Tools for Entrepreneurs to Retain Clients

Patrick Hull, 

 

I want to take some time to drill down a bit further on the topic of retaining clients and why it’s so important for startups, small businesses, and even larger companies.

 

According to the book Marketing Metrics, businesses have a 60 to 70 percent chance of selling to an existing customer while the probability of selling to a new prospect is only 5 to 20 percent. I’ve seen this firsthand throughout my career and am a believer in the mantra that it’s easier to retain customers than get new ones. When it comes to your time and the company’s time, I think it’s better to engage existing customers first.

So if we accept the premise that it’s more effective to market your services to existing customers, it helps to have a strategy to ensure you’re keeping them happy.relationships

1) Stay Hungry: As a service provider, I think it’s important to show your client you are as interested in meeting their needs today as the day you first pitched them. Imagine that you won over a potential love interest with flowers, good restaurants and fun dates. Then, once you were in a committed relationship, you just stopped trying to please them. That’s a relationship heading in the wrong direction.

The same is true for your clients. I’ve found that the moment you start taking a relationship for granted is the moment you start to lose the client. Whether you are a lawyer, marketing professional, consultant, printer or retailer, it’s key to keep engaging your customers. No matter the company I started, I kept a record of my clients and the last time I checked in with them. If it’s been a while, I’ll reach out to them to see how they are doing and if they’re happy. This is one way entrepreneurs can show that you want their business just as much today as you did from the start.

2) Systemize: I’m often working on many projects at once and the only way I can hold down all of those responsibilities, while still making sure my companies are providing excellent customer experiences, is by putting systems in place for my employees to follow. Each customer may have unique needs but it’s important to me that my employees know exactly what is expected of them in the area of customer service.

One solution I’ve had success with is providing employees with a checklist. Questions on this list include: When is the last time we checked in, have our products and services been consistently delivered on time, are we hitting our agreed-upon goals for the client, and have the products and services we provided been effective. If you answer all the questions on that list, you will go a long way towards keeping a customer happy.

3) Engage: As I mentioned last week, soliciting feedback is one important way to ensure that your customer is happy. I’ve found that most customers are unlikely to speak up if they have a problem with a service or product they have purchased. They are far more likely just to walk away and never come back. That’s why making sure that you are meeting their needs as a vendor is vital to long-term success.

One company that has this figured out is the technology services firm Cisco. For example, the communications division at Cisco participates in surveys with its vendors on an annual basis. The survey has the client (Cisco) and the vendors rate one another on a variety of categories. Both groups then meet to discuss the results. I think that’s an excellent approach and really highlights the importance of engagement because client relationships are a two-way street.

Those are a few suggestions. What are some ways that your company monitors its customer service?

5 Ways to Make Your Product Sell Itself

We are creatures of habit. American families, on average, buy the same 150 products over and over again, which make up 85 percent of their household needs, according to research out of Harvard Business School. So how can you get people to take a chance on your new business and become loyal customers?

The trick is helping customers overcome their initial hesitation and making your new item speak to customers in a relatable way.

Here are five ways to help your product sell itself in a crowded marketplace:
1. Broadcast your advantage. What makes you better than everyone else in the industry? Be clear with customers from the start. Perceived advantage is built on factors like greater prestige, more convenience, superior effectiveness or better value for the money.

Even cleaning products, the most mundane of all consumer necessities, can win using this theory. For example, Mr. Clean Magic Erasers solved the problems that previous spray-on liquid cleaners claimed to, with the added advantage of not damaging the paint on walls as competitors' products did. The brand made this ability to remove touch marks without damaging walls clear through a TV ad campaign that demonstrated the product at work. This provided positive reinforcement to consumers before they made their purchase.

