March 7th, 2010
Before ramping up your marketing when sales are disappointing, take a step back and ask yourself, “Do I know what my market really, really wants?” Being able to answer that question is the key to growing your business. By focusing on what people want, rather than on what you hope to sell them, you can begin to see the kind of success you desire.
If you suspect you’re wasting time by marketing something people don’t really want, here are some principles to ponder:
People buy what they want, not what you think they need.
You’re going to get a lot of resistance to your marketing if someone thinks they’re being shoehorned into buying what they don’t want. No matter how loudly you proclaim your product’s benefits, your market won’t respond if they don’t want the product. To continue doing so is a lot like speaking a different language and shouting to be understood.
People need to feel good about what they’ve bought.
One way to zero in on what your market wants is to develop empathy with that group of people. You must connect emotionally with how they feel about purchasing. When you’ve put yourself in someone else’s shoes, you begin to understand how they feel. What are their hopes and dreams? What do they fear? What keeps them awake at night?
If you’ve done a good job of pinpointing a target market, you should be able to learn these things easily. Until you do, you’re wasting time on marketing that won’t work, because you don’t yet know what products they’ll feel good about buying.
People buy products when they feel they’ve been understood.
No matter what logical explanation someone can give for buying a product, underneath it is the belief they’ve been understood. Someone knew enough about who they were to make a product that fits them.
So, how will you know when you’ve learned what your market really, really wants? You’ll know, because that’s when it all becomes easier. There’s no need to push or shove someone into buying, because they want what you’re offering. It will be such a revelation to learn how easy selling your products can be when they’re what your market wants.
Once that happens, you’ll begin to hear from your clients how grateful they are for your products. Everything about how you do business will be transformed, because you’ve taken the time to learn what your market wants. You’ve made the effort to step into their shoes and understand what makes them tick. And that effort pays off in products that really meet the needs of your market.
So, if you’re still struggling to sell your products, or it feels as though you’re pushing people into buying what they don’t want, it’s time to take inventory. Here are five questions to answer before trying again to sell your products:
-
What is most important to the people in my target market?
-
What problems keep them awake at night?
-
What is the desired end result they’re hoping for?
-
Does my product help them solve their problems and reach their goals?
-
Do I need to change my products so that they do?
The process of stepping closer to your target market and understanding that group of people may take time and effort, but it will definitely be worth it. Once you know the people in your market very well, the products you offer them will meet their needs. And that’s what people really, really want.
Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. She publishes a free, weekly newsletter for trainers, speakers, coaches, consultants, complementary therapists and solo professionals. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com
Tags: attracting clients, buyer behavior, chasing clients, Customer Loyalty, customer loyalty concepts, Market share, Marketing, Marketing Strategies, sales strategies, targeted marketing, targeting clients, types of buyers
Posted in Business Networking, Business Plans, Law Of Attraction, Marketing, Niche Marketing, Online Marketing, Sales Motivation, Strategies To Keep Good Customers, target audience | No Comments »
February 18th, 2010
If there’s one challenge new entrepreneurs share, it’s the need to close more sales. They work very hard, but never seem to meet with enough people to reach their desired goals. There’s a better way to meet your goals and it’s called “sales automation.” Once you learn to automate some or all of the sales process, your closing ratio, and your income, will increase dramatically.
Getting Past Your Objections to Automation
When we’re talking about “sales automation,” it simply means putting your sales process into a format that doesn’t require your physical presence. That may mean writing a great letter that causes prospects to want to buy without needing to meet with you. It could also mean setting up a website and email system that reaches out to prospects and makes your offer in a compelling way that leads them to buy.
Right now, you might be saying, “Oh, no, selling my product requires face-to-face interaction!” Here’s the thing— there are only so many hours in a day and so many prospects you can meet with personally. If your company’s success remains tied to your ability to shake hands with every prospect, you’re severely limiting your future income.
Instead of being the bottleneck to your company’s success, find a way to package what you’re offering so that the sales process can be automated. When you do, you’ll be on the path to a big jump in income. Learning to use automation tools like sales letters, webpages and brochures as your sales force will increase your closing percentage exponentially.
