Following People Who Are Lost

One of my favorite marketing guru’s – Perry Marshall, sent an email to me a couple of weeks ago with this as the headline–and I totally understood exactly what he was talking about.

Many entrepreneurs start a business because they have a dream.  Implementing that dream is where the problems come in.  You begin looking, reading, researching exactly what others in your industry are doing and voila what you find is that everyone is doing exactly the same thing.

I noticed it in all businesses.  Look at the realtors, they all have a sign on the side of their car door, they all go to networking organizations and they all are super aggressive. 

By following others in your industry, it makes you interchangeable.  Nothing is unique!

I learned this the hard way.  AND determined that maybe I should not be following the masses and focus on following winners.

-Richelle

5 Ways to divide your Customer List for Money!

List Segmentation for Optimum Dollars:

Now that we have determined that your biggest asset is your customer list…

 I received tons of questions about customer lists. They wanted to know, what information should be kept, what are they supposed to do with the list, and help getting their list together. List segmentation will save marketing dollars, help with determining where to invest additional dollars and how to make money quickly – when needed.

Here are the TOP 5 Ways you must divide your list to give you the best management reports for determining how to allocate your marketing dollars.

1. Last time customer/patient or client purchased from you

2. Money spent with you by year and lifetime

3. Number of products or services purchased by client/patient/customer

4. Customers who referred, how many times and the value of the new customer

5. Where each customer heard about your product or service

BONUS list you must keep – Inactive Customers – we talked about them a couple of weeks ago with the letter of apology. If you need the letter of apology, send me an email and I will forward the template I use.

Hope you learned and are implementing from these articles. Feel free to forward them to friends and enemies… Email me if you want me to answer specific questions.

Your Business’ Biggest Asset – It Might Surprise You

What is Your business’ biggest asset?

If you said your building, your location, your staff or you, You would be wrong. Your biggest asset is your customer list. You have the ability to grow exponentially when you realize that your list has value.

Often, business owners squander the value of their list by not keeping in touch with their customers. They wait for them to call when the customer needs a product or service. I firmly believe that it is important to be there when your customer needs your product or service. Being there creates a relationship.

3 Ways to be there when they need you:

            1. Create a monthly newsletter to showcase great customers, include specials and describe new products and services

            2. Send holiday notes, thank you notes after purchases and referrals

            3. Create an email update with pricing changes, news updates for your industry or just to say hello.

Staying in touch with your customers creates a relationship and helps make YOUR BUSINESS the only choice when they need your products or service.

Don’t get caught up in believing that because you provided a good service that your customers will automatically come back. If you are losing customers it might be because you have not stayed in touch.

3 Steps to Recession Proof Your Business

During a recession it is important to focus of the 3 R’s of your business.

1.  Retention – Keeping your existing customers by making sure that their experience is phenomenal.  I was able to create a fabulous experience for my customers of the telephone company.  I targeted people who had been disconnected before and were not used to getting great service.  I made it fun for them.  They line up to pay their bills each month in order to play the promotional games like Spin the Wheel – for money off of their invoices, or enter to win a plasma television.

2.  Reactivation – Your easiest customer to sell is one that was a previous client. Reach out to your old customers and win their business again.  I send out an “apology letter” to old clients to say – I am sorry for anything that went wrong.  I would like to win your business back – tell me how!  I continue to win back 17.3% of my previous customers.

3.  Referral – Focus on getting great referrals.  My favorite is I run a referral contest and offer free activations to all of my clients family and friends.  For each referral, my client is rewarded with a gift…  $20 off their monthly invoice, free cell phone charger and if they refer 10 people, they receive a plasma television.  The cost of the television is only $800 and I received over 230 new clients.  The best, only one client actually reached the 10 referrals but many referred 3 – 5 and received gifts costing less than $10.

Do You Know When A Customer Should Be Back?

I received an urgent call from Office Depot regarding my account.  It was our Account Manager who called – first time I had ever heard from him, and he wanted to know why I had not used our online account, or ordered since July, 2007. 