2. Fit into your customer's routine. How much effort is required for customers to make the transition from a current product to yours? If the cost is more than its relative advantage, most people won't try the new product. Febreze seems like one of those success stories -- and it is -- but even P&G can make mistakes with their branding, as was the case with Febreze Scentstories. In 2004, the company launched a $5.99 scent "player" that was reminiscent of a CD player with five scent discs that changed every half hour. Consumers were confused. They couldn't tell if the product played music, freshened air or did both. Not knowing how or why they would use it, they didn't.

3. Work right out of the box. When building new products, don't add work for the buyer. Make your product work as intended the first time out and every time thereafter. A kink-free garden hose, for example, should be kink free the first time and the hundredth time; a children's toy should be easy to assemble; and you should never expect a busy mom to spend more than five minutes figuring out how to use a new slow-cooker. 

4. Make benefits easy to spot. The more evident the perceived advantages, the more your product will market itself. For example, the clear plastic packaging of 3M's Command line of removable hooks allows you to see and understand how the product enables you to hang and remove a hook without leaving a hole in the wall.

5. Let customers try it out. Tea bags were first used as giveaways so that people could sample tea without buying large tins, vastly improving the "trial-ability" of brewed tea, and eventually tea bags. Samples, giveaways and store demonstrations are tried-and-true techniques for risk-free experimentation. If you can't afford to give your product away, offer a tempting discount or "buy one get one" deal. Depending on your product and core customer, you can use sites like Gilt.com or Travel Zoo to make enticing offers.

Local products or services benefit from actual social interaction: an informal gathering in a home where guests can "play" with the product or try the service, a farmer's or open-air market where consumers can touch and taste what you're selling and meet you. The easier something is to try, the faster customers will want to buy it.

Debra Kaye

Debra Kaye is a brand and culture strategist and partner at Lucule, a New York-based innovation consulting firm. She is author of the book, Red Thread Thinking (McGraw-Hill, 2013).

Do you know your time quadrants?

By: Northbound Learning

Knowing where your time is being used will allow you to spend more time on the sales activities that make you money.

 
I don’t read many books but at least I try to implement good ideas from the ones I do get around to reading.  One of the oldest books on my shelf that is still in my top 10 is “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey.  The chapter on time management speaks of all activities in you life fitting into one of four quadrants.  The concept is that there are two variables that can be attached to any activity: 1) Level of urgency and 2) Level of importance.  Plotting one of these against the other produces four quadrants as in the diagram below.  Armed with this insight, you’ll be able to make better choices deciding what you’re going to spend your time on and be more effective.

Let’s first be sure we understand the difference between urgency and importance as people often confuse them with each other.  “Importance” represents the amount of value that this activity brings to you.  A good example would be preparing a proposal for a big prospect.  On the other hand, “urgency” refers to how quickly it needs to be done.  Responding to a complaint from your biggest customer is a good example of an urgent activity.  Combining both urgency and importance allow us to place them in quadrants 1 through 4.  You’ll see some examples of common activities also noted in the diagram.

The problem is when we end up spending most of our time reacting to urgent activities, quadrants 1 & 3, the important but non-urgent activities in quadrant 2 take a back seat — sometimes forever!  People who live in the world of urgency often love the thrill of the accompanying adrenaline rush but fail to grow.  Sadly, they also find themselves suffering from areas of their career and life that have been ignored.  We’ve all heard the stories of hard driving executives whose health is failing.

Closer to home, I’ve see countless salespeople who want greater sales success but can’t manage to find the time to attend training sessions or do 1 more hour of prospecting each week.  They spend their time on low value, urgent things or even worse, low importance, low urgency activities like surfing the web or watching TV.  They “major in the minors.”  I’m not saying that web surfing and TV can’t be very entertaining but if it’s at the expense of building your career, getting healthy or spending time with your kids, I’d argue that it’s not the best use of one’s time.

Why does this happen?  Because quadrant 2 activities take planning and discipline to happen.  They don’t just appear out of nowhere crying for your attention whereas urgent activities, by definition, do.  If you don’t workout today, what’s the big deal?  It won’t kill you — at least not today.  If you don’t make those 3 extra calls, it’s not going to kill your career — at least not today.

