Client Attractive Telephone Calls That Make's Money
by Joyce Oladipo
If you're like most small business owners, you know the value of speaking with a prospective client over the telephone before their first appointment. This initial conversation allows you to introduce yourself, establish a cordial relationship, ask questions, and decide whether to work with this person or not. For these purposes, the telephone is a quick, efficient way of collecting information.
On the other hand, the telephone is the least effective way and the most problematic way, of delivering your marketing message. Why? Because you can't see how your prospect responds.
You can't see the expression on her face, which alerts you to her understanding or bewilderment. You can't see whether she's nodding in agreement or shaking in fear. And when you quote your fee, you can't see whether her eyes convey "no problem," or whether they pop out of their sockets. Over the phone, you can evaluate only your prospect's voice. Often, this isn't enough.
Your marketing message deserves equal documentation. After all, you don't want a prospect to hire you based on what he thought you said, when you really said something else.
How often has a prospect repeated something that was exactly the opposite of what you said?
Regardless of whether your prospect is a naïve consumer or a sophisticated executive, you'd do well to put your marketing message in writing. This becomes even more important if your message contains details your prospect might find confusing, such as dollar amounts, time periods, rules and exceptions, benefits of your service, and more.
When delivering your marketing message, here's the tow things you must deliver: You must provide complete details so your prospect can make an informed decision. But the more information you deliver, the more likely you are to create confusion. To help make sure your prospect digests and understands your marketing message, follow these key steps:
Preparation
Write your marketing message to clearly explain what you want to convey. Anything you say during your first appointment can also be said in writing. Put your message in the form of a personal letter, including answers to frequently asked questions. Discuss everything from the problem your prospect faces, benefits of working with you, to how she hires you and her options. The more complete your presentation, the more efficient and effective your marketing message will be.
Action
When a prospect first calls to talk to you or schedule an appointment don't hesitate to speak with her briefly over the phone. After you introduce yourself and ask a few questions, explain that you have prepared helpful information you'd like your prospect to read and digest before your in-depth conversation. Then send your information by mail or e-mail, or explain where he can find it on your web site. I have a session on my site call the "Interview with Joyce". Here I answer all the question the prospect needs to know to work with me. I have been able to close all my sales me sending prospects to this section of my site before booking an appointment with me. At the end of this page, I invite them to email me to schedule an appointment or register for my programs.
If your prospect emails you after they've read your information, you can now assume our prospect is much better informed about her problem and the ways you can help her.
If your prospect doesn't contact you, then your marketing message has successfully screened out anyone that does not fit your profile as an ideal client.
Follow-up
After you're an in-depth conversation, send a letter that reaffirmed some important points, highlights the why they should work with you. The benefits of your service, and explains why she should act now. This gives you yet another opportunity to deliver key facts in writing, so the success of your marketing effort doesn't depend on her memory.
So to make the best impression on phone, just introduce yourself and establish a cordial relationship. Ask questions, and decide whether this person is an ideal client or not.
Follow-up with prospect efficiently by answering any questions thy might have read about what you do, then invite them to take action.
Do not use the telephone to deliver your marketing message. Instead, use the phone calls to collect key facts about the prospect. What is problem they want to solve? What does it mean to them have it solve, how bad do they want it solved. This will save you a great deal of time. Write marketing materials that will attract your deal client, then deliver your marketing message clearly and effectively.
Love and Abudance
=====================================================
Online entrepreneur Joyce Oladipo, "Business Growth and Marketing Mentor," is creator of the winning Business Abundance E-zine to Immediately and Exponentially Growing Your Business offline and online. To Discover the 19 Secrets to Immediate and Exponential Business Growth, visit http://www.BeAWealthyEntrepreneur.com
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Get New Clients, And Get Your Existing Clients Coming Back.
Get New Clients, And Get Your Existing Clients Coming Back.
To Get New Clients
1) An ACTIVE - not passive - referral program. A systemised, generous referral program designed to get your best clients to refer their friends and colleagues. (Why 'best' clients? Because people tend to hang around with people like them. If you want impoverished, penny-pinching clients, sure, ask them to refer their friends.)
