AA - 7 - Instant Business Success
Content
Instant Business Success
25 proven strategies to instantly create new clients, sales and profits for your business...
With the compliments of Amundson & Amundson www.amundson.co.nz
Copyright Notices
Copyright © 2010 by Graham McGregor All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission or further information should be addressed to Twomac Consulting Limited 188 Scenic Drive Titirangi Waitakere 0604 New Zealand Published by Twomac Consulting Limited 188 Scenic Drive Titirangi Waitakere 0604 New Zealand Email [email protected] Website www.EasyBusinessSuccess.com Printed and bound in New Zealand.
Legal Notices
While all attempts have been made to verify information provided in this publication, neither the author nor the Publisher assumes any responsibility for errors, omissions or contrary interpretation of the subject matter. This publication is not intended for use as a source of legal or accounting advice. The Publisher wants to stress that the information contained herein may be subject to varying state and/or local laws or regulations. All users are advised to retain competent counsel to determine what state and/or local laws or regulations may apply to the user's particular business. The purchaser or reader of this publication assumes responsibility for the use of these materials and information. Adherence to all applicable laws and regulations, both federal and state and local, governing professional licensing, business practices, advertising and all other aspects of doing business in New Zealand or any other jurisdiction is the sole responsibility of the purchaser or reader. The author and Publisher assume no responsibility or liability whatsoever on the behalf of any purchaser or reader of these materials. Any perceived slight of specific people or organizations is unintentional.
Introduction:
Hello and welcome to Instant Business Success. I’ve been a professional sales and marketing consultant for 32 years. And in this time I’ve learned a very important lesson. The secret to outstanding results in any business is very simple: Just focus on three things. 1: Smart Marketing This is where you create good numbers of interested people who are keen to talk with you about the products or services you sell. 2: Customer Friendly Selling This is where you find out what your customers really want and show them how your products and services can help them to get what they want. 3: Customer Delight This where you stay in touch and add value to your customers. Delighted customers will create large amounts of repeat and referral business for you. When you focus on doing these three simple things on a regular basis you will create remarkable results in any business. And that’s the purpose of Instant Business Success. In the next few pages you’ll learn 25 simple ways to apply smart marketing, customer friendly selling and customer delight in your business. So dig in and use some of these simple strategies in your own business. The results will both delight and surprise you.
Graham McGregor
PS: When you do things right, it’s actually quite easy to get large amounts of new sales and profits with very little effort. (So everything I give you is very easy to do.) PPS: I love to hear feedback or comments on any of my marketing and sales strategies. So feel free to let me know about anything you’ve tried from Instant Business Success and how it’s worked for you. My contact details are at www.EasyBusinessSuccess.com
Contents: Part One: Smart Marketing
Marketing with helpful information Marketing with educational talks Marketing with special reports Marketing with an email newsletter The ten minute marketing formula Look for ‘different’ ways to market Marketing by looking for a ‘better way’ Marketing with lagniappe The 1-5-15-30 Day Follow Up
Page Numbers
1-3 3 4-5 5-6 6-7 8 9-10 10-12 12-14
Part Two: Customer Friendly Selling
Look for easy sales Make your sales presentations twice as effective Two simple questions to improve your sales How to easily get a customer to choose your business Email an attractive offer to your clients on a regular basis Increase your sales by reducing risk Increase your sales with ‘Social Proof’ Give your clients several different price options 14 14-16 17-18 18-20 20-21 22-23 23-24 24-25
Part Three: Customer Delight
Moments of truth Delight your customers by making them feel good Add memorable value The most important sound in the world to your customers What business are your really in? Elephants don’t bite Use thank you notes The Wow factor 25-26 26-27 27-28 28-29 29 30-31 31-32 32-33
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Part One: Smart Marketing
Marketing with helpful information: One of the most effective ways to market your products, services or business is to put together helpful and easy to understand information for potential customers. Then offer this information to people who may be interested in what you offer. Personal trainer example: A personal trainer working in a fitness centre wrote a short two page tip sheet called ‘Seven secrets to a great looking body’. In this tip sheet he explained seven helpful tips that people could use. One tip was around how to avoid injury when working out. Another tip was on how to keep yourself motivated with your exercise programme. The last tip was pretty obvious. It was to use a personal trainer like him! Each tip had helpful info that explained it in a bit more detail. This personal trainer then made a few hundred copies of this two page tip sheet and did something very clever. He personally delivered this two page tip sheet to hundreds of homes in very expensive neighbourhoods that were close to where he worked. In other words they went to people who potentially had money to afford to use a personal trainer. A number of people who read his two page tip sheet rang him up and said they were interested in getting in shape and wanted to book a free consultation. He then converted many of these people into profitable paying customers. A great benefit of providing helpful information like this is that it positions your business as being an expert or authority in your field. If you put down helpful tips in
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writing you are automatically positioned as being good in your field. You can market many ways when you use helpful information: A good way to start is with something as simple as Commonly asked questions: Whatever product or service you sell, there are usually some commonly asked questions that a potential customer will ask you. You could do something as simple as write up a short 1-2 page tip sheet called something like this: The seven most important questions you should ask when buying an XYZ. (In this case XYZ is the product you sell.) Examples: “The seven most important questions you should ask when buying a spa pool” Or how about “The four most important questions you should ask when choosing a good dentist” You then explain why each question is important to ask and how asking them will help a person make a good choice around buying that type of product or service. When you provide helpful information like this you position your business as being an expert in your field. It also makes it very easy for someone else to recommend your business to someone they know. Imagine if you have just read a really helpful tip sheet on the questions to ask when buying a new boat. If you know someone who is interested in buying a boat, it is very easy for you to give them this tip sheet to read. This is helpful for this person and it also smart marketing by the boat dealer who wrote the tip sheet.
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They are positioned as helpful people in the boat field and many people that read this tip sheet will then make contact with their business. Action Exercise: How could you use this tip sheet idea in your business? Marketing with short educational talks: This is an overlooked opportunity for most businesses. Put together some short and easy to understand helpful tips around the products or services you sell. If you sell ladies clothing put together some useful ideas on how to choose clothes that make you look good without costing a fortune. If you are a painter have some simple and valuable tips on how to do a great painting job. Include useful tips and tricks and interesting examples in your ideas. Then volunteer to give your talk to groups of people that could potentially be your clients. Rotary and Lions groups are a useful start as they meet most weeks and are always looking for interesting guest speakers. (You don’t have to be great at speaking to market with educational talks. You just need to be able to explain some useful ideas for 10-15 minutes.) When you give an educational talk you are positioned instantly as an expert in your field. And at least 10% or more of the audience will want to speak with you further about the products and services you offer. This is a fun way to market and it’s virtually free to do. Best of all you can do this no matter what type of business you have. Just find interesting tips and ideas related to your products and services that people will find useful. Then give some short talks and enjoy the new customers you get from doing this. Action Exercise: How could you use this marketing idea in your business?
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Marketing with special reports: A special report is simply a fancy name for a short booklet of useful ideas around the products or services you sell. It’s in effect a ‘how to’ guide that has some valuable information that a potential client would find useful. Special reports are a great way to market, especially if you sell a higher priced product or services. Home relocation example: A home relocation business wanted new clients. Their service involved physically moving a home on a number of trucks to a new location. So the home was taken to pieces, moved carefully and then put back together like a big jigsaw puzzle. Their home relocation service costs a minimum of $20,000 to use. They decided to use a special report to attract new clients. So the owner spent a few hours and wrote a 20 page booklet called ‘11 secrets to successfully relocating a home’. He took out very inexpensive ads in the local paper offering this special report to people wanting to relocate a home from one location to another. He also offered it on his website. Over an eight year period this one special report has produced over eight million dollars of new business. It also positions his business as being experts in this field because in his special report he puts down all the things you need to do to successfully relocate a home. How to get permits, common mistakes to avoid, handy tricks of the trade and so on. In most cases the information in a special report is the sort of information you normally tell every new potential client who is interested in what you sell. With a special report you just put this information into a handy easy to read written format and offer it to potential customers. This works extremely well especially if what you sell is expensive.
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Action Exercise: How could you use a special report to attract new clients for your business? Marketing with an email newsletter of useful tips: One of the most useful ways to market for any business is to use an email newsletter or what we call an ‘ezine’. The most effective email newsletters come out on a regular basis and have lots of useful and practical ideas that your customers will find valuable to read. Having a helpful email newsletter gives you a perfect excuse to collect the email addresses of both clients and potential clients. And it gives you a simple way to stay in touch with them on a regular basis. Remember this key point: If you provide helpful information in your email newsletter that ‘adds value’ to your customers and clients they will enjoy and look forward to hearing from you. The simplest way to do this is to give them useful tips that are ideally related in some way to the products or services you sell. So if you sell ladies clothing you might want to send out some useful tips on how create a ‘movie star wardrobe’ without having to spend a fortune. If you sell legal services, provide a legal tip of the month. If you are an electrician give a useful tip each month related to things like choosing the right lighting for different rooms, how to save on power, popular new electrical fittings and why people are choosing them. Then send this short email newsletter out at least once a month to the people who have given you permission to send them information by email. Make sure you always have a simple way for any person that doesn’t want to receive your email newsletter to unsubscribe at any time.
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Action Exercise: How could you implement a simple email newsletter in your business this month? The Ten Minute Marketing Formula: One of the things that many business people overlook is that effective marketing doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive to do. A few minutes spent doing some simple things can produce some remarkable results. Here’s a good example. It’s a very simple marketing formula that has helped many businesses to grow their revenues by 10% or more over a 12 month period. Best of all this marketing formula only takes ten minutes a day to do. So it’s called The Ten Minute Marketing Formula. Here’s how it works: Look at the following marketing chart. Your goal is to do a minimum of four marketing activities each day from this chart. Send out one thank Give away one you card business card Make a follow up Ask one person phone call to one for a referral person Now you can combine these marketing activities any way you like each day. So you could send out two thank you cards today and also make two follow up phone calls. Or maybe you could do one activity from each box. The goal though is to do a minimum of four marketing activities every work day. Now four marketing activities a day is close to 1,000 extra marketing activities a year. That’s a lot of extra marketing activities each year and is the reason why many businesses that use this formula increase their revenues by 10% or more over 12 months.
