Client Magnets Official Blog

Posts Tagged ‘customer loyalty concepts’

Many entrepreneurs, small business owners and other professionals find themselves focused on earning an income, finding new clients and the day-to-day struggle to survive.  Having enough income and cashflow to grow your business rapidly is not an uncommon problem.  I often hear people talking about their expected income for the next day, weeks or months ahead.  They focus on knowing where the next paycheck is coming from because they don’t have enough confidence in their existing client base or cashflow.   They fear their income will dry up.

Have you ever felt like that?  If that sounds like you, then it’s time to STOP focusing on your income.  It’s time to start focusing on a long-term plan for success and diversification.  But how?  How do you free yourself from the day-to-day financial worry and really start to thrive?

The answer simply lies in starting your own high-end coaching program.   A high-end coaching programme (when designed and delivered the right way) will provide enough guaranteed revenue to enable you to stop worrying about money and be free to focus on your long-term success!

This is how the strategy works …

Sell Once a Year to Generate Guaranteed Revenue

• With your high-end coaching programme, if you market and sell the right way, you will only need to focus on the selling once and then you’re done for the year.

• Create a program with a limited number of spots, and you’ll only have to sell long enough to fill those spots and then you can focus on serving your clients and creating alternate revenue streams.

• Create a program with a fixed time limit, such as my annual programme, and you only have to sell those spots once per year. Then you’ve got the commitment for the income, and you’re free to focus on other areas of your business. No more worrying month-to-month whether you’ll have enough cash for next month; with a high-end coaching program, you can earn enough money to free yourself up for other pursuits.

Free Yourself Up to Look at the Big Picture

One of the biggest benefits for you and your business of creating a high-end coaching program is freeing yourself up to look at the big picture. If you’re like most people, you spend countless hours per week working on finding enough business, and the rest of your time goes to satisfying your existing clients. You never have time to think about the long-term plans for your business, or how to diversify your revenue streams.

Once you have the committed income of a high-end coaching program, you can stop spending so much of your time selling yourself and your services because you have a guaranteed revenue stream. Instead, you can focus on creating the other steps to achieve success in your business, and put together a long-term plan for your business!

In order to truly become successful in your own business, you’ve got to stop focusing on immediate income so you can begin to build a road map for long-term success.   Worrying about your day-to-day income is short-term thinking and can seriously hamper your long-term business success. When you start a high-end coaching program, you get financial commitments for a large portion of your revenue and begin looking at other ways to improve your business success.

So if you want to see an end to your day-to-day financial struggles and the beginning of long-term success, it’s time to start your high-end coaching programme!

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

There are many ways to become a client magnet. Here are 20 proven methods that will help you to achieve astonishing business results.

•    Carefully choose the niche that you want to be known as an expert at.

•    Learn everything there is to know about your declared area of expertise. Go through the experiences and learn the lessons, connect with a mentor and then put it into practice to be successful. Only then can you teach and help other people to do the same.

•    Pick something that you’re passionate about; when you’re passionate, that really shows through.

•    You will make a greater impact in a place where you genuinely have some value to offer.

•    Realize that you don’t have to try to get every person you ever encounter to become a client.

•    Build your relationship with the people who have already “raised their hands” and expressed an interest in your product or service.

•    Focus your effort and energy on people who are pre-qualified to buy. It is more pleasurable to work with and for them than to try to convert people who will never be interested or will never be qualified to buy your services.

•    Approach your tasks with the right energy. A positive attitude will resonate with your clients; conversely, so will negativity.

•    Be a congruent model for success by focusing on and being committed to your prospects and clients.

•    Use one-to-many methods for connecting with clients and offering services, as much as possible.

•    Put systems in place to start building your list.  Then continue to grow and improve your lead generation systems.

•    Know the principles behind offering ethical bribes, such as a free report, and have processes in place to handle responses.

•    Incite a call to action by creating a sense of urgency for people to sign up with you or purchase your offer. Deadlines work well for this.

•    Don’t underestimate the value of affiliates and joint venture partnerships.

•    Be consistent. Systematize and automate your process so that you can make money even when you aren’t working.

