The Pain
As a small business owner, it is a pain to generate invoices, send them, track them, and collect on them. I see it with myself, and I see it with people who invoice me. I also see lots of people having piles of unpaid invoices because they are too busy working to generate more invoices. That hurts their cash-flow position.
The Product
I would like to see an online invoicing product that lets me fill in an invoice online, then sends it to the customer electronically, and offers the customer the option to pay online via a PayPal or Google Checkout or credit card button, or to print off a copy and pay it the old fashioned way. I would also like the option of offering valuable discounts, coupons or credits towards future purchases for prompt payment online. (For example you get 3% of this purchase off your next purchase if you pay in full within 5 business days).
Of course, I would then also want stuff like prefilled invoices for regular customers, invoices for monthly payments, invoice tracking, reporting, rollups, analytics, invoice number management, etc.
The Pitch
This is the pitch I would use to the target market of small business owners for the product nominally called SBInvoicing:
Attention business owners. Are you tired of spending your scarce and valuable time grinding out invoices, billing your customers, collecting their money, and depositing cheques? Are you tired of your unpaid invoices piling up because you are too busy working hard to generate more invoices and all the while your payroll and operating costs aren't going away? Are you also leery of using online solutions because they don't quite do what you want, or because they are really hard to use? SBInvoicing can help. This product lets you design an invoice with the information that is important to you. You can start with a canned invoice template and change it up from there. This invoice can be printed off and used the old fashioned way, or you can send the invoice to your customer electronically. They can then print it off and pay you the old fashioned way or they can pay you electronically using PayPal or Google Checkout or an online credit card.
How does this help you? By offering electronic payment as an option, you avoid the time and expense of sending a letter, tracking the invoices, and depositing cheques. Secondly, an electronic payment with a short time-limited discount offer is much more likely to get paid off earlier, which means that your money spends more time floating your business instead of your customer's business.
Why not sign up for the free 60 day trial to see if this product is right for you? There is no obligation to continue beyond the end, and that should give you enough time to see all time you can save and how many of your unpaid invoices you can reclaim . Contact us at www.sbinvoicing.kom or 1-800-555-1234 to sign up.
This pitch will, of course, have to be sent to small business owners by some kind of targeted advertising channel. If you start this product, you'll have to figure it out. If I start it, I'll have to figure it out.
Conclusion
I would love to see a product like this because it would help out a lot of hard-working business folks get more reward for their efforts.
