Posts Tagged ‘customers’

Five Steps To Building A Customer Base of Offline Business Clients

A useful starting point in finding offline business customers is the Yellow Pages. A little research will help you identify those who do not have a web presence. Running the company name through the search engines will soon tell you whether or not they are online. This speedy technique will soon give you a sizeable list of potential clients.

A second technique is the concept of a “finder’s fee”, where you pay a fee to people who refer you to a business who decides to use your services. Put some time into this one as it becomes like an offline affiliate program.

You will need to decide on an appropriate fee, which can be a flat fee or a percentage of the value of the package purchased by the customer.

You can easily set this up on your own website, using a simple online affiliate script. It will be important to operate it in much the same way as if you had affiliates promoting for you online. This means you need to supply them with resources, but instead of using banners and graphics, you would supply, flyers, brochures and business cards that could be handed around and distributed by various means.

Experience has shown that once you offer people this kind of opportunity to make money by promoting your services, you will get a surprisingly good result.

You can even start with your friends and family and again you will be surprised and impressed by the number of leads they will generate for you.

A third resource you can use is to place an advertisement in your local community newspaper. This works very well. All you need to do is put your URL in the advertisement or perhaps your phone number so that interested business owners can speak to you directly.

Your fourth helpful tool is to consider purchasing a toll-free phone number from online services. This will create a very professional appearance and offers the advantage of shielding your home number and allowing you to set up messages for times that you are unavailable.

The fifth weapon in your business building arsenal is to contact the local Chamber of Commerce and register your business with them. This gives you additional exposure and enhances your image as a trusted provider.

Why not learn how to build a customer base of offline clients and build your own profitable business? Find out more… Turing Bricks Into Gold

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New Customers Need Proof

“We’re the best because our new [product or service here] is blah, blah, blah and does blah, blah, blah.”

That’s what most advertisements look like to prospects and customers.  Everybody says they’re “the best.”

They list all the cool features of their product or service.  The better ads may even offer up benefits for each feature.

But, to most people – it’s just “blah, blah, blah.”  It’s a bunch of evidence – but no proof.

When we’re building a case for our small  business, we often confuse evidence with proof.  We look at evidence as the thing that provides the proof that our product or service is tops.

Our prospects and customers, however, don’t see things quite the same way.  To them, our evidence is just a bunch of stuff that suggests our product or service might be good.  PROOF is what makes them CERTAIN a product or service IS good.  Evidence suggests… PROOF ensures.

If you’re not providing proof in your promotions, I can guarantee you’re not converting prospect into customers as often as you could be.

There are many ways to provide proof but I’ll break them down into three categories:

1. Direct proof
2. Indirect proof
3. Implied proof

Direct Proof

Direct proof happens when the prospect of customer has direct, first hand experience with your product or service and thereby gains certainty that it’s superior.  All of your current customers should already have direct proof so your promotions to them need only remind them of what they’ve already experienced.

But your prospects won’t yet have any experience with your product or service.  How do they get direct proof?  Give those people a test drive.  It’s work for car dealerships for years.  Software companies have also jumped on the “test drive” bandwagon.  Most allow a limited free trial of their product giving prospective buyers hands on experience and concrete proof that the product works.

Grocery stores and super markets now have tasting and demo stations where customers are invited to taste or try out new products.

New “scratch and sniff” technology gave fragrance companies a way to drop their fragrance onto a magazine page – providing direct, olfactory proof to each of the magazine’s subscribers.

Your freebies don’t always have to be the product or service your trying to sell.  A very effective strategy is to give away a lesser product or service – allowing prospects to get first hand experience with your business and become comfortable with how you handle customers.  Once you’ve “proven” yourself with the less significant (and usually less expensive) product, prospects and customers will be more open to purchasing other (more expensive) items from you.

If you can’t give anything away for free then offer an ironclad, risk-free, money back guarantee.  A well known mattress company uses this technique to sell their “sleep systems.”  They actually call it a “90-day risk-free trial” and it lets prospective buyers get the proof they need to complete the purchase.

