As a marketing consultant, one of my mission is to help people to grow their business, either by using networking as a marketing strategy, or helping them to find ways to attract more clients. But I like to show people the way I do it means selling without selling. My technique is to attract people and have them to come to me, instead of chasing them. This works much better than running after people to try to sell them my services.
But how do you attract more clients?
Depending on the products or services that you offer, there are different tactics to use to expand your client roster. - Ask yourself, why you don’t close more sales? - Do you make enough sales calls? - Do you call on the right people? People who are likely to be interested in your products and services? - Are your prospects afraid to buy from you because of the risk they will take with the product or service itself, or because they don’t know you yet?
Today, people are nervous, skeptical. When you reduce or eliminate the risk of making a purchase from your business, you will create an environment that allows people to buy more from you, and buy more often than they otherwise would have.
It is very important that you build a relationship with your prospects, leads, and customers, so they will trust you, conduct business with you and buy from you.
How can you break their fears?
By offering a sample of your product, you can create a great opportunity for people to test your products and services before they make the decision to buy from you.
Have you noticed companies that advertise on TV? Very often you will see an invitation to “Call for your free brochure," or “Call to receive a free sample."
Why do you think these merchants pay a lot of money ( I mean million of dollars) to advertise on TV, plus offer to pay more to send you a sample? Because they know that they may give away a certain number of products, but they will earn a high return on their investment.
In other words, by putting the product into the target customer’s hands, they create a relationship with the customer. They provide incentives for customers to test their products, and see the results for themselves. This is a proven way to build your customer base and increase sales.
Probably a number of people will take the free sample only, and never make a purchase, but the merchant also gains the opportunity to sell products to people who would never buy if they didn’t try it for free first. Those people may become repeat customers.
If nothing else, the merchant builds his/her mailing list. This can be especially valuable, since most of the people who request the sample are interested in the product. They are the ideal target market. And, even though a portion of the respondents will not make a purchase right away, they may make a purchase in the future.
What if your products or services can’t be sold as a sample?
Well, be creative. Let’s say you offer a free report, a free e-book or a free booklet, to give your target clients. In your publication, you provide information about your products and services. The result is they will learn more about you, which will position you as an expert in your field, and a good percentage of those people will be more willing to contact you instead of your competitor when they need this product or service.
Take my Free mini E-course at www.TheConnectionQueen.com as an example. Sending 15 Tips in 15 days on networking help people to answer their questions, but also learn more about me, who I am, and how I can help them.
Similar, in one of my other businesses, www.FocusonCareer.com, I offer a 30-minute, free consultation for people who want to start a business. Being able to speak with the potential client and answer all of his or her questions helps me to learn more about their projects. I can give them advice, show them how I can help them and more important build a relationship with them.
This example is the best way to show you how people contact you, instead of contacting them, to try to sell them something.
In this business www.focusoncareer.com, just giving access to lot of information on my website, plus offering a free consultation, I have 4 to 5 people calling me every week. After the Consultation, 80% become client immediately, 10% contact me within few months when they are ready to launch their business and 10% don’t become clients, either because they give up on their project or don’t have the finance to start. But in any case, they still receive my newsletter on a regular basis, and I communicate with them, which means that the day they are ready, I will be on the top of their mind and they will come back to me.
A free report, a free booklet or a free consultation are the best tools to break peoples fear and showcase your expertise. As a result, they will know more about you, which will create a feeling of trust, and chances are that as soon as they will be ready to buy, they will return to you where they already have a relationship.
When people meet you, they will see that you know what you’re talking about, and that you have the expertise and knowledge to help them. They will realize that there is a “real person" behind your brochure or website. And if you can give them some valuable information during this consultation, they will be more willing to start working with you, and buy from you when they are ready.
Implement this strategy on your business and you will be surprised on how you will easily attract more clients.
Still need help to set up you free report or free consultation? Learn more about The Marketing Makeover Consultation at www.TheConnectionQueen.com. Give me just 2 hours and I will help you save time and money putting your business on automatic pilot creating systems. We will * Review your actual marketing strategies, * Brainstorm on new strategies to promote your business, * Create a newsletter/ezine, the most effective, least expensive and easiest way to build a mailing list of prospects and get more sales, * Create a follow-up system to attract a constant stream of new clients always flowing into your business, instead of chasing clients?
(c) 2007 Biba F. Pédron
About the author
Biba F. Pédron, also known as The Connection Queen, is a marketing consultant, founder of Biba4Network, that specializes in networking for small business owners in the greater New York area. Biba helps entrepreneurs to maximize their networking results so that they can grow their businesses faster.
Biba is the author of “Start Your Dream Business Today! The Proven 11 Steps to Start and Grow Your Own Business". www.startyourdreambusinesstoday.com
For more information or to receive free tips like this one, please visit www.theconnectionqueen.com
The best way to impress your potential clients begins from the moment the client enters into the building. The first thing they see is the reception furniture, how the furniture has been arranged and what the general room looks like in terms of organisation and cleanliness. Imagine for a moment that you walk into a corporate building, when the first thing you see is a stack of boxes piling up on the floor by the entrance door, no receptionist at the reception desk and all of the reception furniture are dated tattered and unkempt.
Your immediate reaction is to ask yourself where the nearest receptionist or member of staff is located. Once you have found the member of staff, they ask you to take a seat; you wince and try not to make it obvious that you have no intentions of sitting on a couch that has holes on the arms and stains that appear to be from previous drink spillages. Now imagine if this was your office or company building and your new client is walking in to find badly presented reception furniture.
Part of impressing your client is to communicate with them as a professional individual with the ability to network efficiently. When holding a meeting at your establishment the last thing you would want is to greet them in an unorganised office, which is unclean and is clearly not a suitable working environment. You will also need to establish how to arrange all of the furniture in the reception area, but allowing more space for walking round and keeping the furniture layout simple.
Keeping boxes stacked in front of the door to the reception area is both a hazard and is not recommended if this is a designated fire exit. The reception furniture itself must not be elaborately designed and should match the rest of the decor of the office. Of course, if you work in a very informal environment then this is a different matter altogether, some public buildings may have such wacky furniture to suit the theme of the building.
Generally, corporate buildings stick to simple, modern and neutral coloured furniture that compliment the design and style of the rest of the office. This gives a more professional and calm tone to it. Most of these buildings have a very specific style about them as they are targeted towards serving a specific purpose, therefore when clients come in they have a more conservative and business-like nature about them.
Picking the right reception furniture for your office is not as easy as some may think, as this requires understanding on what type of furniture will give out the right impression and what ones give out the wrong impressions. You should make that they are also laid out evenly around the room, but allowing plenty of space to manoeuvre and opening the room up. Often some establishments can make the mistake in ordering more desks or chairs over a period, which then leads to the offices becoming cluttered with furniture.
The best thing to do is to seek professional advice on how best to lay out everything in the office, without have to make too many dramatic changes and preferably with knocking any walls. This can be achieved through making accurate judgement on where best to move the furniture, which will bring out more space. The size of the furniture is vital if you are looking to save space, so make sure you take some measurements before going out to buy your reception furniture.
Both Biba Pedron & Anna Stenning are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Biba Pedron has sinced written about articles on various topics from Business Cards, Networking and Sales and Negotiation. For more information or to receive free tips like this one, please visit www.theconnectionqueen.com. Biba Pedron's top article generates over 2400 views. to your Favourites.
Anna Stenning has sinced written about articles on various topics from computers and the internet, Management and Wedding Gifts. Anna Stenning is an expert on picking out the right for the office environment.. Anna Stenning's top article generates over 4090000 views. to your Favourites.