0

How To Get Your Existing Clients To Sell For You

Lead generation is tough and expensive if you do it the hard way and it is very low cost and easy if you do it the right way.

Let’s have a quick look at why it can be tough and expensive and then figure out the best way around it.

Most lead generation is like shooting a shotgun into the night and hoping you hit something.

Sometimes you might and sometimes you might even hit something you do not want to.

As an example take radio advertising. It is expensive and most people listening to your advert are not at all interested. Basically you are spreading your advertising dollar too thin.

The few that might be interested are not in a position to take action right way. Once your advert has been broadcast, it’s gone and you have to repeat the advert again and again in the hope that eventually the few remaining interested people are in a position to take action and buy something from you.

Additionally, these people are not well qualified and do not trust you.

So one of the few weapons you have to get this prospect to buy is to be cheap and offer an incredible deal.

As you probably know it is not good for business to discount and reduce your margins. You just have to work harder for less profit

Keep this as your overriding thinking when you come up with any marketing strategy and you will get very good returns.

So the 1st question that often comes up is:

“Where am I going to find the person who wants to buy my product?”

The answer is simple.

Your best prospects are associates, friends, and family of the people that have recently bought your products or services.

This is called a referral strategy where you have your existing clients sell for you. It is easy, because you don’t have to do much and it is very low cost because your marketing spend is right next to the most likely person to buy from you.

Your prospects typically trust their friends and they can see the product or service in action. Because your happy customer is raving about the service she has received from you she is practically making your next sale for you.

Here is what happened to me the other day:

I love to go mountain biking with my friend. We both had average bikes and we talked about upgrading.

One day my friend came along with his brand new fancy bike. He kept bragging during the whole ride and as I became more interested he started telling me about the great service he had received from the bike shop he bought his bike from.

A couple of weeks later I decided to also have a look and guess where I went and bought my new bike? Straight to the shop he bought his bike from.

Price was important but not my main deciding factor.

Every business needs to have a solid referral strategy.

And here is another secret.

It is not about your product or service. Yes, your product has to be good but that’s about it. Your client can usually not determine if something is good or brilliant.

For example if you are a builder, your clients cannot see how straight your nails are. Sure they can see if the wall looks good but they can only see the very outer layer.

When the builder has completed the renovation or building project they do a couple of things most builders don’t do very well:

• They get the house or room professionally cleaned including the windows. Clients absolutely love this and always comment how delighted they are about that.
• The builder then has a meeting with the client where they agree that the job is complete and the client signs off
• The builder has a payment app on his iPad and the client pays right there and then. This is the best time to get payment because the client is happy. It is also great for cash-flow and the money is dealt with and quickly forgotten. (This strategy alone is worth a lot of money and time to any builder.)
• Within 24 hours, the builder couriers a gift box and a thank you card to his client. This box contains all sorts of yummy stuff you can’t buy at a supermarket. The cost is about $100.
• At the same time a questionnaire is send to the client by post. This questionnaire asks the client for feedback and also reminds her of the things that were done that are not the norm. For example we ask: “Did we leave your house clean and tidy?”. We then ask for permission to use her replies for our marketing purposes and they always say “yes”.
• There is the law of reciprocity, which means that if you do something for someone, they then have a feeling that they need to give back to you something in return. As you can imagine the feedback is typically extremely positive and if there are areas that need attention the builder can address it right away and get even more bonus points for being pro-active. We include a self-addressed envelope to make it really easy for the client to send the questionnaire back.
• Once the questionnaire is received, we send a quick thank you card with a couple of movie tickets to the clients. We also include 2 fridge magnets and ask them to give them to a couple of friends who might need a builder sometime in the future.

This builder needs to do no advertising and gets most of his work from repeat business and word of mouth referrals from his clients. His prices are well above average and because of that he can invest in good quality equipment and hire above average trades people that he pays very well to do a top job. It is a real win:win.

This strategy can be systemized very easily so that it gets done consistently and without the builder using any of his time.

When you see this as a marketing investment and compare that with almost any other marketing method it is cheap and super cost effective.