2) Lead-generating mailbox flyers, newspaper ads, street signs and window posters. Essentially, lead-generators involve making an introductory offer of some kind of FREE service - with restrictions on numbers, days available etc, to drive them in on days when your appointment book is empty anyway - with the purpose of getting the prospect's to work with you. When they call to get more information you send them the information by post. It when you make the series of follow up that you start the sell by then you would have gotten them interested in you.
Why would you offer something free? Because, you know that an average client is worth $X to you in a year… and you know if you get ten new prospective clients asking for information, you'll keep say 5 of them for the long term. Five times $X = ?
So what is X for you?
To Get Current & Past Clients Coming Back
1) Regular (Monthly!) Ezine. Anything less than monthly is a waste of time. It doesn't have to be glossy, 'professional'. In fact, the more it looks like it's been hammered out on an old typewriter on your kitchen table, the better. Personal stuff, about you, your kids, your staff… and with an offer in it.
I cannot stress enough the value of a regular ezine. They always produce sales, always bring in more than they cost. And they keep your clients close. And they generate referrals. "Oh, but they're too hard/I don't have time/I don't know what to put in them/I can't be bothered…" Well, you have NO excuses. It’s a most to getting more clients.
2) 'Raise the Dead' letters: go to your database, pick all the clients you haven't seen for three months or more…and send them a letter with an offer in it.
Do this every three months.
3) New Client Letters. If they don't immediately re-book, every first time client should be receiving a series of follow-up letters, offering them a Gift Voucher to re-schedule NOW.
4) Memberships. Want your clients to pay a year's worth up front? Or commit to a regular credit card payment every month? A member of your 'Premium VIP Club' who's paid for a year of services up front isn't going anywhere else. Plus, once they've spent the money, they'll soon forget about it….and spend more on your products every time you work with them.
5) Special promos. One of my new clients, once produced a series of promtions offering a range of value-add services ranging in price from a couple of hundred bucks right up to $500 or more. These offers were placed in location all over her town – at the doctors, hair salons, day care. And for a month, the she was receiving call from prospects wanting to know how they can work with her. She sold over $16,000 worth of her packages in a matter of days. And the more expensive ones sold best!
There you have it. If you employ only that handful of strategies, do it regularly, do it well, you cannot fail.
=====================================================
Online entrepreneur Joyce Oladipo, "Business Growth and Marketing Mentor," is creator of the winning Business Abundance E-zine to Immediately and Exponentially Growing Your Business offline and online. To Discover the 19 Secrets to Immediate and Exponential Business Growth, visit http://www.BeAWealthyEntrepreneur.com
To Get New Clients
1) An ACTIVE - not passive - referral program. A systemised, generous referral program designed to get your best clients to refer their friends and colleagues. (Why 'best' clients? Because people tend to hang around with people like them. If you want impoverished, penny-pinching clients, sure, ask them to refer their friends.)
2) Lead-generating mailbox flyers, newspaper ads, street signs and window posters. Essentially, lead-generators involve making an introductory offer of some kind of FREE service - with restrictions on numbers, days available etc, to drive them in on days when your appointment book is empty anyway - with the purpose of getting the prospect's to work with you. When they call to get more information you send them the information by post. It when you make the series of follow up that you start the sell by then you would have gotten them interested in you.
Why would you offer something free? Because, you know that an average client is worth $X to you in a year… and you know if you get ten new prospective clients asking for information, you'll keep say 5 of them for the long term. Five times $X = ?
So what is X for you?
To Get Current & Past Clients Coming Back
1) Regular (Monthly!) Ezine. Anything less than monthly is a waste of time. It doesn't have to be glossy, 'professional'. In fact, the more it looks like it's been hammered out on an old typewriter on your kitchen table, the better. Personal stuff, about you, your kids, your staff… and with an offer in it.
I cannot stress enough the value of a regular ezine. They always produce sales, always bring in more than they cost. And they keep your clients close. And they generate referrals. "Oh, but they're too hard/I don't have time/I don't know what to put in them/I can't be bothered…" Well, you have NO excuses. It’s a most to getting more clients.
