prospect

Donate In Their Name: Make Your Client The Hero

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Most of my clients arrive by word-of-mouth, which is great. I reached out to a prospect the other day, who was referred by one of my existing clients. I offered them a small freebie. The prospect was initially hesitant, until I mentioned that my existing client – whom the prospect knows – had donated this service to them. Wow, were they impressed!

A note of warning – don’t say something like this if it isn’t true! Make sure you check with your existing customer to make sure they don’t mind doing this.

In addition to the prospect being impressed, my existing client was as well. I offered to give something to someone they know, in their name. How cool is that? The product or service you offer doesn’t have to be super expensive, it just has to have a perceived value. The receiver gets something useful, and the giver looks like a hero. And that’s the point.

There are a number of things you can “give” to existing customers to show you appreciate them. I’ve talked about this before in posts about loyalty programs, and customer retention strategies. A discount is great, but a hand-written card is better. Above both of these is letting your customer appear as the hero to someone else.

I make it a practice to ask all my clients about their favorite charities, especially local ones. When I’m sending out holiday or event cards (again, written and addressed by hand), I often include cards to those charities, letting them know that my clients mentioned them as being a good cause. Even though the card is from me, I make sure my client is mentioned prominently. In other words, I make my client the hero. My clients often hear about that card!

Offering to provide a product or service in the name of your client is, very obviously, also a great way to find new clients!

Track Your Marketing For $80 a Year – Or Less

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Phone Touchscreen Keypad

Landing pages are great.  You can – and should – set one up for each different ad or content marketing effort you put out on the ‘net.  Landing (or squeeze) pages are the Holy Grail when it comes to automatically adding contacts to your marketing & sales funnel.  But sometimes, the content just doesn’t lend itself to a simple “give me your lead magnet” email exchange.  Sometimes, the prospect just has to call you.

But how do you know which ad the prospect is responding to?

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Why Free Stuff Sux

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I’ve been talking with a lot of people lately about ‘building your email list.”  Rule #1, they say, is give something away for free.  Okay, there’s merit in that suggestion I suppose.  But quantity does not equal quality.  If you want quality subscribers who are more likely to buy whatever it is you’re going to sell down the line, you want people who’ve already shown a willingness to buy from you.  You want to charge people on your list for what they get.

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Why Profile Your Target Market?

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When marketing your product or service, you want to identify the people who are most likely to buy your product or service.  Not all bald men buy toupees.  Not all thirsty women buy Diet Coke.  You want to find out what the qualities are about the individuals in your target market that make it more likely they’ll buy what you’re selling.

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Educate, Then Sell

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Years ago, I had an unusual interaction with a sales person.  It was winter, about 7:30 PM so it was already dark.  My house is set back away from the road, and my driveway is over a 10th of a mile long.  Not expecting any one, my outdoor lights were out.

I’m in my office when suddenly there’s a loud, frantic banging at my door.  Remembering that there had been a bad accident on the road in front of my house only a couple weeks before, I ran down the stairs full of dread and threw open the door.

Standing there was a gentleman in parka and gloves, grinning and pointing to a large picture.

“What?  Can I help you?”

He continued to grin, pointing to the pic and nodding at it.  Obviously no-one was hurt.  My anxiety level started to drop.

“It’s a picture.”

“Yep,” he said.  “It’s an aerial picture.”

“Uh huh.”

“Of your house.  I’m selling it.”

“I’m not buying it.”

His happy demeanor instantly turned to anger-tinged sadness.

“Jeez man, you don’t have to be so rude about it!”

I was dumbfounded.  I didn’t think I’d been rude at all.  I didn’t visit his house in the dark, pound on the door like there was someone on fire, and then expect him to automatically buy what I was holding in my hand.

“Good luck elsewhere.  Have a nice night.”  I shut the door, shaking my head.

It’s true – a picture is worth a thousand words.  And I suppose when you’re selling one, the prospect should recognize it’s worth instantly.  But even when you’re looking to sell something you think of as basic and self-explanitory, it’s always a good idea to educate your prospects.  I know I’ve used this example before, but look at the places in your local mall food court giving away samples on a toothpick.  You’re hungry, it’s food, buy it!  But the sample is the most basic form of education: “This is what it’s like.”

Providing any type of education prior to a sales attempt allows you to separate the merely bored from actual prospects.  It also provides the prospect with a better understanding of your product or service, and how it relates to their lives right now.  Delivering educational information about your product or service also allows you to build a story around the pitch, and involve yourself and the prospect in the story.

“Hi, I’m Joe.  Earlier this year, I went up in a two-seat plane with my pal Dave.  You should see how clean and green everything looks from just a few hundred feet in the air!  We were flying over your neighborhood when I began snapping pictures of some of the houses.  Once I saw how nicely they came out, I knew I had to offer the owners of those houses the opportunity to share the experience of seeing their property from the air.”

Five sentences to build that story and offer some education, as well as pre-frame the sale.  Now he can begin asking the sales questions.  The whole thing could take less than a minute.