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1: Follow up phone calls. A follow up phone call could be as simple as you ringing up a client and saying ‘Hi it’s John here from XYZ business here. Just a quick call to find out how you are enjoying the ABC product or service you brought from us recently?’ The interesting thing about follow up calls is that very few businesses ever make them. And with at least 10% of follow up calls your customers will often mention an opportunity for a repeat purchase or talk about someone they know who could be interested in buying the types of things you sell. 2: Thank you cards. These work very well when they are hand written. A thank you card can be very short and simple like this: ‘Hi John, this is just a short note to thank you for being a client. I appreciate your business and know you will be delighted with your purchase. Kind regards. Your Name.” 3: Asking for referrals. When you ask for referrals you might try something like this. “Hi John, I wonder if you could help me? Who are two or three people you know who might be interested in getting some helpful information on buying XYZ?” 4: Giving away business cards. You can give them in a low key way to people you meet. Say something like ‘If you come across someone interested in some helpful advice around xyz product or service, feel free to give them my card.’ Action Exercise: Use the ten minute marketing formula in your business for the next three months and notice what happens.
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Look for ‘different’ ways to market your products and services: A lady called Cindy Cashman saw an interesting idea a few years ago that took her fancy. The idea was for a book with the title “Everything men know about women.” The book was over 100 pages long and inside there was nothing but blank pages. Cindy liked the fun nature of the book but she didn’t like the idea of having to work really hard to try and make a few sales. So she began looking for ‘different’ ways to market her book. The outcome was interesting. Cindy ignored completely traditional book shops as she realised her book would be competing with tens of thousands of other books for sale. Instead Cindy approached businesses like women’s clothing shops and got them to display her book next to the cash register. Women shopping at these stores would pick up the book because of the catchy title, laugh when they saw it was totally blank inside and would then buy a whole bunch to give as gifts to people they knew. Cindy kept the price very affordable and sold over a million copies of her book over the next few years. Cindy went on to become one of the most successful self publishers in the world. All by looking for a ‘different’ way to market. (Cindy is now becoming famous all over again for becoming the first person to be getting married in space.) Action Exercise: What different ways can you market your business? Look beyond the normal ways that this is done in your industry.
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Marketing by looking for a ‘better way’ If you want fantastic marketing results a key secret is to spend a few minutes every day looking for a ‘better way’ to do things in your business. Here’s a good example of a great question to ask to find a better way: ‘How can I reduce my customer’s fear of making a mistake when they buy my products or services? When you come up with answers to this question you often experience huge increases in sales. All of us have had the experience of making a bad purchase somewhere. The product or service didn’t work, caused problems and other people criticised us for our purchase. This felt uncomfortable so we don’t what it to happen again. This means we are all a little bit reluctant to spend money on any product or service in case we make a mistake. The Unique Guarantee: A pest control service used this idea well. They would offer a commercial pest control service (insects, rats, fleas etc) for restaurants and hotels. They added a unique guarantee to their service. Firstly if the hotel or restaurant lost a booking because of a problem with pests, the pest control company would pay for that lost booking. If the hotel or restaurant was ever closed down by a health inspector for a pest problem, the pest control company would reimburse them for any lost revenue they might have had. The guarantee went on to cover 10 other points. This pest control company is twice as expensive as anyone else in their field. They also have 80% market share in every area they go into. Best of all they have a simple insurance policy that covers them for any money they might have to pay
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out. All they have done is dramatically reduce the customer’s fear around paying for their pest control service and it not working. Action Exercise: How can you reduce your customer’s fear of making a mistake when they buy your product or service? Write down five ideas and put one of them into action this week. Marketing with lagniappe: Lagniappe is pronounced LAN yap. Lagniappe is a word that is used primarily in southern Louisiana and southeast Texas and refers to an "unexpected something extra.” Lagniappe is giving your customer a little unadvertised, unexpected, unasked-for ‘extra’. This little extra is often remembered long after the purchase. It could be an additional doughnut (as in "baker's dozen"), a free "one for the road" drink, or possibly a complimentary dessert for a regular customer. Here are some examples of businesses that used lagniappe and as a result got clients recommending them to a lot of other people: The Car Dealer and the movie tickets: A customer bought a car from a car dealer. Three weeks after the purchase they received two free movie passes from the car dealer; along with a note thanking them for their business. This customer told all the people they knew about the delightful little added value bonus from this car firm. They also went back two years later and bought another car from the same firm. The Dentist and the phone call: A person was on holiday in another town a few years ago and had a tooth ache. They went to a local dentist who fixed the problem. What was unusual was this same dentist phoned this client that night in their hotel
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to make sure they were okay. They also phoned their client a few days later, when they were back in their home town, just to make sure they were fine. This person was very impressed with this great follow up service and has told dozens of people about their unusual experience. The appliance shop and the pot plant: There is a very successful appliance shop that does something very simple. Several days after you buy an appliance from them, they courier out to you a beautiful pot plant and a lovely thank you note. The owner is making sure you tell everyone about your positive experiences dealing with his store. Their clients rave about their unexpected free gift. It generates a lot of referral and repeat business for them. The Chinese takeaway and the paper bag: There was a Chinese Take-away owner who used to include something free with every order a customer placed. He would put it in a small bag and write "free" on the outside. Many people enjoyed going to this takeaway just to see what the free offer would be each time. It only cost the take away owner a few cents to give away something free and it made his business special to his customers. Here’s the reason for giving you these example of Lagniappe: When you consistently use lagniappe with all your customers and clients you will turn many of these people into hardworking and loyal salespeople for your business. They will actively recommend your business to many of the people they know. You will also generate a large amount of repeat and referral business from these same clients and customers because they now feel valued and special
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Action Exercise: Write a list of 5-10 simple ways that you could provide ‘lagniappe’ to your clients. Use some of these in the next few weeks. This is a great marketing strategy. The 1-5-15-30 Day Follow Up: Many customers never hear back from a business after they have made a purchase of a product or service. Think about all the products and services you’ve bought in the last six months. How often did you hear back from any of these businesses? In most cases, not that often. Remember "Out of mind" means no opportunity for further business and referrals from a customer. One approach that is very helpful is the 1-5-15-30 day follow-up. (It's called this because you take specific follow up action on days 1, 5, 15, 30.) Here’s how it works: Day 1: Within 24 hours of the first sale to a new customer send a short handwritten thank you note. "Dear Mr Smith, I enjoyed helping you choose your new widget. I trust you will enjoy years of enjoyment with it. Best wishes. Your Name.” Day 5: Approximately 5 days after the sale deliver a small present to the purchaser. It could be a small pot plant, a gift book, a couple of free movie passes. Enclose a short thank you note that says something like “Dear Mr Smith, I appreciate you being a customer and thought you would enjoy this small gift. With my compliments. Your name.” Day 15: Approximately 15 days after the sale make a quick follow up phone call. Ask them how their widget is going and how they are finding it. This follow up call lets the customer know you value the relationship with them even after you've made the sale.
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Day 30: Approximately 30 days after the sale send another small gift. (A little something extra.) It doesn't have to be expensive but it should have a high perceived value. Ideally it should be a conversation starter. The Car Dealer and the personalised Desk Calendar One car dealership sends their clients a personalised desk calendar that has a lovely colour photo of the customer sitting in their new car. Customers love this unique memento and often keep it on their desk. This leads to other people picking it up and talking about it. So this simple added value gift often results in further business for the car dealership. The 1-5-15-30 day follow up can be adapted to any business by changing the days you take follow up action on. For instance, you may implement a 1-7-3060 day follow up in your business. Or perhaps yours is a 1-10-20-30 day follow up. The key idea with this 1-5-15-30 follow up system is that you are in contact (in an added value way) four times within the first month or so of a new customer making a purchase. This shows the customer that you are serious about treating them well and looking after them. This is a rare experience for most customers! Action Exercise: Develop a 1-5-15-30 day follow up plan you can use with your own customers. What specific action steps will you take on the following days? (Feel free to change the days given here to other days if it would be more appropriate for your business.) Day 1, Day 5, Day 15, Day 30 Then use this follow up plan with all your new customers
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Part Two: Customer Friendly Selling
Look for easy sales: One of the best ways to make more sales quickly is look for other products and services you can offer your existing clients. It’s seven times easier to make another sale to an existing client as it is to make the first sale to a brand new client. Personal Trainer example: A personal fitness trainer had fast yet fun training methods that produced excellent results for all his clients. Yet this personal trainer was not offering his clients any other products apart from his personal training services. A marketing consultant suggested he offer his clients additional products like protein powders, vitamins, minerals and nutritional supplements. This made sense so the personal trainer tried it. Within three months the majority of his clients were now enjoying even better health and fitness after purchasing the supplements he was now offering. And the personal trainer was now making an extra $1,000 a week in new profits. Action Exercise: What additional sales could you make in your business with very little effort? Make your sales presentations twice as effective with visual aids Visual aids are a powerful way to improve the effectiveness of any sales presentation. One reason they work so well is that there are 22 times more nerves from the eyes to the brain as from the ears to the brain. So we believe far more of what we see than what we hear.