2) 'Raise the Dead' letters: go to your database, pick all the clients you haven't seen for three months or more…and send them a letter with an offer in it.
Do this every three months.
3) New Client Letters. If they don't immediately re-book, every first time client should be receiving a series of follow-up letters, offering them a Gift Voucher to re-schedule NOW.
4) Memberships. Want your clients to pay a year's worth up front? Or commit to a regular credit card payment every month? A member of your 'Premium VIP Club' who's paid for a year of services up front isn't going anywhere else. Plus, once they've spent the money, they'll soon forget about it….and spend more on your products every time you work with them.
5) Special promos. One of my new clients, once produced a series of promtions offering a range of value-add services ranging in price from a couple of hundred bucks right up to $500 or more. These offers were placed in location all over her town – at the doctors, hair salons, day care. And for a month, the she was receiving call from prospects wanting to know how they can work with her. She sold over $16,000 worth of her packages in a matter of days. And the more expensive ones sold best!
There you have it. If you employ only that handful of strategies, do it regularly, do it well, you cannot fail.
=====================================================
Online entrepreneur Joyce Oladipo, "Business Growth and Marketing Mentor," is creator of the winning Business Abundance E-zine to Immediately and Exponentially Growing Your Business offline and online. To Discover the 19 Secrets to Immediate and Exponential Business Growth, visit http://www.BeAWealthyEntrepreneur.com
How Often Should You Contact Your Clients?
After send thing out this week’s ezine. I got an email from Sarah Jane a client of mine asking: can you contact clients TOO often?
I have a rather simplistic approach to this, one that sounds brutal - and frankly, most small business owners too shy to adopt it - but one that has help me though the years in my own business.
"Mail to them till they buy… "
But to explain: the best sales and marketing minds in the world agree that it's almost impossible to contact your clients too often. As a rule of thumb, your clients should get at least one 'touch' from you every single month of the year.
Sound impossible? Think for a minute. 48 touches a year doesn't mean you're pitching something to them every single week. A 'touch' can be any one of dozens of 'points of contact'.
Let's have a look at this in detail, and break it down into bite-sized chunks.
Ezine: you should be doing no less than one a month. That's 12 touches in a year. Your ezine is your 'Trojan Horse' - it turns you from being an 'unwelcome pest' into a 'welcome guest', because it provides a means by which you can make a 'soft sell', cloaked in useful/personal/newsy information. It's not ALL pitch.
And for those of you who moan "I don't have the time to do a newsletter every month", "My ezine without doubt makes me serious money every month." So, if you're complaining about lack of time to do a monthly ezine, what you're actually saying is that you're too busy working on the tools to actually make any money.
Birthday cards: once a year, obviously. But you can include a Gift Voucher.
Client Appreciation Evenings: not every client will come, of course, but you invite ALL of them by mail. Another touch, say four times a year.
Monthly specials: clients want to be alerted to special offers. Another 12 touches.
Special 'Event' Driven promotions: You can count more than a dozen of them without trying e.g. Mothers Day, Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving and so on… plus any number of others you can simply invent, eg National Bad Hair Day. Another dozen 'touches’ or more.
They add up, folks. I haven't done the sums, but just in the points above, there are probably 40 or 50 'touches'.
Here's the thing: If your clients feel they are getting 'too much' from you, they will tell you and unsubscribe. Those that unsubscribe will never buy anything from you anyway. Those that stay love it.
The crime is NOT sending enough information to your clients. Don't market timidly for fear of upsetting one or two of the masses. Market aggressively up to the point - but not beyond - where you pee everybody off. And only THEN back it off a little:-)
Sound like a lot of work but it's not?
=====================================================
Online entrepreneur Joyce Oladipo, "Business Growth and Marketing Mentor," is creator of the winning Business Abundance E-zine to Immediately and Exponentially Growing Your Business offline and online. To Discover the 19 Secrets to Immediate and Exponential Business Growth, visit http://www.BeAWealthyEntrepreneur.com
I have a rather simplistic approach to this, one that sounds brutal - and frankly, most small business owners too shy to adopt it - but one that has help me though the years in my own business.
