Your Salsa Pub

When you think about ways to gain repeat business from your customers, you probably turn your thoughts to marketing efforts such as advertising, public relations and other means that will allow you to repeatedly be seen. However, without one particular element included in your plan, your efforts to entice customers to buy over and over will fail. Even autoresponders - the “king” of repeat exposure - can’t produce the type of loyalty needed to ensure your customers continually send their dollars your way.

This missing link is often not even considered as part of a marketing plan - but it should be! What is the secret to repeat business? Exceptional customer service. Are you surprised? You really shouldn’t be. Put yourself in “consumer mode” for the next minute or two and let’s explore the power of a solid customer service program.

Think of the last time you purchased from a business and had a poor experience. What brought you to the business to begin with? Maybe low price. Perhaps it was that the company had a product/service you needed immediately. Even selection can play a role in attracting us to a business. But once you bought, what happened next?

When the product didn’t live up to your standards or when the service didn’t work as expected, did you get the response you needed? Did the company show concern for your position? Did they correct the mistake or issue a refund? If not, you - like most others - probably left vowing never to buy from them again.

What you experienced was a marketing plan that had no follow-through. They were able to entice you and draw you in. They were successful in getting you to spend your money. However, when it came time for the plan to promote “backend sales”, it failed. It had no follow-through and they lost the remainder of your business for life.

Here are several things to consider when creating a customer service program that will help to boost your marketing plan and your repeat business.

1. Weigh your options. Many small business owners panic at the sound of the word “refund”. Don’t! Think seriously about what you’ll be losing. You could take a small loss of $29.95 now (or whatever the cost of the product is) in exchange for future sales; or you can retain your $29.95 and lose hundreds or thousands of dollars later in future business. If their complaints are handled to their satisfaction, the majority of consumers say they will buy from your company again.

2. Get personal. The number one complaint most consumers have is that businesses don’t appear to care whether they buy from them or not. Get to know your customers. Send a thank you note or small gift when a purchase is made. Fire off a short “just checking in” email when the customer’s purchases seem to slow down just to ensure all is OK. This extra effort will be noticed - and appreciated.

3. Follow through. If and when a problem with a customer does arise, be sure to follow through. Don’t simply tell the customer that you’ll ship a replacement product immediately. Call or email them a day or two later to be sure the new product arrived and is working as needed. This is a true way to WOW your customers and lock in future purchases.

4. Have a plan. Don’t fall victim to “policy”, but do have a flexible plan of action for when customers aren’t 100% satisfied. Knowing what you plan to do will alleviate some of the shock and stress associated with handling unsatisfied customers. It will also allow you to present yourself in a helpful and friendly way when working to fix the problem.

A 1996 study performed by the U.S. White House Office of Consumer Affairs proved that, if you treat your customers with genuine caring and fairness, they will indeed reward you with their repeat business for years to come. That’s something you just can’t get from ads or autoresponders!

Diane C. Hughes * ProBizTips.com

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Lets say I want to buy a nail from you, will you ask me why? Or, will you take my order and sell me what I think I need? Will you give me a demonstration on why your nails are superior to the competition? Or, will you ask me questions on how I will use the nails?

One reason people fail in sales is a strong belief they must sell their product or service to everyone. I met someone who held this strong belief this weekend when he said “everyone is a potential customer”. This wasn’t the first time I’ve heard this. I worked in an industry where this belief was part of its culture. The sales strategy was to focus on presenting features and benefits.

During this era I spent countless hours learning how to demonstrate copier and fax systems, including memorizing sales scripts for each product. We held contests to test our presentation skills and our knowledge of the products and services we sold. This worked well and we sold plenty of equipment. The difference then, was that it was an emerging product line when everyone was a potential customer. This sales strategy doesn’t work well in mature markets.

How a Little Product Knowledge Can be Dangerous

If we sold nails to customers, we should learn everything there is to know about nails. Perhaps we would review product specifications and test our knowledge so we know all the inside information on nails. We might have sales demonstration contests that teach us how to present the superior benefits and features of our nails and why they are better than the competition. These sales exercises and the focus on our product might be a hazard for some salespeople. This is particularly true if sales training focused only on the product and not the questions to ask.