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One way is to use a common item your customer is already familiar with and show this item as part your sales presentation: Life insurance example: A very successful life insurance agent uses three simple visual aids to demonstrate the high cost of waiting to start your investment program. He uses a golf ball, a baseball, and a blow up beach ball. And he actually brings these three items with him on every sales presentation. He explains that if you start an investment programme for financial security when you are in your twenties the premium you pay is very small. He says that this is similar to carrying a golf ball in your pocket and you will hardly notice it. If you wait until you are in your forties to start your investment programme, your premiums are larger. It’s like carrying a baseball in your pocket. Uncomfortable, but you can do it. If you wait until your sixties to start your investment programme, your premiums are hugely expensive. It's like trying to carry a fully inflated beach ball in your pocket which is almost impossible. These three visual aids are very powerful in helping this insurance agent to encourage people to begin an investment programme now versus later. Investment Fund example: An advertisement for an investment fund had a headline that said: “What would you rather enjoy when you retire?” They then had two pictures of the same person at the airport waiting to travel. The person was standing under an airport sign in each picture. In the first picture the person was standing under a sign that said ‘national’. In the second picture the same persona was standing under a sign said ‘International’
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The advertisement went on to explain that the returns you got on your investments made a huge difference to the type of lifestyle you would enjoy when you retired. Like the difference between taking a holiday in your own country and travelling nationally. Or enjoying an exotic holiday in another country and travelling internationally. The ad showed why this particular fund got higher returns on their investments and why that was so important. The two signs ‘National’ and ‘International’ were very powerful visual aids that made the ad much more effective. Action Exercise: What common items could you use as a visual aid that would make your sales presentation more effective? How could you actually use this item in your sales presentation? You may find that the actual item itself could be very powerful to use in your presentation. You may also find that a photo or picture of the item may also be very effective. Two simple questions to improve your sales: Here is a simple sales improvement system you can start using in your business today. It’s free and only takes 60 seconds to use. If you want to instantly improve the sales results in your business, ask yourself two questions and answer them honestly after every sales presentation that you make. Here are the two questions: Question One: What did I do right in this sales presentation? Question Two: What one thing would I do better next time? Question One will keep you focused on the things that you are doing right and it also tends to leave you feeling quite positive. You can now repeat these things
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you are doing right in your next sales presentation. Question Two will help you identify at least one thing you could improve in your next sales presentation. You can then change this one thing. Let’s imagine you have just made a good sales presentation and your potential client has said ‘No’ to your offer. So you take 60 seconds and ask yourself the two questions. Question One: What did I do right in this sales presentation? “I asked good questions to identify the real needs of my potential client. I explained my product or service confidently. I was five minutes early for my meeting so I had time to review my notes before I spoke with my potential client.” (These are the things you did right. There is always something you did right if you look for it.) Question Two: What one thing would I do better next time? “Next time I would show the testimonial letter from another client who had many of the same concerns that this person had, yet used our product or service and was delighted with the results.” (Here you have identified one specific action step you can take in a future sales presentation to make it more effective. There is always at least one thing you could find to improve- even when you make a sale.) This is why these two questions work so well: Imagine that over the next few months you make 100 sales presentations of one sort or another. Now imagine you ask yourself the two questions after every one of these sales presentations and you make one small improvement every time you do. So you have now made 100 improvements in your sales presentations. Do you think if you are now doing 100 things better in your sales presentations that your sales will improve? Yes they will.
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Action Exercise: Use the two question method five times over the next week. Write down the answers you get when you ask these questions. And use these answers in other presentations. How to easily get a customer to choose your business: No matter what product or service you sell, there are usually a large number of other businesses offering something very similar. So with all this competition, how do you get potential clients to choose your business to spend their money with? One way is to focus on selling your ‘special way’ of doing business and not the products or services you sell. A good way to do this is to look at what another business already does that makes you feel special and important. Then see how you can apply this to your business as well. It could be something as greeting clients with a big smile when you see them. It might be the personal thank you note you send after they buy from you. Here are two examples. 1: Important Dates Reminder Service A gift shop offers a free special occasion reminder service to all their clients for important dates in their lives. These are things like birthdays and anniversaries of family members and friends. The gift shop would then contact their client at least a week before each of these dates and remind them that it was coming up. They would also suggest an appropriate gift and card to mark the occasion. Clients of this gift shop loved this service because they were now far less likely to forget an important occasion like an important birthday or anniversary. They also had a good amount of time to select a great gift.
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Naturally the gift shop had a good increase in sales by offering this service. They also have something to talk about that sets them apart from their competitors. 2: Dental Muffins and Coffee A dentist named Paddi Lund does something very interesting as part of his dental service. Once a patient has completed their dental treatment they are given a delicious batch of freshly baked muffins. These are sugar free and Paddi’s team calls them dental muffins for that reason. The muffins taste great and Paddi’s patients love them. There is also an amazing coffee machine in Paddi’s dental practice. It looks like something out of a science fiction movie and it makes delicious coffees for Paddi’s patients. The smell of freshly made coffee is very appealing. What Paddi has done with things like his dental muffins and his coffee machine, is make his patients visit to the dentist much more enjoyable and interesting. And his clients really appreciate this. Action Exercise: List five things you could do either before, after or during the sales process that would be of benefit and value to your customers. Which one of these things are you going to start doing this week? How are you going to explain this new thing to your new clients and why it is of value to them? Email an attractive offer to your existing clients on a regular basis: This can produce new sales in your business within a few days and is simple to do. Here are the steps. 1: Create an attractive offer for your existing clients and offer it to them in an interesting email. An attractive offer that works far better than a discount is
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an offer where someone buys something for the normal price of $X and get’s other things worth $Y completely free.) Here’s an example for a pet shop Subject Line: Thank You John I’ve been thinking for a few days how I can say thank you to our many loyal clients like you so here’s what I’ve done. I’d like to give you a free dog grooming session worth $45. Just spend $100 on XYZ dog food in the next 5 days and I will give you completely free a dog grooming session worth $45 to ABC dog groomers. I only have 25 of these dog grooming sessions to give away so it is a case of first in first served. Thanks again for being a client. (And here you give very clear directions on how they can take advantage of this special offer.) 2: Make sure your special offer is limited in some way. In this example there are only 25 free dog grooming sessions available and they only apply to sales made in the next five days of XYZ dog food worth $100. This is an attractive offer to your clients because they are going to be spending $100 or more on XYZ dog food over the next few months or so anyway. So why not spend this money right now and get a free dog grooming session worth $45? It’s attractive to the dog groomer because the pet store owner has probably said to them ‘Give me 25 dog grooming certificates worth $45 and I will give you $10 for each one with full payment right now. You will then have $250 cash and the opportunity to get 25 new people trying out your services. If you can convert say 5 into regular clients that could be several thousand dollars of new profits every year.” The pet shop has sold $2,500 of dog food at the normal price and has probably made a net profit around $500 to $750. Just from emailing an attractive offer to their existing clients.
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3: Send several reminder emails about the same offer. This is a little known secret. Send a follow up email the second day that says ‘I wanted to make sure you got this’ Then say “I sent you a special thank you offer yesterday and wanted to make sure you got it. It’s only valid for five days so here it is again”. Then have the first email repeated. These follow up emails will increase your response rate by 25% to 35% and are well worthwhile doing. Action Exercise: Create an attractive offer for your clients and then email this offer to them. Put a short time frame on this offer. And repeat on a regular basis with a new offer. You’ll be delighted at the brand new sales and profits you create with very little effort. Increase your sales by reducing risk: Every single customer had had a bad experience at some point in their life with spending money on a product or service. They might have bought something and it didn’t work as well as they expected. Or perhaps they bought something and found they could have got something just as good a lot cheaper from someone else. Or maybe they bought something and were then criticised by someone for their purchase. They might have been told they’d made a stupid or dumb mistake. You and I have also had at least one experience like this at some point in our lives. So this means that we are all a little bit cautious about spending money on products and services because we might make a mistake and then feel bad. In other words there is a certain amount of risk involved in buying any product or service. One of our responsibilities in all selling is to reduce the risk (in our customer’s minds) of buying our products
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or services. Because the lower the risk (in the mind of your customer) the greater the chances that they will buy what you have. The number one rule with risk is this: ‘Everything Counts’ In other words, everything you do or say when interacting with a customer has an impact on how risky they think it is to buy your product or service and do business with you. And the impact is either positive or negative in the mind of your customer. So everything you say or do is causing your customer to think it’s either more risky or less risky to do business with you. Example: Imagine you phone two trades people and leave a message asking them to contact you about their services. One tradesperson phones you back within one hour and the other one phones you back two days later. The tradesperson that phoned you back in two days could be twice as good as the one who phoned you back in one hour. But because they took two days to make contact you assume they are slow, sloppy and not that good at what they do. In other words you think it is more risky to do business with them, simply because they didn’t return your phone call promptly. Action Exercise: Write down 5-10 ways you can reduce the risk (of buying the products and services you sell.
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Increase your sales with ‘social proof’ We often look to see what other people are doing before we act. We also make buying decisions based on what other people similar to us have done. That way we reduce the risk of making a wrong decision. Social Proof is how we often choose movies, restaurants, holiday destinations, cars and many other products and services. The key words in using Social Proof are “People similar to us.” So if you are a medical professional; you will be strongly influenced by what other medical professionals think about a product or service that is of interest to you. If you are a teacher; you will be very interested in what other teachers have to say about a product or service you are considering buying. Social Proof can be summed up in the question many of your potential clients will have. The question is “Who else has purchased this product or service and what happened when they did? When you can show these people proof that other people similar to them have purchased your product or service and enjoyed some wonderful benefits you will increase your chances of making a sale. Some very effective ways to use Social Proof include testimonials, photos of happy clients and case studies. Action Exercise: Ring up a couple of happy clients and ask them to explain some of the positive benefits they have received from using your products or services. Get their permission to use their positive comments in your marketing. These positive testimonials will increase your sales because it’s other people now saying this is a good product or service to buy.
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Give your clients several different price options: This is a great way to increase sales in many businesses. The basic idea is you give your customers three different price choices. Say to your customers: “We have several different options on this particular product or service. The premium option includes A, B, C and D. This is more expensive than the regular product or service but it’s very popular with our clients who value X, Y and Z. The premium option is $X. Then we have the regular option which includes A & B. Over half our customers take the regular package. It’s available for only $Y. And for those clients who have a bit of a tight budget we also have the basic option which includes A. This is useful for clients who need to be careful with their money at the moment. The basic option is only $Z. Which option is of most interest? Now you can create a premium, regular and basic option for virtually any product or service. The premium package might include guaranteed delivery or service within 24 hours, or a double length guarantee, or any number of other added value items that a client would appreciate. The basic version might not include things like ongoing technical support. When you give clients a couple of pricing options some will choose the premium option because there are always clients that want the best that is available. Many will still take your regular option and some will also take your economy option.