Your homework:  Set the alarm on your smartphone to alert you every half hour.  When it goes off, write down what you did in the last 30 minutes.  Do this for 3 days and then mark beside each item which quadrant it falls into.  Add them up in total time.  I promise you that you will be shocked when you see how much time you are spending in quadrants 3 & 4.  I’m also very confident that you will want the time you spent on quadrant 2 activities to increase.  The good news is that after this exercise, it will start to happen as you gain increased awareness and focus of where your time is going.

Effective people, in sales or otherwise, are experts in managing their time and have developed a ruthless approach to “time suckers.”  Apply this knowledge and you too can be one of these people.

Happy selling.

6 Tony Robbins Insights That Will Change Your Sales Game

By Kyle Porter 

 

 

When it comes to helping people improve their lives there is nobody in the game with stronger credentials than Tony Robbins. The “Michael Jordan” of thought leaders, Tony has affected millions of people around the world through his performance coaching.  

Tony has certainly made an impact on me. Last year Marc Benioff invited him to be the closing keynote at Dreamforce, the largest software event in the world. There he laid down sales coaching like I’ve never seen. Through his books, videos, and presentations, Tony gave us each new insights into effective selling. 

Tony empowers his readers and audience to improve themselves. So we’ve scoured the web and found source after source of his advice: 

6 LESSONS FROM TONY ROBBINS: 

#1 Know Your Purpose
In your day-to-day sales world, you MUST have a sense of meaning. Walking into the office, grabbing a coffee, checking your email, and taking your day “on the fly” is just not gonna get it done. When you’re at the office everyday you have got to know what you’re going to get done that day. Knowing your purpose will make the biggest impact you can imagine.

# 2 Give positive meaning to everything
The sales rep’s life is all about risks. The more you take the more you win (and lose). It’s how you respond to the losses that makes you special. Keeping a positive attitude, regardless of the issue, will keep your head in the game and ready for the next opportunity. 

#3 Realize that everything you do has a consequence
A sales rep's interactions with customers can either be positive or negative. There’s no neutral in sales. Every action you take matters. It’s not just about being on your best behavior, it’s about knowing your strengths and lining them up to reach your desired outcome. 

#4 Know that everyone is unique, different, and amazing
Sales is a competitive world where people put themselves on the line every day. They often get shot down. Looking at the world through the lens that everyone has meaning will positively affect every facet of your performance. Don’t get deflated when buyers and competitors don’t behave like you want. 

#5 Be driven by your desire for adventure
What drives you? Your past? Your competitors? Or even your fears? Or are you focused on your successes - on solving the next client problem and taking the next step for your company? It’s important to know what moves us and makes us do what we do.

#6 Expect the unexpected
What are you going to do when something unexpected happens in sales? By the way, something crazy always happens in sales. Why do you think we’re always the storytelling life of the party? When any situation arises, it’s important to respond with the right action that helps you solve a customer problem and take the next step.

The Future of Social Selling

By David Howell

 

Social media has transformed retailing. The question that corporations are now asking is how will this channel evolve in the future?

 

There is no denying that social media has had a profound impact on the sales funnel. The power and influence that consumers now have is unprecedented in the history of retailing. Brand owners seeing this shift have been quickly attempting to evolve their businesses into social enterprises that pay close attention to the new relationships that social media has delivered to their companies – some with more success than others. 

What has become abundantly clear is that at the heart of this new retail landscape is how consumer behaviour has changed. Understanding these changes is now at the heart of brand development that is being played out across the current social media platforms. And accepting that ‘current’ is an important aspect to appreciate is key, as social media is in constant flux.