Packaging Your Offer for Automatic Sales
The first step, is packaging your product so it fits in an automated process. Even if you’re the product, as coaches, consultants and other professionals often are, what you’re offering the client can still be packaged.
What do you say when sitting face-to-face with a prospect? Pull that together into a package that can be presented over and over without your actual involvement, and you’ve got the key to automated sales.
Get started by creating a sales letter that focuses on your product and the need it meets in your target audience.
There’s a lot of discussion about how long online sales letters can be, but it’s important to remember you must answer every question when you aren’t physically in front of the prospect. Otherwise, they’ll simply move on to the next offer.
So, practice writing your prospects a letter that answers every possible objection and points them toward a sale. Open that letter on your website, and make sure the sales process is completely automated. A well-written online sales letter can become a powerful “sales force,” automatically selling your product without any involvement on your part.
There are other ways to make sales more automatic. A carefully written brochure that moves the prospect from initial interest to “I’m ready to buy!” can eliminate the need for personal sales call.
Moving the people toward a sale really doesn’t require being eyeball-to-eyeball with them. It simply takes packaging what you do in a compelling message. Move past your own objections to sales automation and let it help you grow your business.
By putting your products in front of more people, without requiring your own time and effort, a good automated sales process can increase your sales dramatically. Find a way to package your product and increase your exposure dramatically through sales automation.
Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. She publishes a free, weekly newsletter for trainers, speakers, coaches, consultants, complementary therapists and solo professionals. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com
Tags: buyer behavior, Customer Loyalty, Marketing, Marketing Strategies, sales automation, Sales Copy, sales strategies, sales strategy, Selling, Success Secrets, targeted marketing
Posted in Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, Internet Business, Marketing, Niche Marketing, Online Marketing, Sales Motivation, target audience | No Comments »
January 14th, 2010
There’s a fact that can’t be escaped if your business runs on sales: the majority of people won’t respond to your first contact. Instead of being discouraged by that fact, though, it’s time to start doing the one thing that’s sure to increase your sales. Developing an effective follow-up strategy will put you ahead of your competition and on the road to more income.
You may be saying, “Of course you should always follow up!” but are you doing that in your own business? It’s surprising how many sales-based businesses throw away income by failing to respond when someone raises their hand in response to marketing.
Consistent follow-up has always been a factor in sales success, but today, more than ever, people are hesitant to hand over their cash until they trust you. That’s why establishing a follow-up strategy is so crucial. If you don’t respond consistently when someone expresses interest, why would they trust you with their business later?
If you aren’t converting enough prospects to customers, it’s time to review your follow-up strategy. You may find that changing one thing about the way you respond to interested prospects is all it takes to get your business back on track.
For example, a business owner recently complained she was spending far too much on advertising, without seeing a lot of results. A quick look at her prospect database revealed she’d had quite a bit of initial interest to her marketing, but wasn’t following up consistently. Because of this, she was constantly in search of new clients.
To turn things around, she chose a few dozen prospects who had expressed some interest but had never bought. Simply by reconnecting with this group, she generated an impressive amount of income in just a few days. Is there potential income trapped within your own client database for lack of follow-up?
Once you’ve admitted you’re not following up as you should, there are four effective ways to enhance your strategy:
1. Set up a Process: You may keep telling yourself you’ll find time in the future to stop and do your backlogged follow-up. Guess what? That time never comes unless you map out a strategy for follow-up, and then automate the process as much as possible.
2. Lead Them to the Next Step: They’ve raised their hands to show their interested, so what happens next? They may be asking for more information, but your follow-up response should always lead them toward buying. Invite them to sign up for your call, hire your services or buy your product, but don’t simply tell them more about your products!
3. Vary Your Approach: If all you ever do is tell the customer you’re still in business and then ask if they’re ready to buy, you’re going to wear out your welcome. Increase the value of doing business with your company each time you follow up with a prospect, and you’re more likely to be on their minds when they’re ready to buy.
4. Design Marketing for the Customer: It might be more convenient to do one-size-fits-all marketing, but it won’t generate what you want in sales. Clients have different triggers, so map out your marketing follow-up plan so that includes several trigger points. For example, some people respond to the promise of results, while others need the pressure of an expiring offer before they’ll buy. Planning progressive follow-up that touches on several trigger points will improve your client conversions.