"Mail to them till they buy… "
But to explain: the best sales and marketing minds in the world agree that it's almost impossible to contact your clients too often. As a rule of thumb, your clients should get at least one 'touch' from you every single month of the year.
Sound impossible? Think for a minute. 48 touches a year doesn't mean you're pitching something to them every single week. A 'touch' can be any one of dozens of 'points of contact'.
Let's have a look at this in detail, and break it down into bite-sized chunks.
Ezine: you should be doing no less than one a month. That's 12 touches in a year. Your ezine is your 'Trojan Horse' - it turns you from being an 'unwelcome pest' into a 'welcome guest', because it provides a means by which you can make a 'soft sell', cloaked in useful/personal/newsy information. It's not ALL pitch.
And for those of you who moan "I don't have the time to do a newsletter every month", "My ezine without doubt makes me serious money every month." So, if you're complaining about lack of time to do a monthly ezine, what you're actually saying is that you're too busy working on the tools to actually make any money.
Birthday cards: once a year, obviously. But you can include a Gift Voucher.
Client Appreciation Evenings: not every client will come, of course, but you invite ALL of them by mail. Another touch, say four times a year.
Monthly specials: clients want to be alerted to special offers. Another 12 touches.
Special 'Event' Driven promotions: You can count more than a dozen of them without trying e.g. Mothers Day, Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving and so on… plus any number of others you can simply invent, eg National Bad Hair Day. Another dozen 'touches’ or more.
They add up, folks. I haven't done the sums, but just in the points above, there are probably 40 or 50 'touches'.
Here's the thing: If your clients feel they are getting 'too much' from you, they will tell you and unsubscribe. Those that unsubscribe will never buy anything from you anyway. Those that stay love it.
The crime is NOT sending enough information to your clients. Don't market timidly for fear of upsetting one or two of the masses. Market aggressively up to the point - but not beyond - where you pee everybody off. And only THEN back it off a little:-)
Sound like a lot of work but it's not?
=====================================================
Online entrepreneur Joyce Oladipo, "Business Growth and Marketing Mentor," is creator of the winning Business Abundance E-zine to Immediately and Exponentially Growing Your Business offline and online. To Discover the 19 Secrets to Immediate and Exponential Business Growth, visit http://www.BeAWealthyEntrepreneur.com
There are only THREE ways to increase revenue.
There are only THREE ways to increase revenue.
Just three, no more, no less. No matter whether you're a huge small business owner or shoe maker.
Here they are:
1. Get more Clients.
2. Increase what each Clients spends with you.
3. Increase your prices.
It’s not rocket science. Business is actually very simple. People make it complicated. Profit is nothing more than the difference between your revenue, and your costs. If your costs are high, either reduce them, increase your prices, or better, a combination of the two.
However, do NOT reduce your marketing spend. Increase what you spend on marketing - it is the ONLY thing that brings clients in…. and that includes referrals, which is just word of mouth marketing.
=====================================================
Online entrepreneur Joyce Oladipo, "Business Growth and Marketing Mentor," is creator of the winning Business Abundance E-zine to Immediately and Exponentially Growing Your Business offline and online. To Discover the 19 Secrets to Immediate and Exponential Business Growth, visit http://www.BeAWealthyEntrepreneur.com
Just three, no more, no less. No matter whether you're a huge small business owner or shoe maker.
Here they are:
1. Get more Clients.
2. Increase what each Clients spends with you.
3. Increase your prices.
It’s not rocket science. Business is actually very simple. People make it complicated. Profit is nothing more than the difference between your revenue, and your costs. If your costs are high, either reduce them, increase your prices, or better, a combination of the two.
However, do NOT reduce your marketing spend. Increase what you spend on marketing - it is the ONLY thing that brings clients in…. and that includes referrals, which is just word of mouth marketing.
=====================================================
Online entrepreneur Joyce Oladipo, "Business Growth and Marketing Mentor," is creator of the winning Business Abundance E-zine to Immediately and Exponentially Growing Your Business offline and online. To Discover the 19 Secrets to Immediate and Exponential Business Growth, visit http://www.BeAWealthyEntrepreneur.com
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