•    Use articles, teleseminars and social media to increase your exposure and the perception of you as an expert.

•    Use quality software to build and maintain your websites and blogs.

•    Always offer an upgrade with every sale.

•    Build relationships by following up with the people you meet at networking events right after the event.

•    Offer something for free or do a product giveaway at an event, collecting contact information in exchange for entry.

Implementing just some of these strategies today will add many more prospects to your list and take you closer to a more profitable business.  When you’ve applied them all, you will be a true client magnet.

In your quest for a million dollars, would you rather get:

A) get $10 from 100,000 clients,

B) $100,000 from 10 clients, or

C) $1,000,000 from 1 client?

If you’ve chosen option C, one single transaction, congratulations for having great business sense. But for the sake of practicality, let’s use the first two choices for a model of quantity versus quality.

You know that no single person can provide a service that’s perfect for every potential customer. To further that sentiment, I’d like to suggest that no person can serve 100,000 customers as well as they can serve 10 customers.

It’s simple math that results in the same $1,000,000 answer for both options A and B, but you, the business owner, benefit most from choice B.

It’s no secret that valuable time is squandered when you have to exhaust yourself chasing a large number of clients. Wouldn’t it be magnificent to be able to sit, give your attention to a few clients, and make the same, or more, money?

Consider the chain of benefits: More focus on individual clients leads to better results for those few clients; those clients will offer better testimonials; and those satisfaction ratings will attract more high paying, high quality clients. This a circular effect of good business.

Of course, your next question is, “How?”

Scoring those lucrative client relationships starts where all good business does – in the early planning stages, even before lead generation.

Think big before you attract clients. You can’t skip this step, because if you do, you’ll end up attracting small-fry clients, and when you present them with the top-quality, top-priced program, you’ll fall flat.

Here’s an example to explain: you’re selling a top-notch software program targeted at high-end, complicated tax processing. If you market to general accountants, you might be netting prospects that do anything from A-B-C accounting services to intricate, full time gigs with top corporations. There’s no doubt that you’ll strike out with the majority of your audience. Accountants that make their living on Joe Smith’s bread-and-butter will have no interest in a high-end product like yours. Instead, back up and find a creative way to market to only those accountants serving the best-of-the-best, super-corporations. They will be willing to pay what you’re asking. They’ve been around for long enough to see the value in it, and are successful enough to be able to pay for it.

When asking for the big bucks, keep these things in mind:

• Before you bring people to your website, before you send out your newsletter, consider the caliber of your product or service, and match it to the caliber of client that would be most likely to spend the kind of money you’re asking for. Do the research required to find these people, rather than spending time generating dead-end leads.

• Consider your prospects’ mindsets. Do they have cheeseburger budgets and milkshake level businesses? Or do they have filet mignon budgets and crème-brulee-level companies? Which would you rather have? Know that fast food customers won’t have the money, or the taste, for expensive steaks.

• Don’t make quality an afterthought, or you’ll have attracted prospects in vain. Aim high, and your prospects won’t bat an eye at your price revelations.

Don’t assume that high paying clients are high maintenance. Often, they’re more understanding and less demanding. They have the experience that it takes to understand the ins and outs of the business world. They understand your challenges, and are more likely to allow you the freedom to run with your expertise.

Low-paying clients are often new to the business world, and may either indirectly (or directly) look to you for advice beyond the scope of your work, or spend too much time highlighting insignificant details.

Don’t be intimidated by the lucrative account. Be drawn to it. Recognize it for the gold mine that it is – and for the quality that it can create for your business.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Getting your target audience interested in your product or event, and interested in the price you want them to pay, requires a few basic steps. You must establish yourself as an expert. You must build confidence with your audience. You must convince your audience that your solution is the answer to their problems. Building empathy with your target audience is a fast way to accomplish all of these things …

What is Empathy?
For the purposes of creating marketing materials, developing empathy is the act of building a rapport with your audience. Show them that you understand their problem. Convince them that you, too, have the same problem, questions or needs that they have. Create a group for your audience, and then insert yourself into this group. By developing empathy with your audience, you’re making yourself ‘one of them.’ This is an extremely valuable step in creating a successful marketing campaign.