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But what you haven’t had to do is discount your prices and throw away your profits. Action Exercise: Create three different pricing options for one of your popular products and services and offer them to a number of your clients this week.
Part Three: Customer Delight
Moments of Truth: To create delighted customers requires doing a lot of small things well. One of the keys is to remember is it's not what we do that is important. It's what customers think about what we do that is critical. Think about how you treat a customer every time they have an interaction of some sort with you. When they walk into your business for the first time. Or when they phone you. What happens normally? We call these experiences Moments of Truth. In each Moment of Truth the customer will decide one of three things. 1: They got what they expected in that interaction. They will be happy. Example: You phone a business and they answer in 3-5 rings and are polite. 2. They got less than they expected. They are unhappy. We call this a moment of misery. Example: You ring a business and no one answers after 15 rings. So you try again and same result. 3. They got more than they expected. They are delighted. We call this a moment of Magic! Example: You phone a business and they answer within 3 rings. The person is friendly, knowledgeable
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and obviously enjoys their job. They thank you for ringing and wish you a nice day. Here are the figures according to customer service experts. • If you are unhappy you tend to tell up to 33 people about the experience. If you are happy you tend to tell no one. If you are delighted you will tell up to 7 people.
• •
The key to create delighted customers is to improve a small amount consistently in all your Moments of Truth. Action exercise: Select one or more Moments of Truth for your business and answer the question "How can we improve this moment of truth by at least 1% this week. (From the customer’s viewpoint)?" Improving by 1% a week doesn't sound much, however over a year it is an improvement of 50%. Delight your customers by making them feel good: Here are three ways to make customers feel good when they interact with you. 1. Put yourself in the "Glad" emotional state before you talk with a customer. A simple way to do this even if you don't feel very positive is to go to a mirror, look at yourself and start smiling. Make it a genuine smile. Do this for several minutes and you will start to feel better because emotions follow actions. As emotions are very contagious; when you feel good so does your customer. 2. Never tell your customers your problems. 90% don't care and 10% are glad you feel as rotten as they do!
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Telling people your problems makes them feel unhappy and they don't feel they are getting great service. 3. Prepare for customers questions by having the answers before they ask. There are few things more impressive than an employee equipped with the knowledge and ability to help customers solve their problems. Customers often judge the competence of a business by how much employees seem to know. Action Exercise: Write down 5-10 of the most frequently asked questions by your customers. Write down logical, complete answers to these questions and learn them Add ‘Memorable Value’ In his excellent book ‘Turn your customers into your sales force’ Author Ross Reck quotes the following startling business figures. “25% of your success in business is getting a sale from a customer. Another 25% of your success comes from getting repeat sales from a customer. A whopping 50% of your business success comes from getting existing customers to recommend and promote you to their friends, associates and colleagues.” How do you get your customers to recommend your business to other people they know? Focus on adding ‘Memorable’ Value to them. Here are some good examples of how to add ‘Memorable Value’ The shoe repair shop that makes life easier for customers: A shoe repair shop adds great value to their clients by the way they do business. They will, at no charge, collect from your home (at a time to suit you) any shoes you have for repair.
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A pick up in the evening is fine. They will drop them back home for you again at a time to suit. They will also have any keys you want cut duplicated at the same time. Wow, talk about making things easy! Most people have several pair of shoes they would like to have repaired and several keys that they would like to get extra copies made. Guess when they intend to get them done? That's right! When they have free time. (This never happens.) The ‘Vampire’ Dentist Many years ago a dentist in Los Angeles decided to set up a dental practice that only operated from 4pm to 2am. He then took out small ads offering his services in the trade journals that supplied the Film Studios. He knew that films were very expensive to produce and the people involved in producing them often worked long hours. So they didn’t have time to see a dentist during normal business hours. No other dentist at the time offered the convenience of dental services after hours and he made a great living for many years by doing this. Action Exercise: How can you add ‘Memorable Value’ to your customers by making it a lot more convenient for them to do business with you? The most important sound in the world to your customers: As Dale Carnegie pointed out in his book "How to win friends and influence people" a person’s name is (to them) the most important sound in any language.
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By calling your customers by name you make them feel more important and they perceive they are getting excellent service. The friendly gym owner: A gym owner does this well. Every time a client comes in he welcomes them by smiling and saying "Good Morning John” or “Hi Mary". This takes him two seconds and always makes his clients feel good. A key here is to begin to learn the names of some of your customers and begin using them in conversations with them. If you have trouble remembering names get a copy of any good book on improving your memory. You will learn how to remember names and faces quickly and easily. Action Exercise: Who are three customers that you speak with that you could use their name when speaking to? Begin using their name the next time you speak with them. What business are you really in? Most people who work with people don't really know what business they are really in. Most of them think they're in business to deliver products or services to people. They don't understand that they are really there to give end-result benefits to people. Examples: A receptionist in medical practice may think that she is there to schedule appointments. However she is really there to greet people, make the most of the first few seconds of contact, to put them at ease and let them know they've chosen the best place to come to. A clothing sales person isn't in the business just to sell clothes. He or she is there to identify people’s needs, find out what budget they have, what occasion they want the clothing for and to help them present a desirable image.
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A hospital nurse isn't there to check on patients and record information. He or she is there to help patients enjoy as much comfort as possible, relieve anxiety and reassure family members. In other words your main job is to help customers enjoy end-result benefits and enjoy as much satisfaction as possible. Action Exercise: Brainstorm with your work associates for five answers to the question "What business are we really in?" Focus on end result benefits and also how your customers would ideally feel after dealing with you. Elephants Don't Bite: This a wonderful little phrase that reminds us how it's the small things in life that cause us problems a lot more often than the big ones. It's the mosquitoes that are annoying not the elephants. This has tremendous application to delighting our customers. From our customers viewpoint it is usually the many small things that either make or break customer service. Look at how small things can negatively affect customers. Example: You ring up a company and ask for some information to be sent out to you. If it comes out promptly and efficiently you think the company is giving good service. If it takes a long time you think they are sloppy in their customer service. Example: You are taking a seat at a restaurant and you are seated next to the door. It's often opened and lets in cold air. No matter how good the meal it could easily
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be overshadowed by the small factor of how comfortable your seat is. Example: You buy something from a shop and when you take it home you find a small part of it is missing. Conversely small things can positively influence customers: Example: A customer went to buy a new duvet recently and went into two different shops. Neither had what they wanted in stock. Both offered to get it in for the client so they left their name and number. One shop rang the customer back in two days to say it was in stock. The other shop rang the customer back in one hour and said they would get it in especially for them that day. They rang back later that day and said it was now in stock. Guess which shop got the business? There are literally hundreds of small things that can influence your customers either positively or negatively. This gives us an exciting opportunity in any business to provide amazing customer service. We need to identify the many small things that happen when we interact with customers. Then make sure we deliver slightly more than a customer expects in these key interactions. Action Exercise: 1. To use this concept in your business make a list of all the little things that happen when you interact with customers. You answer the phone, you phone the person back, you deliver a product, you send an invoice and so on. 2. Then identify one of these little things and improve it just a small amount this week. Repeat the process next week.
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Use thank you notes: One of the simplest, quickest and easiest ways to build customer loyalty and increase sales is to send short hand-written thank you notes to customers and potential customers on a regular basis. The investment is only a stamp and a few moments of your time. Here are some examples of Thank You Notes you could send. After a visit: “Thank you for your time today. I enjoyed meeting you and look forward to talking with you again shortly. Regards. Your name.” After a sale: “Thank you for investing in X. I appreciate your business and know you will be delighted with our service. Regards. Your name.” For Positive Feedback: “Thank you for your positive feedback. I appreciate your kind comments, they made my day. Regards. Your name.” After any exceptional service: “Thank you for your excellent service last night. The meal was great and our whole group had a great time. Thanks again. Your name.” it is extremely rare to get thanked in writing today for anything. If you do this consistently you are well on your way to providing amazing customer service. Action Exercise: Send out 3-5 Thank you notes each workday for the next 30 days The Wow factor! If customers come into your place of business on a regular basis it can be very helpful to pay attention to small details that cause the customer to go “wow". They will then talk about this experience to other people.
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Example: One of the first things you notice if you go to Disneyland is the incredible cleanness of the place. There is no rubbish on the ground and everything looks spotless. People go home and tell their friends how different this was from most of the amusement parks they've visited. Carl Sewell talks about how he adapted this idea for his own business. (Carl runs the largest and most successful Cadillac dealership in the United States) Carl makes sure that the rest rooms in his dealerships are immaculate. He uses wall paper that costs $250 a roll on the walls. His floor tiles are exceptionally high gloss so they stay clean. They are washed every hour on the hour. His customers often comment on what a wow experience it was going into his rest rooms and Carl has positively differentiated his business again from his competitors. Action Exercise: How can you get your customers to unconsciously go "wow" when they come into your business or deal with you?
Summary:
We’ve covered a number of useful ideas in this report. I recommend that you read through these ideas on a regular basis and put a number of them to work in your business. (You’ll be delighted with the results.)
‘That’s when we began using the Instant Business Success Strategies. They worked really well for us so you might want to try them in your business as well.”
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Helpful Resource: I publish a free monthly marketing newsletter called Easy Business Success that comes out by email once a month. It’s easy to read and each issue has practical ideas to create new sales and profits in any business with very little effort. Here are just some of the ideas you’ll learn in the first few volumes: How to get a ‘completely unfair business advantage’ over every one of your competitors. How to boost sales in as little as sixty seconds How to create hundreds of dollars of brand new profits in less than five days The magic power of the dripping tap. And many more field tested strategies to instantly improve your business results. To subscribe to Easy Business Success just go to
www.EasyBusinessSuccess.com
25 proven strategies to instantly create new clients, sales and profits for your business...
