In today’s economy bringing in more customers (or clients) is a key to your business success, or is it?

Why would I say, or is it? Of course the more customers (or clients) you bring in your business will grow. That is making a couple of assumptions:

#1:  Each customer you bring into your business translates to profit. If not on the front end do you have a predictable back end that will generate profit within the first year? A lot of small business owners make the mistake of cutting their prices to bring anyone in as a customer. Usually that becomes your worst customer. That’s the one that negotiates the most, complains the most, takes most of your time and refers the least. This is a recipe to say, no thank you!

You do have the right to pass on customers that you feel are not going to be suited for your system. We have all made the mistake when the sale in the moment looked good and soon regretted bringing that new customer on board.

#2:  Do you know if the product or service you are offering hand in hand to your customer. This goes hand in hand with number one. What I find is that small business owners if sales are slow, will go sell the highest priced item they have to offer. This may have the highest cost of goods sold! This leads to the smallest profit margins. Cutting your price on top of it, taking out pure profit, is usually the kiss of death. Another key is to be up to date on your books. It is very hard to track your cost of goods sold, net profits, return on your investments when you are using your online business bank account balance as your only barometer.

#3:  You first maximize the highest return on investment which is bring in more revenue with your current customers. It is about 6-7 times more expensive to bring in a new customer vs to sell to a current one. If you are not getting results from your current customers you need to find out why. Are they referring more business to you, if not, why not? Are you over promising on the front end to the make the sale? Is your customer service follow up lacking? The easiest way is, ask your customers if they would they refer clients to you. It is much easier to do a JV with someone who has a valuable product or service to add value to your customers. Not doing teleseminars and webinars? It’s time to start. This is the easiest format to add more value.

Now, let’s transition into the best ways to attract more customers right now:

1. Referrals. Do you have a referral system for your new clients? Do you ask for referrals at a certain point in the sales process? Do you have an incentive for people to refer to you? Are you and your staff proactive about referrals? Do you have tools or a URL to help your clients understand the best ways to ask for referrals?  See one of our URLs, www.nvinc.com/getyourmonthlycheck . This page can be improved but it is a start. It gives tips for language on how to refer to NCP and the best ways we can get you more money each month. Make it easy for people to refer to you. Pay your referral checks on time! This is a pet peeve of many affiliates is that they feel they do not get paid. Make sure you double check your systems each month so you do pay out checks. Develop an email that you can send to your clients to remind them about your program. Remember, if your service is poor no one will refer no matter how much you pay out. Also you do not always have to pay out cash. Jay Abraham did a program years ago which was called 93 referral systems. It was examples of how many different companies incorporated this into their business. For example, one dentist actually made it a condition of doing business with them. You were expected to refer at least two people if the dentist preformed on their expectations. You were nicely told about this at your first visit.
2. Your Current Leads (Prospects). Most people give up on their existing prospects. If you do a campaign and you received 300 prospects (opt ins, leads…) and you convert 2% or 6, did you go back and offer something else to the 294 who said no originally? I am not just speaking about an autoresponder that sends more emails and comes back with the same offer (which you should do only after you offer, more and more value…). Do you actually go back and offer them a different version of your original offer? Do you attempt an offline offer? Invite them with a post card to a webinar with an offer at the end of the webinar. Do you have a system to follow up with your prospects? Do you call them often, email them, send  a direct response mail piece to them? Keep in mind many people’s timing will change as to when they are ready to do business with you. If they do not have a need for your product or service now their needs may change in the future.
3. Direct Response Mail. Yes, you thought I was going to say through the internet! The challenge is that so many are blasted with emails, offers online…that most people forget about the old fashioned sales letter, postcard offer in the mail. The key is to cut through the clutter. You want to get in the A pile mail. The B pile mail is the one that everyone throws away. I would recommend you consider 3D mail. Travis Lee runs that company. His web site is http://www.3dmailresults.com/ .  Your first response may be that it doesn’t look professional. But it works! If you received a sales letter in a trash can would you open it? Most likely! This is a great way to increase your conversion and get noticed. Most people are relying too much online (ourselves included) and need to get back to more direct response mail involved in your customer acquisition process.
4. Joint Ventures. You knew this one was coming. This is the highest form of leverage. A few quick tips for success. Always ask questions and find out who you can help grow their business, improve their results. Do not start searching for how you can benefit. Be organized. Have ready the tools for success. That includes a PDF outline with testimonials of those who have interviewed you, a sample email for someone to send to their list, your bio, and questions to interview you. Make it simple so within 5 minutes someone could review what you have and make an offer to their list! This is the situation where you would be the beneficiary and someone else the host. They are sending an email to their list (at no cost to you) to promote you to a teleseminar or webinar. That means you must be proficient at both teleseminar and webinars. If you are not, practice! Listen for tips on webinars and teleseminars you are on. Listen for how the presenter sets up the training, the webinar and you need to do what works! This means you may need to endorse a few people to your list. Be honest about the size of your list if it is small. Be honest about the fact you need some help and you may have not done many before. Most people like to help and will give you some tips. The first webinar I did I didn’t realize that I clicked the button to pause my screen and for 90% of it no one saw my slides. We all make mistakes. Just get started!

Action Steps:

1. Make an upsell offer to your current customer with massive value.
2. Make an offer 3-6 months after your prospect becomes a customer.
3. Measure your profit margin on your customer transaction. If it is too low find ways to add more value to your product or service to help raise your price. Offer a higher level of service. Most will pay for a premium service (especially those who are impatient like I am at times). This means you need software like QuickBooks® to measure. Need help on this part? Call NCP and ask about our annual tax and bookkeeping program.
4. Every month go back and make an offer to your unconverted leads. For many the timing was not right. They may have lost your content information. Perhaps they are ready now to move forward with you. Make sure you are  offering more tools, tips, bonuses in meantime. Usually most do not like only offer emails all the time. Plus you can make an offer offline as well.
5. Develop a referral system. If you do not have one, copy someone’s. You may have 2-3 referral systems which is even better. Create an affiliate program with tools for your affiliates. Ask for referrals. Do not say, do you know anyone that would be interested in my services…(that usually gets an automatic response of , I can not think of anyone. Ask instead, “who do you know that can use extra cash and capital to grow their business now”? This implies you know someone.
6. Test 3-D mail to your current clients along with an offer. Mail just your offer to ½ your clients and mail the other half your offer and include the 3-D mail as part of the process. Track the ROI increase with the 3-D mailer.
7. Take action with joint ventures. Schedule 1 hour per week to work on joint ventures. Either to put the tools in place or to make calls to those you can help…Bottom line, just take action!

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