Build Trust Through Empathy
In many cases, your target audience may be embarrassed about their problem, or they may feel like they’re alone in needing a special solution to manage their issue. By establishing empathy with your audience, you show them that they’re not alone. You, too, have benefited from a special tool or event to handle the same problem they have. By building empathy with your target audience, you immediately go from becoming an untouchable expert to someone who has experienced the same problems and issues as your audience; someone much more accessible and less intimidating.

As someone who speaks the language of the target group, you build trust; they’re more likely to believe your pitch if they feel you’ve been through the same things they encounter. All of these things go a long way toward establishing yourself as a trusted source, which makes people much more inclined to buy your product or attend your event.

Solve Problems Through Empathy
One of the most effective ways to market a product or event is to establish that it solves a problem that your target audience experiences. If you can build empathy with your audience, and then establish that your product or event solves their problems, you’ve instantly crossed a boundary toward getting them to take action. An audience is much more likely to believe that the solution offered to them is legitimate if they believe the creator of the product has used it to solve the same problems they have.

For example, if someone who has always been thin tries to sell a weight-loss product to an overweight demographic, the overweight demographic may be disinclined to trust the thin creator. However, if someone who has successfully lost weight tries to sell a weight-loss product, he or she gains instant credibility by having successfully solved the problem that the target demographic experiences.

Build Empathy for Successful Marketing
Bottom line: build empathy with your target audience to create a successful marketing campaign. Become one of the crowd. Show them that you understand their problems, and that you can help them. If you’re able to establish empathy with your audience, you’re much more likely to sell your product or event to them.

Bernadette Doyle has attracted a loyal following who rave about her down to earth yet inspiring approach. If you liked today’s issue, you’ll love Bernadette’s marketing and success training products and programmes to help you develop a business that suits YOUR preferred lifestyle. http://www.clientmagnets.com

Many people go out of business because they have failed to align their product with what the market demands – and with what their inner selves demand.

Many times, businesses need to endure a breakdown before a breakthrough can be felt.   Sometimes, the bad times are the only times that spur the need for positive change.  In other words, even if you’re struggling with simply “making it,” there’s plenty of hope.

I know you want an endless supply of customers – a flow that’s as intense as you’re willing to handle.  But there’s an important element to consider before moving forward.  You must ensure that any success you’ve experienced to this point isn’t just a symptom of luck. I like to say that even a broken clock shows the right time twice a day.  If you glance at the clock randomly, there’s a chance you might get the right time.  And if you do, you might be fooled into thinking the clock is working.  But it’s not.

You have to make sure that people are coming to you because of the one-of-a-kind value you’ve offered them, not because they’ve stumbled upon you.

There’s no denying that you have a treasure trove of valuables to offer.  You have gifts, talents, and abilities that are guiding you toward your perfect mission.  You know there are people out there that would greatly benefit from what you have to offer.  But when you can’t find those people, or they can’t find you, it can be a painful disappointment.  Because your venture really is your calling, right?  Or isn’t it?

Every business owner has a calling, and to truly find success in that calling, that business owner needs to be assured that their distinctive abilities are made apparent by that business.

Often, your attempts at furthering your business aren’t the problem.  Instead, it might be that you have missed something that’s fundamental to attracting clients:  finding that one thing that only you can offer, and that consumers are looking for.

If you are passionate about something, and it happens to also be a God-given gift, then somewhere in the world, there is a demand for that service.  God isn’t wasteful.  He wouldn’t give you something and not create an equal and opposite need for it.

Your challenge is to find the channel through which you can deliver your true value to those who need it.  Frederick Buechner defines vocation as the place where passion meets the world’s greatest hunger.  This is a beautiful statement.  It reinforces the idea that we’re all here to do something or be someone.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t tell us how to make the connection, or how to keep ourselves in business.

To get a better grasp on this channel, take the time to reflect on you.  You are a vehicle for delivering the gifts that the world is waiting for.  Put your gifts in writing, and assess them.  Then ask yourself these questions:

• How do my gifts complement one another?