I am sure that he is calling and anxious to get our account back.  He said in his call that he wanted to know if I was just going into the store or using their competitor, but he was just checking in…

I want to remind you that I have a credit card from Office Depot, I participate with their loyalty program by using a special code when ordering for “cash back” AND in every catalog Office Depot gives away a gift with purchase.  I make sure that my order meets the criteria and I get the gift EVERY TIME – including a miniture refrigerator, a portable television and a leather laptop bag.  I have spent a lot of money with Office Depot –  I am a PLATINUM member for an office supply company.

But here is the fatal flaw in Office Depot’s arcenal.  They are staying in contact with me for new purchases by sending a catalog with a gift with purchase option every month.  They even customize the front of the catalog to show My company’s Frequently Ordered Supplies so that we don’t have to search the sales, they have given me more gifts than the law allows however, it took them 6 months to realize that I was gone.

This should be something that triggers a HUGE red flag months ago.  What about my loyalty purchases?  How about the Credit Card?  All of these are tactics to keep me tied to Office Depot and their supplies, Why go through so much stuff that costs money to keep me as a customer, however, miss the biggest opportunity of all by not sounding the alarm when I stopped using their service.

Part of your annual marketing plan, should include knowing when a customer should be back in your business, using your services again.  Don’t forget the 3 R approach – Reactivate, Referral and Retention.

Are you sleeping in your business?

One year I visited the Los Angeles Black Expo… In true expo fashion, I was shocked to see people sitting down in their booths.  I asked one woman who was actually sleeping.  Sleeping?  Why invest $750+ in an expo and then fall asleep?

Is this happening in your business too?  At least figuratively?  One of my private clients was telling me that they hate having to take payments from their clients.  You know Richelle, it just continues to interrupt our day.  So, they hired a customer service rep to handle all payments.  During a visit to their office, I noticed that the clients were taking a long time making a payment.  So I asked the customer service rep, why?  She told me – they like to talk to me.  You know the last client who left, just got a married and wanted to change his policy. 

I looked at my clients (they are 3 insurance agents) and they looked back at me with a baffled look in their eyes.  I said, does that not make your ears perk up?  Make you salavate?  They said no – WHY?  Oh my, I said, don’t you realize that a change in marital status is a major reason to sell additional insurance.  You should be able to add the wife’s car, is there any other property?  What about life insurance now?  Now, they have someone they want to protect.  This could have been a major BINGO for them.  That’s what I mean by – are you sleeping in your business too?  Be on the look out for opportunities in your business.  You should be excited anytime a client comes in – especially if he is coming in to make a payment.  By the way – just think of the alternative if they were not coming to pay!

Finding your Target Market

What are the most important questions when defining your target market?

When I consult with entrepreneurs, I get very concerned when I ask them who needs or will use their product.  And their answer is EVERYBODY.  Or Nurses, students, business owners.  I am every concerned because I know that they have not really thought about who is their target market and what that question is truly saying to me is I don’t know who my target market is but anyone who will pay me.  PLUS, they figure out elaborate concocutions as to why their product or service is needed by everyone in the universe.

But what I found, is that if you think that everyone can use your product, you should just give me the big bag of money that you will be spending right now and take a break because you are throwing your money away by not finding a niche.  What is a niche?  How do I find a target Market?

1.  The best way is to survey the people who have already bought your product or service.  Be sure to exclude friends and family who were obligated to buy from you.
2. If you have not sold anyone other than friends and family, I urge you to go and sell 2 people that are not related to you and do not have a relationship. 
   1. Reason – You want to know that you can sell someone because as a small business owner, that is your best skill for growth in the beginning stages
   2. Reason #2 – You need proof that have a viable product
3. Then, Survey your new customers and review the following
   1. What age is your customer?
   2. Where do they live?
   3. What sex?, family size?
   4. Occupation, education level
   5. Nationality
   6. Lifestyle
4. If you are just starting and need to find what makes a good niche then honestly look at the list below and carefully answer those questions
   1. Is this niche industry growing?
   2. Do these prospects have money to buy?  Why target poor college students?
   3. Can they afford your services or products?
   4. Is it small enough that the big competitors in your industry want to leave it alone?
   5. Is it big enough  so that you have enough people to sell?
   6. Where are they located?  Specific geographic  region?  Selling ski equipment in Colorado or Florida?
   7. Where do they buy?  In a store or on the internet?
5. After determining there is a market, then start thinking about why they would buy? What keeps your prospects up at night?  Are you solving a problem?  Are you solving your prospects problem?
6. Is there a related product or service that is selling successfully in your target?  Can you piggy back with them?
7. Is there a similar priced product or service selling to your niche that you can “copy” the strategy or advertise in the same media outlets since you see they are successful?