You’ve worked hard to create products, develop marketing and research your target audience. Don’t let the ball land at your feet by failing to follow-up with interested prospects. Keep that momentum going by developing an effective follow-up strategy. The payoff will be more sales, greater income and a lot less work to build your client base.
Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com
Tags: attracting clients, buyer behavior, chasing clients, Customer Loyalty, customer loyalty concepts, Customer Retention, Market share, Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Personal Productivity, sales strategies, Success Secrets, targeted marketing, types of buyers
Posted in Business Plans, Business Success, Customer Loyalty, Customer Retention, Marketing, Motivation, Niche Marketing, Personal Productivity, Success Secrets, Systems | 4 Comments »
January 1st, 2010
Going through the work of identifying your target audience, really getting to know them and developing products to meet their needs can be very rewarding. If you want it to be financially rewarding, you’ll also need to learn the art of making repeat sales. Repeat sales generate eighty percent of the profits for a successful business. When you’re ready to move beyond the one-time transaction, here are some ideas for mining the gold of repeat business.
Breaking the “Find New Customers” Cycle
It’s difficult to watch someone work very hard to build a business, only to leave the additional income from repeat business on the table. That’s what happens when you’re constantly chasing new customers and making one-time sales to them, rather than offering new products and services to existing clients.
If you think about it, it’s actually easier to sell a product to a satisfied client, isn’t it? So it doesn’t make sense to get caught in the cycle of “go out and find more clients and sell them the same old product.” In order to boost your income considerably, you must, instead, begin creating new products that meet the needs of your existing clients.
Once you make up your mind to pursue additional business with existing clients, you can step off the never-ending cycle of chasing new clients and watch your income move up at the same time.
Learning What Your Clients Need
You may be asking yourself, “But how do I know what my existing clients need?” You can actually use the same process that you used to create your original products. Here are some helpful steps:
• Look at your client base as a target market.
• What questions are those existing clients asking?
• What additional needs continue to be unmet after they buy your product?
• What add-on products complement your original offerings?
• How could your product line be expanded naturally to meet more needs?
Here’s an example that illustrates how a one-product company can create add-on sales to its existing customers. A hypnotherapist specializes in smoking cessation hypnosis. She has lots of clients who come to her for that service, but once they stop smoking, she doesn’t ever see them again. She’s spending a lot of time and money in marketing to attract new clients.
Because her existing clients know her smoking cessation sessions work, they’re the perfect prospects for additional services. By listening to her current clients’ concerns, she learns many of them are ready to take on new challenges in life, now that they’ve quit smoking. She offers to help with visualization sessions so they can focus on their new goals.
By expanding how she sees her existing client base, and focuses on their needs, she has opened the door to a whole new level of income. You can do the same thing. If necessary, take some time off from marketing to new target audiences and turn your complete focus on your existing customer base.
Develop the habit of listening to your clients’ questions and determining what needs still exist. Turn those needs into products that fill them. Not only will your clients be grateful, you’ll also see your income multiply substantially.
You will always have to do some marketing to bring in new clients, but there’s far less pressure when you’re making repeat sales of new products to existing clients. Once you stop chasing new clients and focus on building more products to help your customer base, your whole business will turn around. Learn how to mine the gold of repeat sales to build a strong, sustainable business and a solid base of satisfied customers.
Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com
Tags: attracting clients, buyer behavior, chasing clients, Customer Loyalty, customer loyalty concepts, Customer Retention, customer service, Marketing, Marketing Strategies, sales strategies, sales strategy, targeted marketing, targeting clients, types of buyers
Posted in Business Plans, Business Success, Direct Mail, Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, List building, Marketing, Motivation, Niche Marketing, Online Marketing, Small Business Marketing | 3 Comments »
December 11th, 2009
We’ve all heard of some version of the 80/20 rule, and I love one of the alternate names for it – The Principle of Least Effort. You may have heard of this before, it’s also called the Pareto Theory or the 80:20 Correlation, but “The Principle of Least Effort” should be the name of choice for what we’re discussing, as that’s so appropriate for our marketing efforts. Of course, in marketing we want the most results for the least effort.