Indirect Proof

With indirect proof prospects don’t experience your business first hand, but do so through others – most often other people that they know, think they know, or can identify with.  Indirect proof happens through testimonials, including:

• referrals from family, friends, co-workers and the like
• testimony from celebrities, popular athletes, community leaders, etc.   Your prospects don’t know these people but they’ve seen them so often they think do.
• testimony from people just like them.  Seniors giving testimonials to seniors, parents providing testimony to other parents, teens testifying to teens, and so on.  Whatever your market (or markets) find one or more of your satisfied customers with matching the demographics and have them provide a testimonial for you.

Implied Proof

Implied proof uses the psychological principle of “social proof.”

“…95% of the people are imitators and only 5% are initiators, people are persuaded more by the actions of others than by any proof we can offer.”

Cavett Robert – Sales and Motivation Consultant

Implied or social proof has been used (and abused) for centuries.  You’ve likely been a victim of social proof in the form of:

• TV laugh tracks
• screaming, swooning teen girls at Beetles concerts
• bartenders, or night club singers, and street performers who “salt” tip jars with a few bills
• evangelical audiences seeded with “worshippers” who “spontaneously and enthusiastically” respond to the minister’s call to salvation
• beverage companies that pay attractive, outgoing men and women to spend evenings in bars drinking and promoting the company’s products
• the wave

Some of these are harmless – even amusing.  Some might be considered less than ethical.  But, they ALL WORK because implied or “social” proof isn’t just a concept.  It’s a fact.

When it comes to social proof in your business, a crowded restaurant or waiting room could be your best advertisement.  Hundreds – or even thousands – of friends in your business’ MySpace or FaceBook account makes attracting new  friends that much easier.  Comments on your blog entries proves to many readers that your blog is worth reading – simply because other people are doing it.

To build a case for your product or service, make sure sure every argument is summed up with:

• Direct proof – freebies, free trials, and no-risk guarantees
• Indirect proof – testimonials
• Implied proof – indicators that everyone else thinks you’re great

You’ll have to provide some evidence to prospects and customers, but you’ll never get the verdict you want without proof.

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Selling More in A Recession

Before starting out any new business strategies in a down turned economy, it’s always beneficial to bolster your position with preexisting clients and customers. Many times there is enough business to be found amongst your existing client base for you to then finance a “new idea” or strategy that you’ve wanted to implement.  Use these strategies to shore up your financial foundation and then go looking for “new” business.

Whether your primary business is offline or online the same principles apply. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling e-books or toothpaste, applied with the right amount of preparation and presentation, these ideas can make the difference between finishing your quarter in the red or in the black.

Try these tips:

• Begin calling your “inactive” customers.
  • Determine why they’ve gone inactive.
  • Ask for the opportunity to “make it good“.
  • “Would taking care of this immediately change your attitude toward us?”
  • Fix it immediately or task someone who will follow through to completion. (Whether it brings the client back immediately or not)
• Call 20 of your “active” customers/clients and ask them make an additional (wisely chosen) purchase.
  • Make them an OTO (one time offer).
  • Offer an upgrade.
  • Offer a “value added service“, something that improves your existing relationship with them.
• Call other businesses that offers complementary products or services to yours and ask for a trade of referrals. Don’t stop with one.
  • Offer to make it an ongoing relationship that’s mutually beneficial.
  • Over deliver! Offer more referrals than you receive. It will serve you well.

Since these principles apply to either an online or a brick and mortar business, they’re perfect strategies for the Offline Consultant to keep in mind when talking to or even prospecting for small business owners. These are the types of high value free advice that will in turn have those shop owners ready and willing  to do business with you.

In fact, the more giving you’re able to be, the more you’ll have people actually asking YOU to do business with them. It will quickly establish you as an authority  and as the person that everyone will want to be affiliated with.

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