How to get your customers to do the selling for you

Sometimes, what everyone else is doing isn’t necessarily the right thing. Many businesses have fallen into following the leader when it comes to high pressure sales tactics. Trying to keep up by copying their methods. A person that broke this mold is Australian media commentator and motivational speaker, Craig Harper - who also owns a personal training center.

Craig says in this article that he has no marketing budget (note that he doesn’t say he doesn’t do any marketing.. there is a huge difference), he does no hard selling and he has no memberships for his gym. No upfront commitments or high pressure tactics like most of the competition does. He also states that this is against all his marketing connections advice.

But what traditional marketing, and especially the “gym mold” is missing is exactly what Craig has been doing. What so many businesses today have been trying to create is exactly the situation that allows him to be successful. When every big player in the area is doing the same thing, (and in this case that thing is to force the customer to to sign a long term membership that Houdini couldn’t get out of),the simple answer is to do something different…

What’s the key to creating this success?

He DOESN’T SELL! … no hard sales ever. He also does something completely moronic if you were to look at the approach of his competition. He LISTENS !

This part from his article is very telling as to why he is successful.

“I spoke to an older gentleman recently who was interested in being trained by one of my team. I spent twenty minutes with him, had a few laughs and he booked in for three sessions per week.” … “Why did he choose Harper’s? Because he had visited eleven centers (we were number twelve) and I was the first person who listened, didn’t ’sell’ and spent more than two minutes with him. I would have happily spent the time with him no matter what the outcome was. If the first eleven businesses had half a clue, we would never have met.”

Craig has grasped the basics of relationship marketing and turned it into an art. He knows that in his case, just doing what the opposition isn’t doing will go very far in earning him a client. He also knows that in his particular case, a happy and satisfied customer will be the best advertising he can get. In the business of personal training, getting satisfied customers creates more business because it creates a walking, talking advertisement for you.

As Craig puts it

“Get a fat bloke in shape and ten things will happen:”

1. He’ll be a slimmer, healthier, satisfied customer.
2. People will want some of what he’s got.
3. He will sell you and your business (verbally and visually).
4. He will create ‘brand awareness’ for you.
5. You will have more people walk through the door.
6. He will boost your credibility.
7. He’ll bring five of his fat buddies, who in turn will bring fifty of their buddies.. and so on.
8. Your business will grow.
9. You’ll make more money.
10. You’ll buy a boat.

There is an old saying that sales is 90% listening and 10% talking. This is what the Hard Sell promoters out there have been missing. They aim for quantity, not quality. They strive to hit as many customers as possible in order to cover the ones that are ready to buy or prone to be pressured into buying a standard sales pitch. Then move on and find another one. They don’t spend enough time to make sure that the customer is getting what they are looking for. Which is why they lock them down into contracts and payment tricks. Since they don’t care about customer satisfaction, they have to ensure repeat business in other ways. For these businesses, return business is the same as repeat billing.

Do you think their customer satisfaction rating is high or low?

Next time, try to sit down, and actually listen to a customer. Maybe you are not that far away from becoming a Craig Harper, who gets business without spending a fortune in advertising because people want to deal with him, not because they got pressured into a contract they can’t get out of…

Or think about what kind of business you would like to run in terms of taglines.

“Your business” - #1 Because once we get you to sign, we own you!
or
“Your Business” - #1 Because our customers come back for more

If you are currently employing the Hard Sell, trying to lock down your customers into long term contracts, you should ask yourself this.

If I met the customers’ needs and expectations, would I need to enforce ironclad contracts? Possibly ruining dissatisfied customers credit and creating bad will for myself in the process?

I would venture to guess that the answer to that question is No!
I would also dare to guess that in the long term, your business will be growing way past what skinning dissatisfied customers out of can ever accomplish.

Not to mention that you will spend a lot less money on call centers trained in how to tell the customer that they can’t stop doing business with you.

Money that you could actually spend on bringing more first time customers through your doors so that you can listen to them too.

Or you could buy a Boat.