This isn’t laziness — it’s just good old-fashioned common sense, finding a way to maximize results with the least amount of input. That’s the basis of the 80/20 rule – 80% of situations can be attributed to 20% of the input. It can apply to so many circumstances, both business and personal.
There are quite a few versions of the 80/20 rule that have been translated into sound business advice:
• 80 percent of results come from 20 percent of efforts
• 80 percent of activity will require 20 percent of resources
• 80 percent of complaints come from 20 percent of customers
• 80 percent of usage is by 20 percent of users
• 80 percent of revenue comes from 20 percent of customers
It’s that last version that I’d like to focus on because when we look at our revenue, you’ll realize how true it is – 80% of the revenue comes from 20% of the customers and the other 20% of revenue is made up of 80% of the customers.
So, if you want to grow your business, the best way, the most sensible way, and the fastest way is to figure out who your top 20% of customers are and provide products, services and offers for those people. Now, for the other 80%, they’ll come along if they want to. If they fall by the wayside, so be it.
But focus on the 20% that will give you the 80% return on revenue.
There are three key steps to making the 80/20 rule successful for your sales.
1. Identify
Take a look at your customer base and identify your top 20%. Who’s generating the most revenues? When you do this, you’ll see that there’s a gap between your top 20% and the remaining 80%. In my business, I’m seeing that gap widen. I’m noticing a smaller group of people who are willing to pay more and more for my products and services.
2. Focus
Focus on this 20% and think about what you can do to create offers for them. Even during tough times, I’m still seeing a percentage of customers that are looking for higher value products and services. I’m also noticing an increase at the lower end in that there’s a larger group looking for the lower ticket items.
Since I’ve noticed this happening in my business, I’ve responded by creating options and opportunities for both ends of the spectrum, but less within the middle ground. I’m focusing more attention and energy to the upper end and the lower end, and if you’re seeing that in your business, that may just be the right course of action for you as well.
3. Create
So, now you’re focusing on creating low end and high end options – where do you get started? In keeping with the “Principle of Least Effort”, I would say start with the high ticket items to make more revenues on fewer transactions. This means you’re only going to need to find a few clients willing to pay top dollar, and you’re going to be earning the same amount as if you had ten times the number of customers with 1/10 of the revenue. Which makes more sense?
If you’re struggling to meet goals or just looking for a better focus for your business or marketing efforts, remember the 80/20 rule. Remember that it’s also going to be “The Principle of Least Effort”.
Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com
Tags: attracting clients, buyer behavior, chasing clients, co-incidence, Customer Loyalty, customer loyalty concepts, Personal Productivity, sales strategies, Success Secrets
Posted in Business & Money, Business Plans, Business Success, Cash Flow, How To Make Money, Marketing, Personal Productivity, Success Secrets | 4 Comments »
November 20th, 2009
Building a strong list of clients and prospects is an absolutely critical step in developing your business. It takes time and effort to refine your list, but every entrepreneur starts somewhere. Let’s discuss the three types of client lists used in direct marketing, where they originate and the value they have for your business.
Compiled Client Lists
When you rent or buy a compiled list from a list broker, they’ve pulled the names together by key attributes. For example, all the people on the list might be IT professionals. Another common way to compile lists might be firms in a geographic location with a certain number of employees.
Whatever the attributes the people on your compiled list share, the point of these lists is to narrow down the reach of your marketing to people more likely to buy your products. So that means you’ll need to focus in on what common characteristics someone who needs your product would have. Once you know that, you can order your list more accurately.
But having said that, it must also be said that compiled lists normally provide the worst response. Unless you find a particularly adept list broker, and a group of people who will absolutely be helped by your product, the return may be disappointing. You’ll have to decide if you’re willing to invest money in such a list, knowing the possible outcome.
Response List
There’s another kind of list you can invest some money renting in order to boost your marketing. That’s the response list, and that simply means it’s a group of people who have responded favorably to your type of product in the past.