With the compliments of Amundson & Amundson www.amundson.co.nz
Copyright Notices
Copyright © 2010 by Graham McGregor All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission or further information should be addressed to Twomac Consulting Limited 188 Scenic Drive Titirangi Waitakere 0604 New Zealand Published by Twomac Consulting Limited 188 Scenic Drive Titirangi Waitakere 0604 New Zealand Email [email protected] Website www.EasyBusinessSuccess.com Printed and bound in New Zealand.
Legal Notices
While all attempts have been made to verify information provided in this publication, neither the author nor the Publisher assumes any responsibility for errors, omissions or contrary interpretation of the subject matter. This publication is not intended for use as a source of legal or accounting advice. The Publisher wants to stress that the information contained herein may be subject to varying state and/or local laws or regulations. All users are advised to retain competent counsel to determine what state and/or local laws or regulations may apply to the user's particular business. The purchaser or reader of this publication assumes responsibility for the use of these materials and information. Adherence to all applicable laws and regulations, both federal and state and local, governing professional licensing, business practices, advertising and all other aspects of doing business in New Zealand or any other jurisdiction is the sole responsibility of the purchaser or reader. The author and Publisher assume no responsibility or liability whatsoever on the behalf of any purchaser or reader of these materials. Any perceived slight of specific people or organizations is unintentional.
Introduction:
Hello and welcome to Instant Business Success. I’ve been a professional sales and marketing consultant for 32 years. And in this time I’ve learned a very important lesson. The secret to outstanding results in any business is very simple: Just focus on three things. 1: Smart Marketing This is where you create good numbers of interested people who are keen to talk with you about the products or services you sell. 2: Customer Friendly Selling This is where you find out what your customers really want and show them how your products and services can help them to get what they want. 3: Customer Delight This where you stay in touch and add value to your customers. Delighted customers will create large amounts of repeat and referral business for you. When you focus on doing these three simple things on a regular basis you will create remarkable results in any business. And that’s the purpose of Instant Business Success. In the next few pages you’ll learn 25 simple ways to apply smart marketing, customer friendly selling and customer delight in your business. So dig in and use some of these simple strategies in your own business. The results will both delight and surprise you.
Graham McGregor
PS: When you do things right, it’s actually quite easy to get large amounts of new sales and profits with very little effort. (So everything I give you is very easy to do.) PPS: I love to hear feedback or comments on any of my marketing and sales strategies. So feel free to let me know about anything you’ve tried from Instant Business Success and how it’s worked for you. My contact details are at www.EasyBusinessSuccess.com
Contents: Part One: Smart Marketing
Marketing with helpful information Marketing with educational talks Marketing with special reports Marketing with an email newsletter The ten minute marketing formula Look for ‘different’ ways to market Marketing by looking for a ‘better way’ Marketing with lagniappe The 1-5-15-30 Day Follow Up
Page Numbers
1-3 3 4-5 5-6 6-7 8 9-10 10-12 12-14
Part Two: Customer Friendly Selling
Look for easy sales Make your sales presentations twice as effective Two simple questions to improve your sales How to easily get a customer to choose your business Email an attractive offer to your clients on a regular basis Increase your sales by reducing risk Increase your sales with ‘Social Proof’ Give your clients several different price options 14 14-16 17-18 18-20 20-21 22-23 23-24 24-25
Part Three: Customer Delight
Moments of truth Delight your customers by making them feel good Add memorable value The most important sound in the world to your customers What business are your really in? Elephants don’t bite Use thank you notes The Wow factor 25-26 26-27 27-28 28-29 29 30-31 31-32 32-33
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Part One: Smart Marketing
Marketing with helpful information: One of the most effective ways to market your products, services or business is to put together helpful and easy to understand information for potential customers. Then offer this information to people who may be interested in what you offer. Personal trainer example: A personal trainer working in a fitness centre wrote a short two page tip sheet called ‘Seven secrets to a great looking body’. In this tip sheet he explained seven helpful tips that people could use. One tip was around how to avoid injury when working out. Another tip was on how to keep yourself motivated with your exercise programme. The last tip was pretty obvious. It was to use a personal trainer like him! Each tip had helpful info that explained it in a bit more detail. This personal trainer then made a few hundred copies of this two page tip sheet and did something very clever. He personally delivered this two page tip sheet to hundreds of homes in very expensive neighbourhoods that were close to where he worked. In other words they went to people who potentially had money to afford to use a personal trainer. A number of people who read his two page tip sheet rang him up and said they were interested in getting in shape and wanted to book a free consultation. He then converted many of these people into profitable paying customers. A great benefit of providing helpful information like this is that it positions your business as being an expert or authority in your field. If you put down helpful tips in
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writing you are automatically positioned as being good in your field. You can market many ways when you use helpful information: A good way to start is with something as simple as Commonly asked questions: Whatever product or service you sell, there are usually some commonly asked questions that a potential customer will ask you. You could do something as simple as write up a short 1-2 page tip sheet called something like this: The seven most important questions you should ask when buying an XYZ. (In this case XYZ is the product you sell.) Examples: “The seven most important questions you should ask when buying a spa pool” Or how about “The four most important questions you should ask when choosing a good dentist” You then explain why each question is important to ask and how asking them will help a person make a good choice around buying that type of product or service. When you provide helpful information like this you position your business as being an expert in your field. It also makes it very easy for someone else to recommend your business to someone they know. Imagine if you have just read a really helpful tip sheet on the questions to ask when buying a new boat. If you know someone who is interested in buying a boat, it is very easy for you to give them this tip sheet to read. This is helpful for this person and it also smart marketing by the boat dealer who wrote the tip sheet.
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They are positioned as helpful people in the boat field and many people that read this tip sheet will then make contact with their business. Action Exercise: How could you use this tip sheet idea in your business? Marketing with short educational talks: This is an overlooked opportunity for most businesses. Put together some short and easy to understand helpful tips around the products or services you sell. If you sell ladies clothing put together some useful ideas on how to choose clothes that make you look good without costing a fortune. If you are a painter have some simple and valuable tips on how to do a great painting job. Include useful tips and tricks and interesting examples in your ideas. Then volunteer to give your talk to groups of people that could potentially be your clients. Rotary and Lions groups are a useful start as they meet most weeks and are always looking for interesting guest speakers. (You don’t have to be great at speaking to market with educational talks. You just need to be able to explain some useful ideas for 10-15 minutes.) When you give an educational talk you are positioned instantly as an expert in your field. And at least 10% or more of the audience will want to speak with you further about the products and services you offer. This is a fun way to market and it’s virtually free to do. Best of all you can do this no matter what type of business you have. Just find interesting tips and ideas related to your products and services that people will find useful. Then give some short talks and enjoy the new customers you get from doing this. Action Exercise: How could you use this marketing idea in your business?
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Marketing with special reports: A special report is simply a fancy name for a short booklet of useful ideas around the products or services you sell. It’s in effect a ‘how to’ guide that has some valuable information that a potential client would find useful. Special reports are a great way to market, especially if you sell a higher priced product or services. Home relocation example: A home relocation business wanted new clients. Their service involved physically moving a home on a number of trucks to a new location. So the home was taken to pieces, moved carefully and then put back together like a big jigsaw puzzle. Their home relocation service costs a minimum of $20,000 to use. They decided to use a special report to attract new clients. So the owner spent a few hours and wrote a 20 page booklet called ‘11 secrets to successfully relocating a home’. He took out very inexpensive ads in the local paper offering this special report to people wanting to relocate a home from one location to another. He also offered it on his website. Over an eight year period this one special report has produced over eight million dollars of new business. It also positions his business as being experts in this field because in his special report he puts down all the things you need to do to successfully relocate a home. How to get permits, common mistakes to avoid, handy tricks of the trade and so on. In most cases the information in a special report is the sort of information you normally tell every new potential client who is interested in what you sell. With a special report you just put this information into a handy easy to read written format and offer it to potential customers. This works extremely well especially if what you sell is expensive.
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Action Exercise: How could you use a special report to attract new clients for your business? Marketing with an email newsletter of useful tips: One of the most useful ways to market for any business is to use an email newsletter or what we call an ‘ezine’. The most effective email newsletters come out on a regular basis and have lots of useful and practical ideas that your customers will find valuable to read. Having a helpful email newsletter gives you a perfect excuse to collect the email addresses of both clients and potential clients. And it gives you a simple way to stay in touch with them on a regular basis. Remember this key point: If you provide helpful information in your email newsletter that ‘adds value’ to your customers and clients they will enjoy and look forward to hearing from you. The simplest way to do this is to give them useful tips that are ideally related in some way to the products or services you sell. So if you sell ladies clothing you might want to send out some useful tips on how create a ‘movie star wardrobe’ without having to spend a fortune. If you sell legal services, provide a legal tip of the month. If you are an electrician give a useful tip each month related to things like choosing the right lighting for different rooms, how to save on power, popular new electrical fittings and why people are choosing them. Then send this short email newsletter out at least once a month to the people who have given you permission to send them information by email. Make sure you always have a simple way for any person that doesn’t want to receive your email newsletter to unsubscribe at any time.
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Action Exercise: How could you implement a simple email newsletter in your business this month? The Ten Minute Marketing Formula: One of the things that many business people overlook is that effective marketing doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive to do. A few minutes spent doing some simple things can produce some remarkable results. Here’s a good example. It’s a very simple marketing formula that has helped many businesses to grow their revenues by 10% or more over a 12 month period. Best of all this marketing formula only takes ten minutes a day to do. So it’s called The Ten Minute Marketing Formula. Here’s how it works: Look at the following marketing chart. Your goal is to do a minimum of four marketing activities each day from this chart. Send out one thank Give away one you card business card Make a follow up Ask one person phone call to one for a referral person Now you can combine these marketing activities any way you like each day. So you could send out two thank you cards today and also make two follow up phone calls. Or maybe you could do one activity from each box. The goal though is to do a minimum of four marketing activities every work day. Now four marketing activities a day is close to 1,000 extra marketing activities a year. That’s a lot of extra marketing activities each year and is the reason why many businesses that use this formula increase their revenues by 10% or more over 12 months.
