Satisfied customers are your best sales force, but are you paying attention to the ones that are doing the work for you?

Next time you get a clear referral, don’t miss a beat in contacting the person who gave it. Make sure that you thank them for the business. If at all possible, reward them somehow, give them a discount, a gift card, take them out to lunch. Whatever you do. never let a referral go unnoticed.

If you notice and appreciate the business they send you, they’ll do it again.

Major sales teams almost always have bonus programs, are you rewarding your “sales force?”

The elevator pitch - a 30 second window to make an impact promoted by so many is actually slowing you down. But there is one great thing about the elevator pitch. Most people don’t know that they are wasting their time. Use that to your advantage.

Jack of all trades - Master of none

This is the problem of the whole concept; it means that you have to write a sales pitch that covers everyone and everything.
Almost no business can be made in 30 seconds, the elevator pitch is designed to create interest and hopefully further contacts so that you can get the business at a later date. So in order to measure the effectiveness of an elevator pitch we need to see how much of it results in future contacts.

If you completely 180 your approach, you can actually improve the results of this opportunity to almost 100%. You do this by letting them run their elevator pitch on you.

Get them talking

No matter how you do it, get them to throw their elevator pitch at you instead. By listening to their trimmed and elegant message you will gain valuable information about what they are doing.

Use question sets that keep them moving forward.
- Oh, how do you do that? - Isn’t that a very competitive field? - Is that government regulated… Ask questions relevant to what you do, know, or can offer. But don’t try to sell it now.

Don’t interrupt; let them get as deep into their elevator pitch as you can get them. Your only objective is to walk away with as much information as you can get and their business card.

The benefit of this is that your interest will do two things for you, it makes them feel comfortable, and it takes the pressure off you to have the perfect elevator pitch for every situation. All you have to do is listen and pay attention.

Once you have got them to talk about their business and themselves, the next step is to simply get their business card. Since they are already warmed up and relaxed, the natural next step for them is to give it to you. Especially since you didn’t sell or try to pitch anything to them.

If you can get their cards, you now have the 100% return, by doing nothing more than listen, you get the control of further communication. You also have key information as to who they are, what they are doing and maybe even what they want, and you have their contact information. Use this opportunity to take your time, come up with how you can help this person, and prepare a much more targeted, relevant, and powerful message.

Take them to lunch - you have now increased your window of opportunity from 30 seconds to an hour.

Most companies have a pricing policy that leaves very little room for giving a customer his or her money back. The ones that have that space normally do so because they are aware that their product is not what they make it out to be.

I discussed the cost of losing a single customer in "Short term Decisions ". And this is something you should always keep in the back of your mind.

Both approaches are equally dangerous. I won’t explain the problem with selling a sub standard product under the pretense of it being more than it is. You will however never be completely error proof in your business. You will always have customers with legitimate problems, and they should always be taken care of immediately.

Before you consider any major purchases or investments, put enough of a buffer away so that you can quickly and easily give a customer his money back should they be dissatisfied. Building this financial buffer into your financial model means that you will always have the ability to correct a problem and hopefully avoid bad will.

No one likes having made a purchase that they are dissatisfied with, but if they are met with no argument and a quick fix, this will often turn into a Positive relationship builder as opposed to a negative experience.

Take the small hit up front. You will gain a loyal customer that comes back, and brings friends.

You should never let a day go by without doing at least one marketing activity. This can take many shapes. If you are normally short on time, focus a lot of your energy on the activities where you learn more about your customers as opposed to just trying to sell to them. This will both build your relationships and give you an insight into where you can improve to better help them solve their problems.

If your schedule is normally packed full, your lunch could be a great way to do this. Start every day with making a phone call or two and see if you can book a lunch with a customer or prospect. The key here is to take the time to listen to them, ask questions about who they are, what they are doing, how they are doing it, and what problems they are having.

Don’t sell, don’t try to sneak in your pitch, and try to talk a whole lot less than you listen. Remember, this is not a sales meeting, this is marketing research. You are going to learn a whole lot about the customer and by not putting any sales pressure on them; you will be given a much greater gift, Information.

You can then take that information back and take a long hard look at what you are doing to meet the customer’s needs, and solving their problems. This is often the best way to find areas where you could be selling your services to a customer that neither you nor they have thought about. It can also be a way to find out that your customer could become a strategic partner.

You have to eat, why not make it count.

Do you have an advertising budget? If so, is it considered an expense? If you answered yes to those questions, you are letting the wrong person control your marketing.

Accountants and Marketers are notorious enemies in the corporate world. Accountants are constantly fighting to keep budget control, and Marketers keep singing the old "spend money to make money" tune.

Treating your marketing budget as an expense is completely wrong. It should be considered a form of credit line if anything. You should certainly start by setting aside an amount that is to be used for marketing. But in order to make sure that you are not shooting yourself in the foot, this amount must be allowed to replenish on its own merit as it earns money. This will allow your marketing to become self funding and it will also give you much better insight in what works, and what doesn’t.

If you run an ad, costing you $500, then that money should be taken out of your marketing/advertising budget. Just like the accountant would want you to. That’s however where the accountant is right for the last time.

