Secrets to Success
Secrets to Success
Your most powerful
sales team is
already paying you
Part six in a series of eight How great would it be to have a sales team that is always growing, always at work and never wants to get paid? Better yet, how would you like it if they paid you to sell your products or services?Well if this sounds like an outstanding idea to you, I've got good news for you. In today's sixth installment of the maximum profit marketing principle you'll learn a powerful principle that will help you to find this team of motivated sales people. If you have clients, you've already got the best sales force right under your nose.
Principle 9
Existing clients are the quickest, surest way of getting more new clients.When it comes to generating leads and attracting new clients to your business, most conventional advertising is useless. Like to prove it to yourself? It's easy. Just go and grab five or six consecutive months of your favorite magazine. Browse through them and track how many ads are repeated.
How many ads did you find that ran more than once? Precious few I would bet. And there's a simple explanation why. The ads didn't generate enough new business to justify ever being run again.
"Why do so many businesses continue to focus on this type of advertising to generate fresh leads?" you ask. It could be pride. It could be the pack mentality, "everybody else does it this way."
It could be that they were taught this was a standard business practice, and told they just had to "accept" these poor results in the game of advertising. Most businesses continue to pour huge chunks of their budget into these wasteful types of ads, always telling themselves, "This time, this one will really work."
We could talk about direct mail and the dismal results conventional direct mail brings. You know the drill -- 2 percent average response; or, as I like to look at it, a 98 percent failure rate. I don't let my clients stand for these types of results, and now you don't need to either.
There's a tremendous source for attracting as many qualified and targeted prospects as you can handle.
The source? It's the existing relationships you already have with clients, vendors, strategic partners and other businesses. The key to unlocking the power within this revved up sales force is to give each source a strong enough incentive to endorse your products and services and refer you to their clients.
Let's look at some examples.
Say you own a financial planning firm and you provide wealth generation and protection services. Go through your list of clients. Every person that you provide services for can probably refer you to 5 or 10 other people. If you do financial planning for attorneys, it only takes one referral to get your business in front of an entire association of attorneys. And nothing pulls response like an endorsement from a satisfied client.
Vendors, suppliers and strategic partners have loads of other businesses they work with. How many of them will endorse your services to their other clients? You could trade them a percentage of the first year's fees for every referral who becomes a client. Or swap a free preparation of a financial plan in exchange for an endorsement letter to their customer list. The possibilities are endless.
And these principles apply to whatever business or profession you may be in.
So you see, there's no reason to ever again waste your precious time, money and effort in generating a constant flow of qualified leads. Think about it. Most people sincerely welcome a strong word-of-mouth referral from someone who they've come to trust.
An endorsed referral like this is a win-win-win. You increase your client base. Your endorsers increase their goodwill with their clients by making them aware of valuable products or services. The clients end up getting more of what they want or need. Everybody wins.
Have you started to think how this principle can apply to your business?
I promise you, if you dedicate serious thought to this principle and apply these ideas, it will transform how efficiently you attract and retain new clients to your business.
In the next installment of this series, you'll learn how you can make your all your marketing virtually risk free. This article series is based on our TeleCourse, "Small Business, BIG Profits."
John-Paul Micek is a small business strategist
and chief operating officer at RPM Success Group.
Reach him at JPM@RPMsuccess.com
or toll-free at (888) 334-8151.