They might be managers who have attended certain seminars or workshops that fill a need similar to what your product meets. Or, they could be a group that has bought a product related to yours. Another way response lists are focused is by the types of trade magazines they subscribe to.
No matter why they end up on the response list you lease, they’re more likely to respond to your marketing because they’ve shown an interest in similar products. In the past, they’ve taken action in response to someone’s marketing in a field similar to yours.
That kind of qualification can make all the difference in how successful your marketing is. Rather than simply sharing a characteristic, they’ve actually reacted favorably to products related to yours. They understand the value of what you have to offer, and it’s filled a need they have. That’s a stronger foundation for your marketing efforts.
House List
While both the compiled list and the response list can result in sales, one list you should be building from day one in your business is the house list. These are the people who have raised their hands and said “I’m interested in your product.”
They may have responded to one of your marketing campaigns. They could also be previous clients. No matter how your house list is built, it’s going to yield a much higher rate of conversion than purchased lists.
This is true because the people on your house list are already somewhat invested. They’ve already moved toward you by responding to your marketing. This is the group of people on which a successful business is built.
How many do you need on your house list to become a success? That depends on how focused you are in learning what they need. If you have a small list of people who request information every time you announce a product, your conversion rate will be increasingly higher as you fine tune your products and marketing. For a house list, it’s not the size, it’s the quality that builds business.
Once you’ve spent the time and effort to build a decent house list, you’ll learn how it feels to sell out a seminar. You’ll know what it’s like to have tremendous response from little marketing effort. That’s when the tide turns to real success for your business.
Sometimes getting started in business requires renting or purchasing client lists. If you know up front that the conversion rate won’t be as high as from your house list, you can decide how much to invest in them. As your business begins to grow as a result, definitely compile your own house list. Focus specific marketing to them in ways that have worked before. In this way, you’ll build a group of loyal clients who can put your firm’s success on autopilot.
Tags: attracting clients, buyer behavior, chasing clients, Customer Loyalty, Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Personal Productivity
Posted in Business Plans, Business Success, Customer Loyalty, Customer Retention, Marketing, Sales Leads, Strategies To Keep Good Customers, Success Secrets | 1 Comment »
November 7th, 2009
Building a solid list of people who need your products is very much like growing a crop. You must sow either time or money, and sometimes both, to reap the benefits of that kind of list. The question for you is, “What are you willing to invest to build your list?” To motivate you to make the investment, let’s first look at the benefits of doing so.
A Great List is a Long-Term Asset
You may have already made the mistake many entrepreneurs do of being short-sighted about your list. You may say to yourself, “Yes, I have thousands of names on my list now, but only the ones who bought this month are important.”
Developing and working with a list of prospects is a long-term process. Someone may raise their hand today and say, “Tell me more” but not buy until later. That interest they’ve expressed is still a valuable asset for your business.
You’ll continue to work with them and they’ll buy. By doing so, you’re building a structure that will sustain your business long-term. That business, stretched out over time, is what allows you to grow.
Here’s how it can be for you, once you’ve invested the time and effort to build your list: Suppose you develop a seminar to serve a specific need. Over time, your hard work growing your list and continuing to offer them your product pays off. Each seminar gains a little more interest from your list until, finally, you announce a seminar and it sells out immediately.
Wouldn’t that be a fantastic place to be? That type of customer response takes time to develop, but it’s well worth it. A loyal base of customers who look forward to your next product is a fabulous asset.
When you’ve built trust with your list, and they’re eager to hear what you’ve got to offer, you can return again and again to the same people to sell products. You’ve taken the time to learn what the people on your list need, and you’ve developed products to meet that need. That’s when growth really becomes automatic.
What Are You Willing to Invest?
And so, we return to our original question: “What are you willing to invest to build your list?” Are you willing to put in the hard work, even when it seems as though no one is paying attention? Do you have a long-term view of what your list can bring to your business?
If you’re discouraged now because it doesn’t seem as though the people on your list are responding, dig deeper. If your list is too small, it may take a financial investment to grow your list by buying someone else’s.
If you’re not in a financial situation to do that, you must invest the time to find ways to increase your list. The investment you make, whether in time or money, will pay off if you keep at it. What feels like spade work now is going to reap big rewards. The secret is to keep at it.
