What do I need to know about starting an on demand inspection company?

As your targets are SME companies with 3 or more developers you can use LinkedIn premium search for finding the list of top executives of the companies and send them in-mails for partnership! Another great source for you could be outsourcing websites where US development companies are represented and do testing for their clients periodically for various projects! Please call for more detailed information of the best B2B sources for you! I have got also some availability to the actual lead generation job for you with a reasonable hourly rate. I have been working as a sales manager in this industry for over 4 years and have got large databases of B2B clients that you will be interested in!

There are a few online B2B marketplaces in the US to consider and which one you go with will depend on your requirements. Amazon Business: This is a very legitimate option now as Amazon looks to expand its offering away from just a B2C model, with a greater focus on B2B. You can offer unique discounts for businesses and a host of other features to drive your B2B business. ThomasNet: This is more for a traditional supplier/purchaser business relationship but may be a worthwhile avenue if you sell high volume or recurring use items Alibaba and eWorldTrade: Both Chinese based business so I am unsure of any implications on trading here from the US however there are a huge number of US businesses looking to buy on here and so they are atill some of the largest B2B platforms.

I've been in ecommerce for over a decade and have co-founded and helped start companies collectively driving over $10MM in ecommerce sales. I've consulted for Fortune 500 ecommerce stores. Here's my advice if you're just getting started without a big budget. Note: Some of this is copied from my answer to a similar question. #1) PROVE THE ASSUMPTION: Start with a dropshipper's existing products to figure out what sells best before you spend money on manufacturing and warehousing. Amazon is perfect for this - they will pay you 4%-10% to promote 253,000,000 products (http://bit.ly/1q2M85R) - you can sign up at https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/ Alternately, get very small amounts of the product (maybe even just buy some from a competitor) and try selling them on ebay and amazon. Nothing hurts more than having $50,000 of imported product gathering dust in your fulfillment warehouse while listening to a voicemail from a debt collector. #2) SOURCING There are several options here. Many people prefer Alibaba.com. Warning - if you use Alibaba, you are stepping into a tank of pirahnas. There are more scam "manufacturers" on Alibaba than real ones. Use Escrow or AliSecure Pay if you buy. If the supplier says they only take T/T, Western Union, Moneygram - just say no! I prefer American Made when possible. If you're like me, try Ariba's Discovery Service - http://bit.ly/1q2NFZu - which will allow you to find suppliers with a physical presence in the USA. Note: Many things can be made on demand (someone purchases, one gets made and shipped) instead of in 500+ manufacturing runs. Start there if you can - Books on CreateSpace.com, Clothes on CafePress.com, Playing Cards on MakePlayingCards.com, etc - to test out your exact product. If you decide to source by purchasing product in bulk, find a fulfillment company to store and fulfill (ship) your orders. Amazon does this - http://services.amazon.com/content/fulfillment-by-amazon.htm - but they might decide to crush you like a bug if you're successful (http://bit.ly/1q2V7DX). Other fulfillment companies for e-commerce include http://www.shipwire.com/ and http://www.webgistix.com/ #3) LAUNCH YOUR SITE This is an entire topic in itself. One of the fastest ways I know for newbies to start in e-commerce is with a SquareSpace.com store. Other options include GoDaddy.com and BigCommerce.com. If you can stand to use the templates they provide instead of trying to customize them, you'll save yourself a lot of hassle and expense - customization usually looks terrible unless a designer/coder was hired to do the work. If you do customize, find someone on odesk.com or elance.com. If you're not hard up for money, just build a custom store from the start. If you can't do that, save up some money and then go for it. Focus on increasing conversion rate - for every 100 visitors, get 1 to buy. Then 2. Then 4. Then 8 (8%). #4) MARKET Figure out where your competition is advertising. Are they getting free, "organic" SEO results on Google? Using social media to drive billions of dollars of sales? (NOTE: That was a joke - don't count on social media as the nucleus of your marketing campaign. Please!) Are they paying for Google ads ("PPC"), buying email lists, using strategic partnerships for promotion, relying on shopping portals, using banner advertising, or something else entirely? There's probably a good reason - figure out what it will take to play in those waters. At the same time, try to find a small enough niche that you can win in it. #5) BEWARE Be careful about artsy things. If someone is attracted to something artistic, it's usually because there is a story behind the art for them, or because it's cheap. If you're going to try to sell artistic things, you may want to consider doing some serious research first about who has been successful in that area. Look at etsy.com to see handmade artsy items (very cool). #6) WORTH A LOOK Worth checking out as you start your journey: Art.com, yessy.com, Artfire.com, ArtPal.com #7) DEEP FOUNDATION If you need help, reach out for a 15 minute call and we'll discuss a go-to-market strategy specific to your goals.

Start by getting a doctor to 'sponsor' you - to recommend it to their patients. Give them a few for free so their patients can try it out - which will get the physician sold on it. Meanwhile, also start reaching out to the right people in the appropriate insurance companies through LinkedIn and via email. You may also want to connect with people who have been in Insurance - like Jeff, Daniel, Craig, or Liran here: https://clarity.fm/search/insurance When you reach out to executives in insurance, keep it personal, and tell them you are looking for their advice. I have a 12 step system to walk you through the sales process once you get a call lined up, but to get you started you could read The Little Red Book of Selling (quick read) or The New Strategic Selling (dense but invaluable). SNAP Selling is good too. Remember, this is all about relationships, so start with personal. InMails recently changed to make it easy for you to keep costs down for outreach. As long as you get a high response rate, your cost of $10 per unanswered InMail will go a long way. If you can't use InMails, try sending samples with testimonials and call them to discuss the day after you expect them to receive it. Use FedEx sign on delivery to increase the chance it gets to them instead of a mail room or secretary.

I want to begin by assuring you I don't want to rain on your parade. Now... Ideas are a dime a dozen. Execution is what is critical, and hardly anyone does execution well. NDAs are nice but they won't protect your idea from being ripped off in the medium term at the latest, if it's a winner. Your best protection is that execution thing...people sure like to talk, but they don't like to Do. Do NOT have your prototype made in China. It will take months in shipping back and forth, misunderstandings, finding the right manufacturer, and other difficulties. Do not embroil yourself in that mess. Absolutely you should get a prototype made first. Will it cost you 10-100X what the final version will cost? Of course. Do you need something to show investors, suppliers, channel partners, retail outlets? Yes. All a patent does is protect your idea for awhile from being duplicated in the exact way you are executing it. I can't go make a sticky-note that uses a strip of lightweight glue to hold the paper onto something. 3M has that patent. But I could find another method for holding the paper on, and that would be fine. Worrying about protecting your idea is kind of a waste of time. You should do what you can afford and what makes sense in terms of your time invested to accomplish a level of protection, but don't let this be all-consuming. It's just not worth it. Get out there and make your product and find paths to market. That's what will really pay off. Someone WILL copy your product sooner or later if it's a money-maker. That's why developing great branding is so important: keep the knock-offs in the knock-off category in your buyer's brain, and you as the top quality original.