You might say all of this just to start a business?  I would argue YES!  Dan Kennedy – the Millionaire Maker and marketing guru, talks about a woman who owned  a ritzy boutique across the street from a high rise building and assumed that her customers were coming from across the street.  BUT after evaluating her list of customers, she found that most of her customers were coming from over 25 minutes away.  AND were not rich.  So she began to target market to the 25 minute neighborhood and got great results just be defining her target market. 

The obvious point above is any reason why you want to target market but it is important so that you can develop sales messages that appear to be speaking directly to your market.  They identify with your message and want to buy.  When you talk directly to your prospect, you as the business owner, stop chasing and begin attracting the right clients because you are focused on your market.

The second reason why you will want to find a niche is so that you can insulate your business from the competition.  As we stated above, your competition won’t want to bother with your small niche.

I did this very thing when starting my telephone company.  I began copying the other telephone companies in Las Vegas.  Then, I realized that I did not have enough money to compete.  I was dying, so I decided to find a niche.  Friends would come up to me and ask why I did not sell to everyone, because everyone needs a telephone?  BUT, I found a niche who needed my services, my competitors did not want them and they were growing daily.  THE DISCONNECTED MARKET.     I enjoyed a competition free zone for several years.  This niche though eventually grew to be a “target” of my competitors because they saw how successful I was, but by the time they did, I had already made my money and was onto the next niche.

One last point, “use what you got” so look at delivery slips, any information for your customers to find their existing data to find your target market, then construct all of your marketing messages to go hand in hand with this target.

The Most Important Way to Advertise in This Economy

Everybody is trying to recession proof your business but they are not giving you concrete things to do right now.

Here is the list.

1. Don’t stop marketing!
2. When you do buy advertising, make sure that you are using direct response techniques.

A brief example:

My new coaching client Stephanie participated in a “combo” special marketing program. First, Stephanie’s company sells beautiful high end handbags, in multiple colors and textures. A women’s dream! Check out her website at http://www.micis-boutique.com/.

Stephanie is really excited about what can happen with this program. It includes, an email blast to over 80,000, a full page ad on a digital magazine and a full page ad in the print magazine. Sounds like lots of exposure and she is waiting for her website to start sending orders!

So here is the prescription to make sure that this is going to work for her. Breaking the questions into 2 different categories.

Maximizing Sales

1. Designing your site appropriately for fast loading.
2. Monitoring things – making sure that the website has your best deals ready for buyers
3. Adding a special urgency message to the website so that the people visiting will buy immediately
4. Capturing the data from those that are not ready to buy just yet, but want to come back and browse. Getting their information so that we can follow up with them.
5. Adding upsells to the check out and thank you pages to take advantage of the shoppers in a buying mode
6. Making sure the shipping package includes coupons and discounts for other services especially for the holidays

Knowing your numbers
7. Proper tracking codes on each media so that we know which media – the email, print magazine or the digital magazine worked the best
8. Knowing the numbers! How many bags do you need to sell to make your money back?

Advertising again? During these economic times, only proven strategies should be used. Only media that you have used before and experienced a high ROI – return on investment should be used. Most entrepreneurs are not using this method. They like to hear the phone ring, or they are looking at the increased traffic to their website. Look – you can not deposit the good feelings, the hunches or the traffic. Only money is allowed.

Well, Stephanie is a fast learner but had not considered the info above. Especially not how many bags you need to sell to make your investment back. This number is KEY.

When deciding advertising to purchase, run these numbers first. Advertising is only expensive when it does not work. As long as it works, it is the best way to get new lifelong customers. But if you don’t know the numbers, it is like running through the house with a butcher knife… very very dangerous.