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1: Follow up phone calls. A follow up phone call could be as simple as you ringing up a client and saying ‘Hi it’s John here from XYZ business here. Just a quick call to find out how you are enjoying the ABC product or service you brought from us recently?’ The interesting thing about follow up calls is that very few businesses ever make them. And with at least 10% of follow up calls your customers will often mention an opportunity for a repeat purchase or talk about someone they know who could be interested in buying the types of things you sell. 2: Thank you cards. These work very well when they are hand written. A thank you card can be very short and simple like this: ‘Hi John, this is just a short note to thank you for being a client. I appreciate your business and know you will be delighted with your purchase. Kind regards. Your Name.” 3: Asking for referrals. When you ask for referrals you might try something like this. “Hi John, I wonder if you could help me? Who are two or three people you know who might be interested in getting some helpful information on buying XYZ?” 4: Giving away business cards. You can give them in a low key way to people you meet. Say something like ‘If you come across someone interested in some helpful advice around xyz product or service, feel free to give them my card.’ Action Exercise: Use the ten minute marketing formula in your business for the next three months and notice what happens.
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Look for ‘different’ ways to market your products and services: A lady called Cindy Cashman saw an interesting idea a few years ago that took her fancy. The idea was for a book with the title “Everything men know about women.” The book was over 100 pages long and inside there was nothing but blank pages. Cindy liked the fun nature of the book but she didn’t like the idea of having to work really hard to try and make a few sales. So she began looking for ‘different’ ways to market her book. The outcome was interesting. Cindy ignored completely traditional book shops as she realised her book would be competing with tens of thousands of other books for sale. Instead Cindy approached businesses like women’s clothing shops and got them to display her book next to the cash register. Women shopping at these stores would pick up the book because of the catchy title, laugh when they saw it was totally blank inside and would then buy a whole bunch to give as gifts to people they knew. Cindy kept the price very affordable and sold over a million copies of her book over the next few years. Cindy went on to become one of the most successful self publishers in the world. All by looking for a ‘different’ way to market. (Cindy is now becoming famous all over again for becoming the first person to be getting married in space.) Action Exercise: What different ways can you market your business? Look beyond the normal ways that this is done in your industry.
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Marketing by looking for a ‘better way’ If you want fantastic marketing results a key secret is to spend a few minutes every day looking for a ‘better way’ to do things in your business. Here’s a good example of a great question to ask to find a better way: ‘How can I reduce my customer’s fear of making a mistake when they buy my products or services? When you come up with answers to this question you often experience huge increases in sales. All of us have had the experience of making a bad purchase somewhere. The product or service didn’t work, caused problems and other people criticised us for our purchase. This felt uncomfortable so we don’t what it to happen again. This means we are all a little bit reluctant to spend money on any product or service in case we make a mistake. The Unique Guarantee: A pest control service used this idea well. They would offer a commercial pest control service (insects, rats, fleas etc) for restaurants and hotels. They added a unique guarantee to their service. Firstly if the hotel or restaurant lost a booking because of a problem with pests, the pest control company would pay for that lost booking. If the hotel or restaurant was ever closed down by a health inspector for a pest problem, the pest control company would reimburse them for any lost revenue they might have had. The guarantee went on to cover 10 other points. This pest control company is twice as expensive as anyone else in their field. They also have 80% market share in every area they go into. Best of all they have a simple insurance policy that covers them for any money they might have to pay
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out. All they have done is dramatically reduce the customer’s fear around paying for their pest control service and it not working. Action Exercise: How can you reduce your customer’s fear of making a mistake when they buy your product or service? Write down five ideas and put one of them into action this week. Marketing with lagniappe: Lagniappe is pronounced LAN yap. Lagniappe is a word that is used primarily in southern Louisiana and southeast Texas and refers to an "unexpected something extra.” Lagniappe is giving your customer a little unadvertised, unexpected, unasked-for ‘extra’. This little extra is often remembered long after the purchase. It could be an additional doughnut (as in "baker's dozen"), a free "one for the road" drink, or possibly a complimentary dessert for a regular customer. Here are some examples of businesses that used lagniappe and as a result got clients recommending them to a lot of other people: The Car Dealer and the movie tickets: A customer bought a car from a car dealer. Three weeks after the purchase they received two free movie passes from the car dealer; along with a note thanking them for their business. This customer told all the people they knew about the delightful little added value bonus from this car firm. They also went back two years later and bought another car from the same firm. The Dentist and the phone call: A person was on holiday in another town a few years ago and had a tooth ache. They went to a local dentist who fixed the problem. What was unusual was this same dentist phoned this client that night in their hotel
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to make sure they were okay. They also phoned their client a few days later, when they were back in their home town, just to make sure they were fine. This person was very impressed with this great follow up service and has told dozens of people about their unusual experience. The appliance shop and the pot plant: There is a very successful appliance shop that does something very simple. Several days after you buy an appliance from them, they courier out to you a beautiful pot plant and a lovely thank you note. The owner is making sure you tell everyone about your positive experiences dealing with his store. Their clients rave about their unexpected free gift. It generates a lot of referral and repeat business for them. The Chinese takeaway and the paper bag: There was a Chinese Take-away owner who used to include something free with every order a customer placed. He would put it in a small bag and write "free" on the outside. Many people enjoyed going to this takeaway just to see what the free offer would be each time. It only cost the take away owner a few cents to give away something free and it made his business special to his customers. Here’s the reason for giving you these example of Lagniappe: When you consistently use lagniappe with all your customers and clients you will turn many of these people into hardworking and loyal salespeople for your business. They will actively recommend your business to many of the people they know. You will also generate a large amount of repeat and referral business from these same clients and customers because they now feel valued and special
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Action Exercise: Write a list of 5-10 simple ways that you could provide ‘lagniappe’ to your clients. Use some of these in the next few weeks. This is a great marketing strategy. The 1-5-15-30 Day Follow Up: Many customers never hear back from a business after they have made a purchase of a product or service. Think about all the products and services you’ve bought in the last six months. How often did you hear back from any of these businesses? In most cases, not that often. Remember "Out of mind" means no opportunity for further business and referrals from a customer. One approach that is very helpful is the 1-5-15-30 day follow-up. (It's called this because you take specific follow up action on days 1, 5, 15, 30.) Here’s how it works: Day 1: Within 24 hours of the first sale to a new customer send a short handwritten thank you note. "Dear Mr Smith, I enjoyed helping you choose your new widget. I trust you will enjoy years of enjoyment with it. Best wishes. Your Name.” Day 5: Approximately 5 days after the sale deliver a small present to the purchaser. It could be a small pot plant, a gift book, a couple of free movie passes. Enclose a short thank you note that says something like “Dear Mr Smith, I appreciate you being a customer and thought you would enjoy this small gift. With my compliments. Your name.” Day 15: Approximately 15 days after the sale make a quick follow up phone call. Ask them how their widget is going and how they are finding it. This follow up call lets the customer know you value the relationship with them even after you've made the sale.
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Day 30: Approximately 30 days after the sale send another small gift. (A little something extra.) It doesn't have to be expensive but it should have a high perceived value. Ideally it should be a conversation starter. The Car Dealer and the personalised Desk Calendar One car dealership sends their clients a personalised desk calendar that has a lovely colour photo of the customer sitting in their new car. Customers love this unique memento and often keep it on their desk. This leads to other people picking it up and talking about it. So this simple added value gift often results in further business for the car dealership. The 1-5-15-30 day follow up can be adapted to any business by changing the days you take follow up action on. For instance, you may implement a 1-7-3060 day follow up in your business. Or perhaps yours is a 1-10-20-30 day follow up. The key idea with this 1-5-15-30 follow up system is that you are in contact (in an added value way) four times within the first month or so of a new customer making a purchase. This shows the customer that you are serious about treating them well and looking after them. This is a rare experience for most customers! Action Exercise: Develop a 1-5-15-30 day follow up plan you can use with your own customers. What specific action steps will you take on the following days? (Feel free to change the days given here to other days if it would be more appropriate for your business.) Day 1, Day 5, Day 15, Day 30 Then use this follow up plan with all your new customers
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Part Two: Customer Friendly Selling
Look for easy sales: One of the best ways to make more sales quickly is look for other products and services you can offer your existing clients. It’s seven times easier to make another sale to an existing client as it is to make the first sale to a brand new client. Personal Trainer example: A personal fitness trainer had fast yet fun training methods that produced excellent results for all his clients. Yet this personal trainer was not offering his clients any other products apart from his personal training services. A marketing consultant suggested he offer his clients additional products like protein powders, vitamins, minerals and nutritional supplements. This made sense so the personal trainer tried it. Within three months the majority of his clients were now enjoying even better health and fitness after purchasing the supplements he was now offering. And the personal trainer was now making an extra $1,000 a week in new profits. Action Exercise: What additional sales could you make in your business with very little effort? Make your sales presentations twice as effective with visual aids Visual aids are a powerful way to improve the effectiveness of any sales presentation. One reason they work so well is that there are 22 times more nerves from the eyes to the brain as from the ears to the brain. So we believe far more of what we see than what we hear.