Focus on the Reason and Application

Having strong product knowledge is important. However, product knowledge is not as important as learning the questions to ask. A sales person should learn the reasons for using the product too. A good sales person will learn the benefits and problems the product will resolve so they can use this information in questioning prospects about the application.

Remember the story about selling me a nail? If you asked why I needed a nail, you might learn that I want to hang a very special, heavy picture that weighs about twenty pounds. You might learn that the picture is a valuable family keepsake worth more to me than any object in my home. With that in mind, you would realize that a nail won’t do the job. Your questions allow you to understand my purpose and goal. My wanting to hang a personal and priceless heavy object would change your recommendation because a nail won’t do the job.

It is important to learn the reasons why a prospect or a customer will need our products or services. When we understand what the reasons, goals and purposes are, we will know how to solve our customer’s needs. Questions accomplish this task better than presentations.

Steve Martinez teaches businesses how to increase sales by automating the best practices of sales. http://www.sellingmagic.com

All leaders strive to market and sell successfully. As they do so, they have many questions. Rivers of Revenue, written by a Kristin Zhivago, a 35-year marketing veteran, answers these burning questions, in a new and refreshing way. The book has been praised by readers and reviewers as containing new revenue-increasing perspectives and processes, while being easy to read.

Questions the book answers include:

-How can I avoid getting blind-sided by rapid changes?

-How can I find out what my customers really want?

-What do customers say about us when we’re not in the room?

-How can I get my customer’s attention?

-How can I close more sales?

-How can I beat my competition?

-Which marketing method should I use?

-What should my messages say?

-How can I stop conflicts between employees?

-What should my brand be?

-How do I manage and improve it?

-What price should I charge?

“People who start companies usually specialize in a particular aspect of business,” Zhivago says. “Those who don’t come from a sales or marketing background are at a distinct disadvantage. Successful marketing and selling is not something you pick up overnight. Lessons are learned over time. What worked for one type of product or service won’t work for another. Rivers of Revenue is designed to give any entrepreneur the tools needed to find the right course of action, quickly and efficiently.”

Ironically, getting the answers to the toughest marketing and selling questions requires that you interview the very people you’re trying to sell to. “People are actually happy to tell you what they want from you and how they want you to sell to them,” Zhivago says. “But you have to ask them correctly. For example, you can’t sell during an interview call. The minute you stop interviewing and start selling, they will stop wanting to help you. They will become recalcitrant buyer. They will clam up.”

Rivers of Revenue teaches interviewing techniques that Zhivago has perfected while conducting thousands of customer interviews for her clients. “The information you glean from these interviews sets the foundation for your marketing and selling strategies” she says. “The rest of the book explains how to take that information and turn it into new revenue streams. It helps you understand how to build a company that consistently and profitably keeps its promises to customers. Keeping that promise is the essence of your brand.”

The book’s author, revenue generation coach Kristin Zhivago, is known as an expert on customer behavior. For 35 years, Zhivago has been helping company owners increase their revenues in the world’s toughest, fastest-moving markets. As a monthly columnist and contributor to business publications since 1985, she has authored hundreds of articles and is a worldwide speaker on the subject of successful and ethical revenue generation. She founded Zhivago Marketing Partners, Inc. in Silicon Valley in 1979, and moved to a waterfront location in Rhode Island in 1996. She is the editor of the Revenue Journal, a blog for CEOs and small business owners.

Ed Hutchison is CEO and President of the North American Boxing Council (NABC.net). He works with pro athletes, trainers & managers at all levels. He writes daily on his personal website http://www.winrz.com - Winrz.com Home Page for Winners about self help, leadership and success.

Any business, whether it’s just starting out, or is established, can benefit by having a virtual office in London UK with Messagemail.com. A London virtual office provided by Messagemail.com can substantially reduce the start-up costs while simultaneously giving a new company a solid business presence in the best commercial location in the world.

