu and back the next day. We had 3 million stopovers. In Embu they went all out club hopping till morning. All this time I did not complain. I did what was expected of me. We came back to Nairobi and parted ways. The 9 in the van were very happy. I kid you not; they have all brought business back to me. It has even gotten to places where they call and request for me personally to take them. Business was good. They were good clients. Then one day, they were planning to go to Gilgil. Due to unavoidable circumstances, they couldn’t afford to pay the rate I had given them earlier. They shared their position well in advance and since they were good clients I offered the transport services at a loss. The amount they could pay did not even meet the total costs but because of the business relationship, I took the bullet this once.

It is the small things which really matter. For instance one of the ladies once told me that the reason she was so impressed is that after one of their tours as I was dropping people off, she had too much luggage, I offered to take her home at no extra cost instead of dropping her at the matatu terminals. It was completely out of my way. Nowadays when they call and I don’t have any car available, they tell me to figure it out. They will not call someone else and will let me sort them out because they trust me and my work. That group of 9 made my penetration in the non corporate side of transport services easy and since they could vouch for me I was even able to get corporate gigs from their places of work.

Now, if I was to get the bank to give me transport services contract, I could have had to know someone or bid. In this case, I got it because not 1 not 2 not 3 but 9 of the employees gave an honest independent unsolicited account of our work.

I did my work well, they spread the word and now I am enjoying the fruits of my labour as I cash in more from the more referrals coming my way. What people say about you and your business may get people to want to come or stay away from your business.