If you have a $1200 advertising budget, you can afford to run a $600 ad twice if you work on a straight budget. After you’ve run it twice, you are out of money and have to stop. However, if that ad brought you $800 in profits, you are bidding for a dunce cap if you don’t run it again and again.

When that ad brings you $800 in profits, start by replenishing the marketing budget before you consider what your real income was. In essence, you made $200 but your marketing budget is back to its original level.

Should the Ad bring $500 in revenue, don’t run it again, but stick that money back into the advertising budget. "Pay" your marketing account first, and you will always be able to continue your efforts.

Doing this carries two major benefits.

1. It gives you a better understanding of your marketing ROI, Telling you which efforts are good and which are bad.
2. When done over time, it allows you to compare several ads. In other words it allows you to find the ads that are outperforming the others, tweaking your message so that you will slowly see better and better results from each ad you run.

You should end the year with the marketing budget at the same amount as you started. That will be your best indication that your advertising has justified itself.

Start off by writing "Have a Great Day" or something similar on ten of your business cards. Always carry this special batch with you so that you are ready to use it when the opportunity presents itself.
For Instance:
Pay the toll for the car behind you, Give your card to the toll person and ask them to give it to the car behind you and let them know that the toll has been paid.

I often do this and I have gotten both great network contacts and business out of it. You might want to consider targeting this approach. If you are selling Luxury Yachts, maybe a Ferrari or Lexus would be a better choice than a 1986 rusted Chevy. However, this is such a low cost approach that you can just make it a standard whenever you go through a toll. You can also do this in other ways, Pay for lunch for another table, and ask your waiter or waitress to hand over the card for you instead of the bill.

If your cell phone number is on the card, you might want to have it handy. I get a lot of calls immediately after the car behind me pulls through the station.

This is a great way to make an initial connection with someone that can end up giving you references and business in the future.

Networking is imperative to business success and growth. Your network can bring you knowledge and skills that you would pay serious money for if you have to hire a consultant. It is also the best way to find strategic partners.

Consider creating a business network / think-tank composed of your immediate business neighborhood. Try to get them all involved in growing the group as a whole and your respective businesses will grow as a result of that.

Try to meet for a business breakfast on a regular basis.
This can be once a week, month, quarter or whatever timeframe you decide. I suggest breakfast because it is a time that is almost never booked for anything else. Another thought is to consider the ones that may have families and children. A Saturday BBQ can be a great think to invite them to and let them bring the families. This will often help your network of small business peoples overcome the “no time for family” problem and do business at the same time.

By doing this, you can share ideas, discuss current issues and come up with joint effort solutions. Sharing the cost of marketing efforts, security, upkeep etc. can be a great relief on the budget.

When you read an interesting article, see if it applies to any one of your clients or prospects. Not only is this a great way to make sure that you are applying what you are reading at all times, but it also opens up a great way to communicate.

Once you find something that you think, "XX should really read this," you have a great opportunity to make a positive impact in a client’s life. Make a copy of it, and send it with a handwritten note to telling him that you thought of him and why.

"I saw this article and thought about how you mentioned having trouble finding a good outsourcing partner in China." Now you’ve told him that you were paying attention and that you are interested in helping him.

Include your business card and send it off.

The cost in time and energy to do this is negligible, but to Bob this shows that you have his best interests in mind. It also shows him that you are the type of person that provides solutions, and Bob will remember that next time he or someone he knows need something.

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.

Spring is in the air, summer is almost here and this is the time to start thinking about creating an event that a whole community will see and rally behind. There are hundreds of worthy ideas and causes that you can create a charity event for. And make no mistake about the impact that doing such a thing can have.

This is a tip that takes a little more time and energy than others, but can be a great branding tool for you and your company. It is best suited for small companies with a few employees. But you can also get together with other companies and co-host the event, which is also a great networking opportunity. If you are unable to create your own event, don’t miss an opportunity to sponsor one with either your special skills, or your products.

You will:

- Send a very powerful message of Civic engagement
- Get connected with new people that can function as a future network
- Build new business and strengthen your customer relationships
A few years back I helped a small company organize a soap box derby. The goal was to raise money for a children’s hospital. They had other companies donate necessary items like the safety barriers. They also sold the advertising space on these barriers to advertisers.

Community organizations stepped in and helped with manpower.

The positive community image that resulted was incredible. The company was featured on the front page of the local newspaper three times. State media picked the story up and broadcasted the name of the business and interviewed the owner.

The trick is to ensure that you really are focusing your efforts on the charity or cause that you are supporting. You can and should of course make sure that you use available space to place your logo, but by actually doing something for someone else, media will be much quicker in giving it coverage than they ever will if they assume that you are doing it for the publicity.

Make sure that you craft a strong press release and media package, having this ready for the initial announcement is crucial to make the most out of your coverage.

Event Ideas could include: Soap Box Derby, Outdoor concert, Flea Market, Chili Cook-off, BBQ competition, Movie night in a park, Rubber Duck Race, Raft Race, Golf or Tennis tournament, Bingo Night, Silent Auction. The list is endless.