It takes time to communicate effectively with the people who need your products. It’s hard work to find ways to break into new markets and to develop new products. Learning what the people on your list need and creating those solutions isn’t always easy.
There’s nothing, however, quite like knowing there are people waiting for your next product. You can be in that position by deciding to invest whatever it takes to build the kind of list that will sustain your business long-term.
Tags: attracting clients, buyer behavior, chasing clients, Customer Loyalty, Law Of Attraction, Market share, Marketing, Marketing Strategies, sales strategies, targeted marketing, targeting clients
Posted in Advertising, Business Plans, Business Success, Customer Retention, Marketing, Niche Marketing, Personal Productivity, Success Secrets | 3 Comments »
October 22nd, 2009
Do you think your sale is complete once you’ve physically delivered a product or service to a client?
I hope your answer is no. Because, if it’s yes, you are missing out on a golden opportunity to create more revenue for your business.
Once you deliver your product or service, you are actually in the prime position to make another sale to your client. Every completed sale or delivered order should include an opportunity for your customers to purchase something else from you.
If your customers receive your product through the post office, you should include a bounce back with that order. A bounce back is an offer for another product. Something in addition to what was purchased. It doesn’t necessarily have to be your product. You could recommend a partner’s product and receive commission on that. Or it could be something of yours.
I recognized this as an area of hidden money in my own business. I sent out mailings for quite awhile which didn’t include any bounce back offers with them. Since add bounce back offers, we’ve been generating extra revenues. It was something that I only needed to set up once and now it generating additional revenue every time we deliver a product to a customer.
If you’re delivering some type of service, rather than a product, you can still implement this bounce back offer. When you’re delivering a coaching or training program to a client, this is the perfect time to approach them with additional services. This is the time when that client or customer is going to be most motivated to work with you or hire you again.
You’ve surely heard the expression “strike while the iron is hot.”
At the end of an appointment, automatically say to clients who received the training services you offer, “When shall we set up your next appointment?”
You want to be certain to get the next date on their calendar right then and there.
After you’ve done a day’s training, make sure that you’ve arranged or booked a debrief meeting with the client at the end of that day. During that debriefing you’ll be making your recommendations for what they need to do next. That is when you present them with their options and schedule for what they need next.
Whatever you do, don’t leave the building.
Don’t leave and then try to get them back on the phone two weeks later. Because you won’t be the most important thing on their mind two weeks later. When you’re physically there with a client is when you are of most importance to them. That’s your biggest opportunity to make additional sales.
Bounce backs can make a big difference to your business because they can have a cumulative effect. So, even when you think you’ve completed a sale, implementing some type of bounce back offer could significantly increase your revenue and bring out some hidden money for your business.
Tags: attracting clients, buyer behavior, chasing clients, Customer Loyalty, customer loyalty concepts, Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Personal Productivity, sales strategies, Success Secrets
Posted in Business Plans, Business Success, Cash Flow, Customer Loyalty, Marketing, Money Making Ideas, Personal Productivity, Sales Motivation, Success Secrets | 2 Comments »
October 16th, 2009
Does this scenario sound familiar? You’re working sixty plus hours a week and yet your income remains stagnant. You couldn’t be any busier, but you’re no more successful than last year. If any of this rings a bell, consider this possibility: the real problem with your productivity may be the time you spend avoiding clients instead of connecting with them. There are three steps to turning things around and having the connections with clients that build business.
Step Number One: Track How Your Time’s Being Spent
The activities on which you spend your time determine your income. If you take a hard look at how your time’s being spent, you may find a lot of busy work and very little client contact.
Are you actually talking to clients, or do they have to hunt you down? Does it take multiple calls for a client to receive a price quote? Do you actually quote prices or promise to get back later, but never do?
Whatever it is you’re doing besides connecting with clients, it probably isn’t producing income.
What’s needed is time in front of clients making your offer. Identify the ways you’re avoiding doing that and you’re ready for the next step.
Step Number Two: Make a Commitment to Connect
Once you’ve identified the things you’re not doing that could put you in touch with clients, make a commitment to change. Tell yourself that for the next week, or month or whatever time period, you’re going to return calls or finish price quotes, whatever it is you’re not doing now.