In their report for Hearsay Social Forrester state: “The social ecosystem is no longer a single, unified set of tools competing for the same resources and users — and it really never was. Instead, advanced businesses focus their investments in social tools by what phase of the customer life cycle the tool facilitates, in addition to the business objective for interactions with their end customers. Sales professionals do not use social channels in the same way that marketers do, and therefore need their own set of capabilities to succeed today.”

 Marketing To The Individual 

One clear component of the future of social selling is that even more focus on the individual will be required. The broadcast model for marketing campaigns has moved aside as social media has asserted a one-to-one relationship with brands and their consumers.What is now important is that the realignment of the sales funnel and how social media has impacted on its lifecycle is appreciated and acted upon by all corporations. In addition, the future of social selling will mean that sales, marketing and PR departments work increasingly closely together, as they all have a stake in how their businesses utilise social media within their sales channels. 

However, Forrester did point out: “The sales professionals that we spoke to were relatively dismissive of corporate social marketing and its ability to help them close more business. While Forrester has seen many successful social marketing efforts that track their ROI through increased lead volume and conversion, those successes were not recognized by the sales teams in this study. Sales either had no visibility into what corporate marketing was doing, common for sales agents, or didn’t know how marketing could directly help win more business at all, common among sales enablement professionals and sales managers.” 

This lack of transparency and cooperation must also change as they are at the foundation of the future development of social selling. Understanding how social media impacts on each stage of the buying cycle is of paramount importance, as often the key stakeholders in the buying cycle use social media for different outcomes and at different points in the consumer buying cycle. Ratifying these relationships to create a seamless customer journey is clearly an important aspect of social selling as it develops over the next few years. 

The future of social selling will also increasingly be visual. A number of reports have concluded that video content and also images are powerful marketing tools that consumers are using as touch points when they are looking for goods or services to buy. The exponential growth of Pinterest is testament to this trend. Corporations will need to think increasingly visually with their marketing efforts to lock into a trend that shows little sign of slowing.

Soft Metrics

Another core aspect of social selling that will develop rapidly as this channel matures is how these relationships are tracked from initial contact to conversion. Often the social channel is lamented as being weak when tracking of ROI is concerned. The tools that are available at the moment are nascent, but will rapidly evolve to offer the kind of data that corporations are looking for. 

There will always be an intangible ‘soft’ metric that must be considered when conversion statistics are considered, but brands are understanding that the hard application of data when coupled with sales statistics won’t give highly accurate ROI, as social selling often relies on a number of intangibles, such as the impact that the so-called ‘recommendation economy’ can have on the performance of a sales channel. 

In addition, the future of social selling will mean a quantification of what it means to be a follower on Twitter, or the actual value of a like on Facebook. How a corporation’s customers interact with its brand and the iteration of those values across social networks will be important to build into the fabric of all marketing campaigns.

What is clear for all brands to see is that social shopping has yet to reach its peak. As the rules of engagement and best practice continue to change as the social media networks themselves evolve, brands can feel lost as they wrestle to understand how social shopping can be managed within their sales funnels. A loser grip on traditional values practices is the key to success in the social shopping space. Listen before acting is a mantra to adopt.
 

The Secrets for Selling to 'Main Street': Top Small Business Selling Techniques

 A recent report from payroll firm ADP notes that in the U.S., 193,000 more people worked at businesses with 1-19 employees in February 2013 than before the recession. I find this very interesting.

The reasons, the report notes, have less to do with a surge in new hiring than the fact that fewer small businesses have been affected by the mass layoffs the nation’s largest organizations have faced. While America’s “main street” businesses face growing pressure from internet sales and big box retailers, small and local businesses continue to be a strong force in the national economy and an increasingly important source of American jobs.

