Entering the Relationship: Finding and Assessing Microenterprise Training Clients

A microenterprise program's initial contacts with its clients set the stage for the success and effectiveness of the relationship – for both the client and the program. Just as program clients' marketing efforts and initial interactions with potential customers are critical to their ability to build a customer base, so too do they build the program's success. The messages that programs send to potential clients about the types of individuals they want to serve and the types of products or services they offer, strongly influence who, in fact, chooses to become and stay a client. Similarly, the degree to which the products or services offered reflect the demands of program clients and their readiness for business development is critical to a program's success and effectiveness.

Ultimately, the ability of a microenterprise program to achieve best practice – in terms of the quality and scale of its service delivery – will depend on the extent to which it understands and meets customers' needs. Because the initial stages of the relationship are so critical to future success, this module focuses on three aspects of the earliest phases of interaction between a microenterprise training and technical assistance program and its clients – the stages in which the program and its customers learn about each other. They are:

• Market research: The process by which a program gathers information about the characteristics and needs of the individuals that it serves (or seeks to serve), and uses that information to shape program products and services.
  
• Marketing and outreach: The process by which a microenterprise program informs potential clients about the services that it offers, and enlists their participation in the program.
  
• Client assessment: The tools or strategies that a program uses, together with the client, to determine the client's readiness to engage in business ownership, and to determine the set of microenterprise services necessary to help him or her reach that goal.

This module begins with an assessment tool intended to help practitioners identify how well their current practices reflect best practice industry-wide. This tool also serves as a guide to help readers identify which parts of the module might be most useful.

Each section of the volume begins with an overview of the three program components (market research, marketing and outreach, and client assessment), and presents a set of lessons and findings, based on research conducted by FIELD and others, regarding the best practices in use within the industry today. Each section also is accompanied by a set of tools, found in the last section of the module, which practitioners can use to adapt these best practices to their own institutions.

Volume 1: Entering the Relationship: Finding and Assessing Microenterprise Training Clients (PDF)

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