The next series of posts will cover how to maximize your resources even further and multiply your results.
In this first of the four-part series we’ll cover:
Calling All Cars
Finding and securing new clients can be exhausting and expensive. How much does it cost to secure a new customer? One way to reduce marketing costs is to work with other business contacts as affiliates to help you find new clients. Look for professionals who establish solid, secure and positive relationships with their clients. Also, ensure that their products or services are not directly competitive with yours.
Contact prospective partners and talk with them about helping promote your products to their clients. Always offer them a commission on the sales that come from their client lists. This can be done as a cross-partnership where you help each other’s customers find solutions to their problems by referring them to your contacts and vice versa.
Make sure to include these key points in your proposal:
· Ensure that your products don’t compete with theirs.
· The partnership will not take away from their current or future sales.
· The partnership will increase their profits.
· They won’t have to do nor spend anything on the partnership.
· You will produce all needed marketing materials.
· You will offer an unconditional guarantee on all your products.
Bring ‘Em Out of the Woodwork
Take the time to put together a solid referral system and you’ll draw new customers out of the woodwork through everyone you already know. You can start doing this through first showing all your current clients how much you care about them.
First make sure you truly have top-notch products and service. Train your staff to put the customer first. Deal with problems immediately. Make your customers feel like kings and queens.
Create a referral rewards system. Celebrate your customers and the value of the products they have purchased from you.
Look for your advocates – those customers who are so delighted they trumpet you and your product to the world. Then ask them for referrals. Thank them and reward them for bringing in new customers. Then look at the rest of your customers and ask them for referrals as well. Make it a requirement for doing business with you.
A referral-based business needs little or no outside marketing efforts. It runs on its own with your happy customers pulling it along the tracks for you.
Black Sheep Clients
One of the best ways to rejuvenate business is to find your stray clients and offer them something amazing. First you need to understand why they strayed and are no longer purchasing from you. There are generally three reasons why customers/clients leave. They are:
- Unrelated causes that have nothing to do with you
- A problem with their last purchase
- No longer benefit from your products or services
The best way to bring these clients back is to simply contact them. If you don’t make the first move, they’ll never come back. Make an appointment to visit them or call them if it’s not possible to meet in person.
Talk openly with your stray clients. Let them know you noticed they were no longer working with you and that you’d like to talk with them about their experiences with you and how you can improve things to work together again. Take the time to make them feel special and work hard to make sure their experiences with you going forward are the best ever.
A disgruntled customer who has been delighted by having their concerns taken seriously and addressed promptly can turn from a black hole running you and your business down into one of your best advocates. All you have to do is cherish them.
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Next time we’ll talk about the next three areas of multiplying your resources. They include: Olympic-Size Sales Staff, Open Sea Fishing and Call for Back-Up.If you need help working through any of these or the previous areas, try our FREE test drive to work with one of our amazing business coaches.
Larry Earnhart
Alchemy Business Consulting
March 18, 2014