Make this commitment serious by adding some conditions. For example, you might say, “Every day this week, I will return client calls before I can eat lunch.” The point is to make it a high priority commitment in your life. Make this an iron-clad thing that you must do, because it’s so important to your business.
Step Number Three: Dig Deeper to Discover Why
If you’re still having trouble facing your clients, it’s time for a little soul searching. Is it possible you’re avoiding clients because you’ve erected mental barriers? Is there some belief inside you that’s keeping you from being responsive? Until that’s resolved, you may be saying “I need more clients” but you’ll continue to avoid doing the things that attract them.
Perhaps you feel you need more education or training first. Maybe you feel your website’s not quite perfect. Those are both mental barriers you’ve put in place to keep from moving forward.
It’s actually quite possible to make great sales without having much in place at all. Tell yourself it’s time to get down to the basics—returning calls, making appointments, completing price quotes—anything that will help keep you connected to your clients.
Once you’ve made the commitment to stay connected with your clients, the energy in your business is going to change. You’re going to see opportunities appear that can bring you great success. By making yourself open and accessible to clients, you will naturally attract more business and begin to reach your goals. All it takes is identifying how you’re avoiding clients now and making a commitment to take a step back toward them.
Tags: attracting clients, buyer behavior, chasing clients, Customer Loyalty, Customer Retention, Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Personal Productivity, Success Secrets, targeting clients
Posted in Advertising, Business Networking, Business Success, Customer Loyalty, Customer Retention, Marketing, Personal Productivity, Sales Motivation | 1 Comment »
October 10th, 2009
Did you know that 20% of your efforts drive 80% of your business’s results? And, that 20% of your clients generate nearly 80% of your annual revenues? These are simple examples of a proven and well known concept called the 80/20 principle, or Pareto’s Rule.
If you were to take some time to analyze your business’s results, you would find these statistics true. In fact, it can be a useful task to complete, as it will open your eyes at some of the underlying dynamics present within your current business structure. You will also be surprised to discover that within the top 20%, the 80/20 rule applies again. 20% of your 20% is 4%, which represents the absolute top tier of your client base. This group is the driving force behind your business’s success.
With this information in mind, how can you leverage it to grow your business?
In many cases, your top tier clients will demand more from you than your lower tiers. They will often demand more of your time, personalized support and readily available help. And, they will often want to know more about other services or information you have to offer. Because this group demands more, this is your best opportunity to leverage your products and services.
Here are simple steps for identifying existing opportunities within your top tier of clients:
Step 1- Take a moment and identify who your top tier clients are by name.
Step 2- Review which products and services they have ordered in the past, any spending patterns and any information which they have recently or previously requested.
Step 3- You may even want to consider calling them to find out what additional services they may be interested in, if there are any particular parts of their business that they would like to address given the opportunity and to solicit any general feedback that they are willing to offer.
This information should be what you utilize initially when developing your products.
For example. Let’s say you begin offering a top level mentoring program aimed at this group – in particular, giving customized solutions and more access to you as a professional. Because the demand for your services will be higher, your ability to provide the services directly will be reduced. With increased demand and decreased supply, you can charge a premium. Instead of $500 for your services, you may be able to charge as high as $5,000. And, if just 20 of your top clients sign up for this value added service, you have just effectively increased your income by $100,000. When you put this increase into perspective annually, and then over the life of your business, you can begin to see the tremendous financial impact you could experience if you implement this business concept into your current offerings and operations.
As you develop your online business, think beyond just digital products such as ebooks. Think about how you can design solutions which specifically cater to your top, top clients, the 4% we identified earlier. When you have focused on sharing your unique talents with others, there is a demand for it.
To begin this process, work through the 3 simple steps outlined above with your top clients. This is your target audience, which will provide the information you require to build an information empire.
Tags: attracting clients, chasing clients, Customer Loyalty, Customer Retention, Market share, Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Success Secrets
Posted in Business Plans, Business Success, Customer Loyalty, Customer Retention, Marketing, Success Secrets | No Comments »