• How can my talents be combined to create something unlike anything the world has ever seen?

• Does that combination meet a need?

• If not, can I find a legitimate need?

• Or do I need to find a new and different recipe for those gifts, based on a need I know I can satisfy?

Carving out your vocation using the talent and need factors will go miles to pull your business through adversity.  In times of adversity, luck is nowhere to be found…but true value never dwindles.

If, after true introspection, you still believe that you are where you need to be, and the consumers just aren’t coming, stay with me.  There are secrets yet to be revealed that might affect your view, and your success, in a manner that you haven’t yet considered.

Bernadette Doyle created Client Magnets Ltd to help self-employed people solve one of their biggest business problems: attract a steady stream of clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

You’ve made a sale.  The customer’s credit card has been approved, you’ve booked their seat or ordered their product, and you’ve added your new customer’s email address to your newsletter list.  You’re already tallying your net profit in your mental bank register, and you’re resting comfortably in the pleasure of another sale well-done.

Not so fast…

If there is any time lapse between the closing of the sale and the delivery of the customer’s product or service, at some stage you will need to address the “buyer’s remorse” phenomenon.

If your customer falls under the weight of buyer’s remorse, he or she might have feelings of guilt associated with a high price tag, credit extension, or disapproval by others.  The client might begin to fall off of their “purchase high” and start to consider their new, reduced spending power; or they might wonder if they should have done more research or waited for a better, newer version of your product or service.

Your job is simple:  you must keep buyer’s remorse from ever showing its face…by using a Stick Strategy.

A Stick Strategy is simple.  It involves offering a gift that fulfills your customer’s need for instant gratification, and then staying in touch with them to reinforce the benefits of their decision, until they receive the product or service that they purchased.  In other words, remind them regularly that they’ve made a good decision.

Example of a High-Cancellation-Risk Sale:

A motivational speaker offers two types of events:  a 1-day workshop and a 2-day weekend seminar.  She starts marketing and taking reservations for the 1-day workshop only 6 or 8 weeks in advance.  But for the weekend event, she starts accepting bookings up to 4 months ahead of time.

Her customers who book 4 months prior to the 2-day event are much more susceptible to the effects of buyer’s remorse.  A lot can happen in 4 months – people move, their family situations can shift, their employment might change – and that might prompt them to eliminate her seminar from their new schedule.

It’s especially important that this business owner stays in contact with her weekend seminar customers during those critical 4 months – to make sure that those clients remain interested and on-board, without regrets.

Follow these simple steps to keep your waiting customers on-board:

• Immediately following your customer’s booking, make a good-will gesture (e.g.  a digital report, an insider preview of your service, a free sample, coupons to use in the meantime, or anything that will reinforce their spending decision as a good one).

• Keep a list of people who have signed up for one particular service, and use that list to send industry tips, answers to commonly asked questions, or special bonus offers throughout their wait – and be sure to reference the date of the upcoming service in every piece of correspondence.  This will keep their interest piqued, their energy levels high, and will shoo away that bothersome remorse bug.

• You can also send a friendly note part-way through their wait. A simple “Hello, can’t wait to meet you at the conference,” or, “Here’s the seating chart and your nametag.” can boost their obligation to the commitment that they’ve made.

• Keep customers-in-waiting involved. Maybe you’re thinking about making an addition to your service – send a note asking for their opinion on the change.  Or, ask them for feedback on the booking process.  In short, make them feel that their opinions are important.

Maybe you have felt buyer’s remorse yourself.  If you have, think about how much better you might have felt if you’d gotten a free gift right away, or if someone had contacted you to ask for your input.  Would you have been more willing to “Stick?”

Make your customers stick with you…all it takes is a healthy dose of communication and a little dollop of good-will glue.

Bernadette Doyle created Client Magnets Ltd to help self-employed people solve one of their biggest business problems: attract a steady stream of clients. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

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:

1. What is most important to the people in my target market?

2. What problems keep them awake at night?

3. What is the desired end result they’re hoping for?

4. Does my product help them solve their problems and reach their goals?

5. 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

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

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

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