I had the chance to visit this week with Erik Blomquist, the VP of business development for LunaWebs, a web development firm that specializes in the design and creation of sites and applications for—you guessed it—small to medium firms. Here’s what Erik had to say about the secrets to selling products and services to the nation’s hundreds of thousands of “main street” and community businesses:

1. Become Part of Your Community’s “Main Street.” To sell to small business, you should become a genuine part of small business. This requires time, effort, and most especially a commitment to spending time with small business owners on their own turf. Says Blomquist: “I learned this lesson during my first week in a new job. I had left a job where I spent significant time traveling internationally and living the dream.

“When I began my new job, I quickly found myself scheduled to attend a conference in Colby, Kansas—a far cry from Kuala Lumpur. As I drove to the conference, I asked myself several times, ‘What am I doing in Colby, Kansas, attending a conference at a Comfort Inn?’ I did not know I was about to learn one of the best ways to build a business.”

2. Work Hard. “My father and grandfather had taught me to work hard. They taught me to cut all the grass, to pick all the cherries and to finish all of my homework. Professors and mentors had taught me to work hard on analyzing the facts, building strategies around solid goals and objectives, and to continually work until the work is entirely done.

“What I learned that day in Colby, Kansas—and in many subsequent years—was a lesson that was not taught to me by parents, mentors or professors. Instead it was learned through a practice that fewer and fewer people experience, especially today. It is a simple principle, and one that has ample evidence in the business world of today, just like yesterday.”

“For example, Standard Oil experienced success because of local owners and operators who were visited by a Standard Oil business development person. These individuals went in person to the small towns and big cities throughout the nation to establish relationships and convince someone locally to open a gas station. It was a relationship sale.

“William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer built their newspaper and media industries in a similar fashion. They established relationships with local newspaper publishers and editors, invented syndication and eventually created the largest newspaper and media holding companies of their day. The same principles apply today. But in an effort to consolidate and cut expenses, we have often forgotten that what humans and customers crave is relationships.”

3. Build Relationships. “Small business customers want someone to care for them. They want someone to talk to. They want to do business with someone they know and care about and who cares equally strongly for them. Businesses today have forgotten that having a salesperson in every state or even several salespeople in each state can be the key to true success because the company’s ultimate success is based on caring for their customers.”

4. Care for Your Customers. “Technology has many uses. I have dedicated my career to technology. When technology saves money, increases efficiency and helps to accomplish tasks that were never before possible, it is a great thing.

“When technology keeps a company and the individuals in the company from engaging with their customers and building the bonds of an unbreakable relationship, it becomes a detriment. The products may be quality offerings that the market needs, but every market will have at least several participants. Without relationships, it may be easy to lose a customer.

“It is very easy for a customer to leave and move to another vendor if their only relationship is what I would categorize a ‘light relationship’ (based on marketing emails, support forums, and limited communication with the people of the company). However, it is nearly impossible to break the bonds of a deep relationship between a customer and vendor. When you know your customers’ birthdays, the names of their children, their hobbies and you know each customer as an individual, it is a relationship you are never likely to lose. These principles help to drive brand loyalty.

“I would never advocate reverting back to the days of the milkman and the paper delivery boy. I would, however, hypothesize that for every business there is an appropriate mix of light and deep relationships, and that every sales and marketing plan should include the right mix. In other words, when building a company and a sales plan, you must first know the type of relationships you want to have with your customers, and determine the ways you can and should take the working relationship to them (a la pharmaceutical companies), or whether the relationships will come to your company.”

5. Be Proactive and Personal. “The deepest relationships are proactive and personal. These are the relationships that hold the most value, and, by extension, will bring the most revenue to your growing business, as well.”

Erik’s secrets for selling to “main street” are a fundamental secret for my own company’s increasing success. Of every award, Fishbowl’s most prized acknowledgement is the one that came from our local community: Utah’s Best of State award for enterprise software (which we have now received for two years in a row). Our community has some of our most avid customers, and our partner relationships (which I would characterize as strong and genuine friendships) with our customers run deep. This, indeed, is the secret of selling to small business. Are you up to the task? I welcome your thoughts.

David K. Williams, Contributor