London Virtual Office Advantage No. 1: Look Bigger. The advantages of having a London business address and telephone number that are prestigious and recognisable, along with being able to rent a conference room at that same address on an hourly basis, lends credibility to your business while saving on the overhead that can cripple a business before it has a chance to succeed. Studies show that consumers perceive companies with a London business address, telephone and fax numbers as being larger and more established. Give your customers the sense of security they are looking for with a London Virtual Office. You can transfer your calls anywhere in the world and even get your voicemail messages through email.

London Virtual Office Advantage No 2. Freedom of Movement. By using a virtual office instead of a physical office, you will free yourself up to go out and get new customers. With a virtual office you can forward your calls to your office phone, home phone or even your cell phone so that you never have to miss a call. If your physical business is not located in London, but your customers are, a London virtual office is the perfect way to keep your business growing.

London Virtual Office Advantage 3. Cost Savings. A rented physical office is very expensive, especially in the best commercial areas in London, UK. A virtual office on the other hand, provides all the benefits of a physical office, but at a fraction of the costs.

Finding the Right Provider for your Virtual Office in London.
Choose an established company. Paramount to getting new business, as well as keeping the business you have, is making sure your customers can get the information they need, whether that is from you or an automated system. You can’t afford to have your calls not get through or to have dropped calls. One way to make sure you are going to have a reliable system is to go with a reliable provider. An established company will have remained in business, while others have gone by the way side, for one main reason - they are very good at what they do. Messagemail.com has been providing top quality virtual offices in London for more than 10 years, and is one of the largest operators in the industry.

Service Backed By a Guarantee. Go with a service that has a 30-day money-back guarantee. This will allow you to try out the system without worry. If you find that it doesn’t suit your needs, you are free to cancel. Messagemail.com offers a 30 day guarantee.

Thousands of small businesses have discovered that Messagemail.com London virtual offices are good for their business.

Ultimately the success of any business depends upon having a
consistent flow of new prospective clients. Unfortunately, far too many
individuals rely solely upon their existing clients and referrals as their
primary methods for getting new clients. While this may prove to be a
successful strategy short term, it invariably leads to the “feast and
famine” roller coaster that so many firms and individuals experience.

On a fundamental level, marketing for new clients is pretty
straightforward. We have found successful marketing campaigns
focuses on:

1) Targeting a hyper-responsive group of prospective clients.

2) Identifying the issues that are of most importance to this group.

3) Motivating them to self-nominate themselves as being interested in
learning more about your services.

4) Moving them along a sequence of steps that encourages them to take
action.

If you focus on these four steps, it is relatively easy to create a marketing
system that will consistently brings you a steady stream of new clients-
all of whom have pre-qualified themselves as being interested in
learning more about your services.

Let’s look at each of these steps in more detail.

Step 1: Determining Who you are going to target.

Too often this is given only a cursory consideration. Since we all operate
on limited marketing budgets and only have time to follow up with those
most likely to actually engage our services, identifying the most hyper-
responsive sub-groups within a targeted market is very important.

We define Hyper-Responsives as the sub-group that is most interested
in obtaining a competitive edge. Thus, they are most likely to hire
outside advisors to achieve that objective. In order to identify this group
we look for specific traits and behaviors which enables us to segment
this group from the larger target market.

One trick is to look for those that read the relevant trade publications and
are members of the professional associations. These data-points
usually indicate that the individual is interested in staying current and
maintaining their competitive edge. Thus they are likely to be the most
interested in at least learning more about your services.

Step 2: Create a Free Information Report.

Remember that the goal of any lead generation tool is get prospective
clients to “raise their hands” about being interested in your services. The
“hook” to achieve this is the free special report.

The goal of the free report is two-fold. First it must contain enough
practical information so that the reader feels that they have learned
something that they didn’t know before. This is crucial for developing
credibility. The second objective is to entice the reader to become
hungry for more information. This balance of providing enough (but not
too much) information is crucial for moving the relationship process to
the next steps.

We recommend that your free report be between 4-12 pages in length
and be available from your website.

Step 3: Crafting the One-Page Lead Generation Letter.