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One way is to use a common item your customer is already familiar with and show this item as part your sales presentation: Life insurance example: A very successful life insurance agent uses three simple visual aids to demonstrate the high cost of waiting to start your investment program. He uses a golf ball, a baseball, and a blow up beach ball. And he actually brings these three items with him on every sales presentation. He explains that if you start an investment programme for financial security when you are in your twenties the premium you pay is very small. He says that this is similar to carrying a golf ball in your pocket and you will hardly notice it. If you wait until you are in your forties to start your investment programme, your premiums are larger. It’s like carrying a baseball in your pocket. Uncomfortable, but you can do it. If you wait until your sixties to start your investment programme, your premiums are hugely expensive. It's like trying to carry a fully inflated beach ball in your pocket which is almost impossible. These three visual aids are very powerful in helping this insurance agent to encourage people to begin an investment programme now versus later. Investment Fund example: An advertisement for an investment fund had a headline that said: “What would you rather enjoy when you retire?” They then had two pictures of the same person at the airport waiting to travel. The person was standing under an airport sign in each picture. In the first picture the person was standing under a sign that said ‘national’. In the second picture the same persona was standing under a sign said ‘International’
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The advertisement went on to explain that the returns you got on your investments made a huge difference to the type of lifestyle you would enjoy when you retired. Like the difference between taking a holiday in your own country and travelling nationally. Or enjoying an exotic holiday in another country and travelling internationally. The ad showed why this particular fund got higher returns on their investments and why that was so important. The two signs ‘National’ and ‘International’ were very powerful visual aids that made the ad much more effective. Action Exercise: What common items could you use as a visual aid that would make your sales presentation more effective? How could you actually use this item in your sales presentation? You may find that the actual item itself could be very powerful to use in your presentation. You may also find that a photo or picture of the item may also be very effective. Two simple questions to improve your sales: Here is a simple sales improvement system you can start using in your business today. It’s free and only takes 60 seconds to use. If you want to instantly improve the sales results in your business, ask yourself two questions and answer them honestly after every sales presentation that you make. Here are the two questions: Question One: What did I do right in this sales presentation? Question Two: What one thing would I do better next time? Question One will keep you focused on the things that you are doing right and it also tends to leave you feeling quite positive. You can now repeat these things
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you are doing right in your next sales presentation. Question Two will help you identify at least one thing you could improve in your next sales presentation. You can then change this one thing. Let’s imagine you have just made a good sales presentation and your potential client has said ‘No’ to your offer. So you take 60 seconds and ask yourself the two questions. Question One: What did I do right in this sales presentation? “I asked good questions to identify the real needs of my potential client. I explained my product or service confidently. I was five minutes early for my meeting so I had time to review my notes before I spoke with my potential client.” (These are the things you did right. There is always something you did right if you look for it.) Question Two: What one thing would I do better next time? “Next time I would show the testimonial letter from another client who had many of the same concerns that this person had, yet used our product or service and was delighted with the results.” (Here you have identified one specific action step you can take in a future sales presentation to make it more effective. There is always at least one thing you could find to improve- even when you make a sale.) This is why these two questions work so well: Imagine that over the next few months you make 100 sales presentations of one sort or another. Now imagine you ask yourself the two questions after every one of these sales presentations and you make one small improvement every time you do. So you have now made 100 improvements in your sales presentations. Do you think if you are now doing 100 things better in your sales presentations that your sales will improve? Yes they will.
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Action Exercise: Use the two question method five times over the next week. Write down the answers you get when you ask these questions. And use these answers in other presentations. How to easily get a customer to choose your business: No matter what product or service you sell, there are usually a large number of other businesses offering something very similar. So with all this competition, how do you get potential clients to choose your business to spend their money with? One way is to focus on selling your ‘special way’ of doing business and not the products or services you sell. A good way to do this is to look at what another business already does that makes you feel special and important. Then see how you can apply this to your business as well. It could be something as greeting clients with a big smile when you see them. It might be the personal thank you note you send after they buy from you. Here are two examples. 1: Important Dates Reminder Service A gift shop offers a free special occasion reminder service to all their clients for important dates in their lives. These are things like birthdays and anniversaries of family members and friends. The gift shop would then contact their client at least a week before each of these dates and remind them that it was coming up. They would also suggest an appropriate gift and card to mark the occasion. Clients of this gift shop loved this service because they were now far less likely to forget an important occasion like an important birthday or anniversary. They also had a good amount of time to select a great gift.
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Naturally the gift shop had a good increase in sales by offering this service. They also have something to talk about that sets them apart from their competitors. 2: Dental Muffins and Coffee A dentist named Paddi Lund does something very interesting as part of his dental service. Once a patient has completed their dental treatment they are given a delicious batch of freshly baked muffins. These are sugar free and Paddi’s team calls them dental muffins for that reason. The muffins taste great and Paddi’s patients love them. There is also an amazing coffee machine in Paddi’s dental practice. It looks like something out of a science fiction movie and it makes delicious coffees for Paddi’s patients. The smell of freshly made coffee is very appealing. What Paddi has done with things like his dental muffins and his coffee machine, is make his patients visit to the dentist much more enjoyable and interesting. And his clients really appreciate this. Action Exercise: List five things you could do either before, after or during the sales process that would be of benefit and value to your customers. Which one of these things are you going to start doing this week? How are you going to explain this new thing to your new clients and why it is of value to them? Email an attractive offer to your existing clients on a regular basis: This can produce new sales in your business within a few days and is simple to do. Here are the steps. 1: Create an attractive offer for your existing clients and offer it to them in an interesting email. An attractive offer that works far better than a discount is
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an offer where someone buys something for the normal price of $X and get’s other things worth $Y completely free.) Here’s an example for a pet shop Subject Line: Thank You John I’ve been thinking for a few days how I can say thank you to our many loyal clients like you so here’s what I’ve done. I’d like to give you a free dog grooming session worth $45. Just spend $100 on XYZ dog food in the next 5 days and I will give you completely free a dog grooming session worth $45 to ABC dog groomers. I only have 25 of these dog grooming sessions to give away so it is a case of first in first served. Thanks again for being a client. (And here you give very clear directions on how they can take advantage of this special offer.) 2: Make sure your special offer is limited in some way. In this example there are only 25 free dog grooming sessions available and they only apply to sales made in the next five days of XYZ dog food worth $100. This is an attractive offer to your clients because they are going to be spending $100 or more on XYZ dog food over the next few months or so anyway. So why not spend this money right now and get a free dog grooming session worth $45? It’s attractive to the dog groomer because the pet store owner has probably said to them ‘Give me 25 dog grooming certificates worth $45 and I will give you $10 for each one with full payment right now. You will then have $250 cash and the opportunity to get 25 new people trying out your services. If you can convert say 5 into regular clients that could be several thousand dollars of new profits every year.” The pet shop has sold $2,500 of dog food at the normal price and has probably made a net profit around $500 to $750. Just from emailing an attractive offer to their existing clients.
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3: Send several reminder emails about the same offer. This is a little known secret. Send a follow up email the second day that says ‘I wanted to make sure you got this’ Then say “I sent you a special thank you offer yesterday and wanted to make sure you got it. It’s only valid for five days so here it is again”. Then have the first email repeated. These follow up emails will increase your response rate by 25% to 35% and are well worthwhile doing. Action Exercise: Create an attractive offer for your clients and then email this offer to them. Put a short time frame on this offer. And repeat on a regular basis with a new offer. You’ll be delighted at the brand new sales and profits you create with very little effort. Increase your sales by reducing risk: Every single customer had had a bad experience at some point in their life with spending money on a product or service. They might have bought something and it didn’t work as well as they expected. Or perhaps they bought something and found they could have got something just as good a lot cheaper from someone else. Or maybe they bought something and were then criticised by someone for their purchase. They might have been told they’d made a stupid or dumb mistake. You and I have also had at least one experience like this at some point in our lives. So this means that we are all a little bit cautious about spending money on products and services because we might make a mistake and then feel bad. In other words there is a certain amount of risk involved in buying any product or service. One of our responsibilities in all selling is to reduce the risk (in our customer’s minds) of buying our products
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or services. Because the lower the risk (in the mind of your customer) the greater the chances that they will buy what you have. The number one rule with risk is this: ‘Everything Counts’ In other words, everything you do or say when interacting with a customer has an impact on how risky they think it is to buy your product or service and do business with you. And the impact is either positive or negative in the mind of your customer. So everything you say or do is causing your customer to think it’s either more risky or less risky to do business with you. Example: Imagine you phone two trades people and leave a message asking them to contact you about their services. One tradesperson phones you back within one hour and the other one phones you back two days later. The tradesperson that phoned you back in two days could be twice as good as the one who phoned you back in one hour. But because they took two days to make contact you assume they are slow, sloppy and not that good at what they do. In other words you think it is more risky to do business with them, simply because they didn’t return your phone call promptly. Action Exercise: Write down 5-10 ways you can reduce the risk (of buying the products and services you sell.
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Increase your sales with ‘social proof’ We often look to see what other people are doing before we act. We also make buying decisions based on what other people similar to us have done. That way we reduce the risk of making a wrong decision. Social Proof is how we often choose movies, restaurants, holiday destinations, cars and many other products and services. The key words in using Social Proof are “People similar to us.” So if you are a medical professional; you will be strongly influenced by what other medical professionals think about a product or service that is of interest to you. If you are a teacher; you will be very interested in what other teachers have to say about a product or service you are considering buying. Social Proof can be summed up in the question many of your potential clients will have. The question is “Who else has purchased this product or service and what happened when they did? When you can show these people proof that other people similar to them have purchased your product or service and enjoyed some wonderful benefits you will increase your chances of making a sale. Some very effective ways to use Social Proof include testimonials, photos of happy clients and case studies. Action Exercise: Ring up a couple of happy clients and ask them to explain some of the positive benefits they have received from using your products or services. Get their permission to use their positive comments in your marketing. These positive testimonials will increase your sales because it’s other people now saying this is a good product or service to buy.
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Give your clients several different price options: This is a great way to increase sales in many businesses. The basic idea is you give your customers three different price choices. Say to your customers: “We have several different options on this particular product or service. The premium option includes A, B, C and D. This is more expensive than the regular product or service but it’s very popular with our clients who value X, Y and Z. The premium option is $X. Then we have the regular option which includes A & B. Over half our customers take the regular package. It’s available for only $Y. And for those clients who have a bit of a tight budget we also have the basic option which includes A. This is useful for clients who need to be careful with their money at the moment. The basic option is only $Z. Which option is of most interest? Now you can create a premium, regular and basic option for virtually any product or service. The premium package might include guaranteed delivery or service within 24 hours, or a double length guarantee, or any number of other added value items that a client would appreciate. The basic version might not include things like ongoing technical support. When you give clients a couple of pricing options some will choose the premium option because there are always clients that want the best that is available. Many will still take your regular option and some will also take your economy option.