Are You Running Your Business Like A Frat House?

April is spring break for colleges and I noticed that most entrepreneurs struggling in this economy are running their businesses like college frat houses.

Brace yourself this may be a little controversial but sometimes instead of giving you “professional book smart” tactics, I have to be blunt and give you down and dirty street smarts.

Here are 3 strategies that will occur during Rush Week at UNLV in the coming months and hopefully you can learn from these horrible examples how to run your business right.

1. Frat BOYS – Only selling to the easy ones?
In a Boys will be Boys mentality, many college boys are not really confident in who they are and tend to target the “Easy Girls”. Hopefully, you are not making the same mistake. Selling only to easy customers would be to target customers by selling PRICE only. When you are the lowest and cheapest, you may be signing lots of new clients, however, they are not keepers. They are not customers for life. These customers will leave as soon as there is another offer for similar services that are cheaper than yours. This may immediately help with cash flow, however as a long term strategy this will not work. The analogy – the “easy” girl is not the girl you take home. If you only sell PRICE, your business will not survive. There is only one Wal-Mart.

2. FRAT BOYS DO Not pay attention to what is important
As typical Frat House Antics, living in the moment can be dangerous. Just like for an entrepreneur. Attention should be focused on figuring out a way to bring back customers again and again to buy your products or services. It should not be on making the sale today. As well as what are the long term goals and what I call “FUTURE MONEY”. It is difficult to drive your car if you are always focused on the rear view mirror. You must be planning for what will happen next month. That does not come from living in the moment and just handling business today. Creating your Marketing PLAN and implementing it solves this problem.

3. FRAT BOYS – Hit it & Quit It mentality…
I warned you this was going to be a bit controversial. But the real gold in any business is not to keep getting new clients and have them buy once. The KEY to building a million dollar business is to build a relationship with your existing customer so that they trust you. Getting your customer to come to you first is the real KEY. Even though, I never sold telephone systems, my customers were trained that anything that had to do with telecom to ask my opinion. They trusted my information and as soon as you become a trusted advisor, chasing customers and chasing money is no longer in your daily activities.

It’s ok to grab an occasional beer, but always strive for building a long term relationship

What does it really take to build a Million Dollar Business?

There is a simple plan to building a million dollar business and I have followed it several times both personally and for clients.
The system is basic and simple, but don’t mistake simple and basic for easy. It can be difficult to stay focused on the basic and simple things.
Strategy #1

1. Great Customer Service – Last week, I met with a coaching client who was having difficulty with a new vendor. She decided to change vendors because of the cost savings and then half way into to the transition, the deal was not how it was presented. So my client asked for help from the owner. Well, the owner turned out to be an independent contractor for a bigger company and could not help with the transition. Then, when my client mentioned cancelling, the vendor complained to him that he would lose the commission. WHAT? Lose the commission, what about all the business he was losing while the problem persisted. And the loss of time for my client while he chased down getting the problem rectified. Often clients come to me and ask for marketing help but their problem is really in fixing their customer service.
This seems so simple, but when I ask business owners in the initial consultations, I ask, what makes you different from your competitors, and 100% of the time, the new client will tell me – CUSTOMER SERVICE…sigh…

2. Nurture Existing Clients – Stop chasing new clients and start focusing attention and dollars on your existing customers. If you only have one product or service to sell – get another one. Create a relationship by nurturing the relationship with a monthly newsletter, tips sheet, information that the customer can use. MONTHLY – not sporatically, not when you think about it, MONTHLY. If you need help visit – http://www.RichellesNewsletterSecrets.com

3. Have more than one way to acquire a customer – I can usually stump a new client when I ask them, how many ways are you getting a new customer right now? I am shocked at how many have less than 5 ways. A million dollar business has more than 30. During FreshStart’s reign, I had over 84 ways. That I did every month, partnerships, signage, radio, phone book (hispanic and general)… Take this time to write down how many ways that you have for bringing in a new customer. I guarantee that the number of ways that you have are a direct correlation to how much money you have in the bank.
Simple and basic but POWERFUL