Among all the lead generation methods we track, the one page letter
has the highest metrics in the B2B market place. We recommend that
you write your lead generating letters after you have created the free
special report. Remember the objective of the letter is to position oneself
as an industry or functional expert with an interesting perspective on an
issue the prospective client may be facing.

We cannot emphasize strongly enough that it is a mistake to simply
include your report along with your initial letter. The letter’s sole purpose
is to intrigue the prospective client enough so that they want to request
the information.

Successful markting campaigns emphasize consistency and repetition.
Thus we recommend that you develop a series of three letters which will
be sent in sequence-each focusing on compelling reasons to request
the free report.

Step 4: Sending the free information report and collecting data about
prospective clients.

As mentioned earlier, the offer of the free report in your letter should
direct prospective clients to your website.

As a “Big thumb” goal you should try to get 75% of these visitors to
follow through and fill out the information form to get the report. Although
it would seem natural that people going to your site would follow
through and request the free report, this is unfortunately not the case.

Care must be taken to ensure that the landing-page you are directing
readers to, re-emphasize the benefits that will be obtained by requesting
the free report. Don’t assume that just because visitors are at your site
they will automatically do what we want them to.

Precisely what information to request becomes a crucial issue at this
point. While you want more that just name & email, requesting too much
information will suppress response.

Successful marketing campaigns on the premise that through consistent
and regular contact we can move prospects through a carefully
orchestrated series of steps which results in an identifiable percentage
of them purchasing our services.

The key is to automate as much of it as possible.

We suggest that the initial auto-responder be sent out three hours after
the report is requested. It should serve to simply thank the recipient for
requesting the information and to introduce yourself.

The next series of messages should move the conversion process
through a carefully designed series of steps in which you both build
credibility for yourself and move the prospect to take action. As with the
other steps in the process the ability to communicate content in a
compelling manner is crucial for success.

One of the main challenges of any marketing effort is the follow-up
stage. When we look at marketing campaigns that have achieved
outstanding success and compare them to those that have performed
below expectation, the difference is almost always in how effectively the
stay in touch process was implemented.

Mark Satterfield is the creator of the Gentle Rain Marketing System: How
to Generate a Consistent Flow of New Clients. Quickly & Easily. With No
Cold Calling. Find out more: http://www.gentlerainmarketing.com

* Selling the Appointment

* Building Rapport

* Establishing Relationships with Potential Prospects

* Filling the Sales Funnel

* Don’t Take No? for an Answer

* Making Prospects Feel the Pain

* Persuading

* Convincing

* Overcoming Objections

The result of these sales techniques is rejection and frustration. Ready for something different?

Guilty of Holding These Outmoded Beliefs?

* People Who Need Your Product or Service Can Be Convinced to Buy

* You Need to Educate Your Prospects Before They Can Be Sold

* Presentation Skills Are Very Important

* Good Prospects Are Created By Good Salespeople

* Helping Prospects is Most Important

* Sell Benefits Not Features

* Always Ask for the Order

* A Well Written Proposal Can Win the Sale

* Doing the Same Things a Little Better Will Get Great Results

* Your Industry Is Different from All Others

* You Must Be Able to Take Rejection: In Sales, It’s Inevitable

If you still believe that persuading, cajoling, and razzle-dazzle presentations are necessary components of the sales process, you’re probably wondering why you don’t close more sales. It’s not you, it’s your outmoded belief system.

If you’re ready to learn a more rewarding and effective way of selling, it’s time to read High Probability Selling. Start selling more — and enjoying it more — enroll in a workshop today!

©Jacques Werth, High Probability® Selling - All rights reserved.

Jacques Werth, author of “High Probability Selling,” is an internationally respected Sales Trainer and Sales Consultant. HPS graduates are excelling as Top Producers in over 70 industries. Visit http://www.highprobsell.com to read more articles, preview the book, and learn more about High Probability Selling.

After careful consideration, we have chosen our vendor, and it’s not you.”

Hard words to hear. That big deal, the account you’ve been courting for months, has fallen to someone else.

“We appreciate all the time and effort you put into your bid. It was quite professional.”

Yeah sure, they really appreciate your months of grueling work, but not enough to actually write you a check. You feel like you’ve just been elected the mayor of Loser-ville.