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But what you haven’t had to do is discount your prices and throw away your profits. Action Exercise: Create three different pricing options for one of your popular products and services and offer them to a number of your clients this week.
Part Three: Customer Delight
Moments of Truth: To create delighted customers requires doing a lot of small things well. One of the keys is to remember is it's not what we do that is important. It's what customers think about what we do that is critical. Think about how you treat a customer every time they have an interaction of some sort with you. When they walk into your business for the first time. Or when they phone you. What happens normally? We call these experiences Moments of Truth. In each Moment of Truth the customer will decide one of three things. 1: They got what they expected in that interaction. They will be happy. Example: You phone a business and they answer in 3-5 rings and are polite. 2. They got less than they expected. They are unhappy. We call this a moment of misery. Example: You ring a business and no one answers after 15 rings. So you try again and same result. 3. They got more than they expected. They are delighted. We call this a moment of Magic! Example: You phone a business and they answer within 3 rings. The person is friendly, knowledgeable
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and obviously enjoys their job. They thank you for ringing and wish you a nice day. Here are the figures according to customer service experts. • If you are unhappy you tend to tell up to 33 people about the experience. If you are happy you tend to tell no one. If you are delighted you will tell up to 7 people.
• •
The key to create delighted customers is to improve a small amount consistently in all your Moments of Truth. Action exercise: Select one or more Moments of Truth for your business and answer the question "How can we improve this moment of truth by at least 1% this week. (From the customer’s viewpoint)?" Improving by 1% a week doesn't sound much, however over a year it is an improvement of 50%. Delight your customers by making them feel good: Here are three ways to make customers feel good when they interact with you. 1. Put yourself in the "Glad" emotional state before you talk with a customer. A simple way to do this even if you don't feel very positive is to go to a mirror, look at yourself and start smiling. Make it a genuine smile. Do this for several minutes and you will start to feel better because emotions follow actions. As emotions are very contagious; when you feel good so does your customer. 2. Never tell your customers your problems. 90% don't care and 10% are glad you feel as rotten as they do!
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Telling people your problems makes them feel unhappy and they don't feel they are getting great service. 3. Prepare for customers questions by having the answers before they ask. There are few things more impressive than an employee equipped with the knowledge and ability to help customers solve their problems. Customers often judge the competence of a business by how much employees seem to know. Action Exercise: Write down 5-10 of the most frequently asked questions by your customers. Write down logical, complete answers to these questions and learn them Add ‘Memorable Value’ In his excellent book ‘Turn your customers into your sales force’ Author Ross Reck quotes the following startling business figures. “25% of your success in business is getting a sale from a customer. Another 25% of your success comes from getting repeat sales from a customer. A whopping 50% of your business success comes from getting existing customers to recommend and promote you to their friends, associates and colleagues.” How do you get your customers to recommend your business to other people they know? Focus on adding ‘Memorable’ Value to them. Here are some good examples of how to add ‘Memorable Value’ The shoe repair shop that makes life easier for customers: A shoe repair shop adds great value to their clients by the way they do business. They will, at no charge, collect from your home (at a time to suit you) any shoes you have for repair.
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A pick up in the evening is fine. They will drop them back home for you again at a time to suit. They will also have any keys you want cut duplicated at the same time. Wow, talk about making things easy! Most people have several pair of shoes they would like to have repaired and several keys that they would like to get extra copies made. Guess when they intend to get them done? That's right! When they have free time. (This never happens.) The ‘Vampire’ Dentist Many years ago a dentist in Los Angeles decided to set up a dental practice that only operated from 4pm to 2am. He then took out small ads offering his services in the trade journals that supplied the Film Studios. He knew that films were very expensive to produce and the people involved in producing them often worked long hours. So they didn’t have time to see a dentist during normal business hours. No other dentist at the time offered the convenience of dental services after hours and he made a great living for many years by doing this. Action Exercise: How can you add ‘Memorable Value’ to your customers by making it a lot more convenient for them to do business with you? The most important sound in the world to your customers: As Dale Carnegie pointed out in his book "How to win friends and influence people" a person’s name is (to them) the most important sound in any language.
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By calling your customers by name you make them feel more important and they perceive they are getting excellent service. The friendly gym owner: A gym owner does this well. Every time a client comes in he welcomes them by smiling and saying "Good Morning John” or “Hi Mary". This takes him two seconds and always makes his clients feel good. A key here is to begin to learn the names of some of your customers and begin using them in conversations with them. If you have trouble remembering names get a copy of any good book on improving your memory. You will learn how to remember names and faces quickly and easily. Action Exercise: Who are three customers that you speak with that you could use their name when speaking to? Begin using their name the next time you speak with them. What business are you really in? Most people who work with people don't really know what business they are really in. Most of them think they're in business to deliver products or services to people. They don't understand that they are really there to give end-result benefits to people. Examples: A receptionist in medical practice may think that she is there to schedule appointments. However she is really there to greet people, make the most of the first few seconds of contact, to put them at ease and let them know they've chosen the best place to come to. A clothing sales person isn't in the business just to sell clothes. He or she is there to identify people’s needs, find out what budget they have, what occasion they want the clothing for and to help them present a desirable image.
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A hospital nurse isn't there to check on patients and record information. He or she is there to help patients enjoy as much comfort as possible, relieve anxiety and reassure family members. In other words your main job is to help customers enjoy end-result benefits and enjoy as much satisfaction as possible. Action Exercise: Brainstorm with your work associates for five answers to the question "What business are we really in?" Focus on end result benefits and also how your customers would ideally feel after dealing with you. Elephants Don't Bite: This a wonderful little phrase that reminds us how it's the small things in life that cause us problems a lot more often than the big ones. It's the mosquitoes that are annoying not the elephants. This has tremendous application to delighting our customers. From our customers viewpoint it is usually the many small things that either make or break customer service. Look at how small things can negatively affect customers. Example: You ring up a company and ask for some information to be sent out to you. If it comes out promptly and efficiently you think the company is giving good service. If it takes a long time you think they are sloppy in their customer service. Example: You are taking a seat at a restaurant and you are seated next to the door. It's often opened and lets in cold air. No matter how good the meal it could easily
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be overshadowed by the small factor of how comfortable your seat is. Example: You buy something from a shop and when you take it home you find a small part of it is missing. Conversely small things can positively influence customers: Example: A customer went to buy a new duvet recently and went into two different shops. Neither had what they wanted in stock. Both offered to get it in for the client so they left their name and number. One shop rang the customer back in two days to say it was in stock. The other shop rang the customer back in one hour and said they would get it in especially for them that day. They rang back later that day and said it was now in stock. Guess which shop got the business? There are literally hundreds of small things that can influence your customers either positively or negatively. This gives us an exciting opportunity in any business to provide amazing customer service. We need to identify the many small things that happen when we interact with customers. Then make sure we deliver slightly more than a customer expects in these key interactions. Action Exercise: 1. To use this concept in your business make a list of all the little things that happen when you interact with customers. You answer the phone, you phone the person back, you deliver a product, you send an invoice and so on. 2. Then identify one of these little things and improve it just a small amount this week. Repeat the process next week.
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Use thank you notes: One of the simplest, quickest and easiest ways to build customer loyalty and increase sales is to send short hand-written thank you notes to customers and potential customers on a regular basis. The investment is only a stamp and a few moments of your time. Here are some examples of Thank You Notes you could send. After a visit: “Thank you for your time today. I enjoyed meeting you and look forward to talking with you again shortly. Regards. Your name.” After a sale: “Thank you for investing in X. I appreciate your business and know you will be delighted with our service. Regards. Your name.” For Positive Feedback: “Thank you for your positive feedback. I appreciate your kind comments, they made my day. Regards. Your name.” After any exceptional service: “Thank you for your excellent service last night. The meal was great and our whole group had a great time. Thanks again. Your name.” it is extremely rare to get thanked in writing today for anything. If you do this consistently you are well on your way to providing amazing customer service. Action Exercise: Send out 3-5 Thank you notes each workday for the next 30 days The Wow factor! If customers come into your place of business on a regular basis it can be very helpful to pay attention to small details that cause the customer to go “wow". They will then talk about this experience to other people.
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Example: One of the first things you notice if you go to Disneyland is the incredible cleanness of the place. There is no rubbish on the ground and everything looks spotless. People go home and tell their friends how different this was from most of the amusement parks they've visited. Carl Sewell talks about how he adapted this idea for his own business. (Carl runs the largest and most successful Cadillac dealership in the United States) Carl makes sure that the rest rooms in his dealerships are immaculate. He uses wall paper that costs $250 a roll on the walls. His floor tiles are exceptionally high gloss so they stay clean. They are washed every hour on the hour. His customers often comment on what a wow experience it was going into his rest rooms and Carl has positively differentiated his business again from his competitors. Action Exercise: How can you get your customers to unconsciously go "wow" when they come into your business or deal with you?
Summary:
We’ve covered a number of useful ideas in this report. I recommend that you read through these ideas on a regular basis and put a number of them to work in your business. (You’ll be delighted with the results.)
‘That’s when we began using the Instant Business Success Strategies. They worked really well for us so you might want to try them in your business as well.”
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Helpful Resource: I publish a free monthly marketing newsletter called Easy Business Success that comes out by email once a month. It’s easy to read and each issue has practical ideas to create new sales and profits in any business with very little effort. Here are just some of the ideas you’ll learn in the first few volumes: How to get a ‘completely unfair business advantage’ over every one of your competitors. How to boost sales in as little as sixty seconds How to create hundreds of dollars of brand new profits in less than five days The magic power of the dripping tap. And many more field tested strategies to instantly improve your business results. To subscribe to Easy Business Success just go to
www.EasyBusinessSuccess.com