So what do you do now? At this crucial point, many salespeople make one of two mistakes: they either forget about this big potential customer (and the time invested) forever or they make some desperate move that further cements their fate as the Company That Couldn’t. “Hey wait-a-second Mr. Prospect, are you really mentally prepared to give me a final no? Hello?…. Hello?” (Never comment on a prospect’s mental health).

One thing that separates a good salesperson from a great salesperson is the ability to become a backup vendor. In essence, positioning yourself as the secondary supplier for the account sets you up to continue to build a relationship with the client, to someday win that business. Most companies want to have depth in their supply chain. Everybody likes to have options. Few clients will deny your last request.

“Sure, whatever.”

Maybe they don’t sound sincere, but they’ve just given the invitation to keep the relationship alive. Now you can go to work showing them what a great vendor you could be. One key thing to remember is to never criticize the company that won the business. If you talk bad about the winning competitor, you are criticizing the customer’s recent decision. Calling your potential customer stupid is not an effective sales tactic.

Next, find out exactly why you lost the deal. People typically don’t have much trouble telling you where you went wrong. If they balk, tell them that to be an effective backup vendor, you want to know more about their specific needs. Before long, you find out what you did wrong - and what you need to do right - to eventually get the business. Every bit of detail you discover will help you win the account one-day. Look for the role you played in the failed deal.

You can also ask for referrals. You will be amazed how easy it to get leads from a company that just told you they have chosen another vendor. Then sell to the other companies and get testimonial letters from them. Send copies and a thank you note to the company who gave the referral.

Continue to build the relationship just like you would if you were the primary vendor. Put regular ticklers for the client in your contact database (if you don’t have contact software, pick up your rotary phone next to the lava lamp and order some now) and touch base with them. Keep reminding them that you’ll be ready when they need backup.

Develop an Email relationship and let them know occasionally (not every two day’s) how you are helping your other happy customers.

Keep building the relationship. Stock the products they use, and send updated product information. Offer solutions to any problems they may tell you about. Refer them to other companies who provide products or services you don’t. These kinds of activities will ensure that you stay on their vendor list, and you will build a reputation as a problem solver.

Be nice to everyone in the company. Someone, who is not making the final decision, now, could be in the future. As a matter of fact, I have seen situations where the low man on the ladder ended up as a decision-maker. I was able to get the business because I treated him with importance when he was Mr. Nobody. In another case, I discovered that the purchasing agent had been replaced, and that the new one couldn’t stand the current vendor. I have also built strong relationships with want-to-be decision-makers who move to other companies to become real buyers (guess who got the business).

Invite the client to company events and parties. Treat them just like a customer, and sooner or later, they will be.

All the while, continue to document what did not work the first time with this client, and make sure you cover your bases for the future. If your product and service is superior to the competition, hang in there. Your potential customer will be replacing parts or suffering inferior service while you start to emerge as the low risk provider.

Treat the lost customer well enough, and they’ll start to imagine how good you’d treat them if you really had their business. The company that keeps up the communication longest will eventually get the business.

Practice poised consistent persistence. We had a Skybox at the Astrodome. On one occasion, I had some folks there from a company we had never sold anything to. They hung out and watched the game with all our happy customers. At the end of the day the CEO walked up to me with a plate of barbecue in his hand and said, “How come we are not buying from you?” I said, “I have no idea!” I signed them the next day.

Never give up. A company once told me I would “never, ever” get their business. Never turned out to be exactly 18 months.

Garrison Wynn is a nationally known speaker, trainer, and coach. He is the President and founder of Wynn Solutions, specializing in The Truth about Success.

www.wynnsolutions.com

About The Author

As a speaker, advisor, and entertainer, Garrison has worked with some of the world’s most effective corporate leaders and salespeople, from multi-billion dollar manufacturers to top New York Stock Exchange wire houses. He has a background in manufacturing, entertainment, telecommunications and financial services. An experienced actor and former professional stand-up comedian, he has hosted PBS television specials and national radio programs.

garrison@wynnsolutions.com