The factors that contribute to the success of any business are
the same, whether you are in the business of selling a line of dresses, knits, décor,
photo copiers, counseling sessions, or chimney sweeping services.
1.) KNOW WHAT BUTTONS TO PUSH and PUSH THEM FAST, EARLY and
REPEATEDLY. Everyone has something to offer with his or her product. Know
what the features that attract and entice YOUR KINDS OF CLIENTS exist, in your
case. Know what to say in speech or print to make them go ‘huh?’ In most cases
in any non retail-purchasing situation, once the interest and curiosity of a
potential client has been aroused, you will need to implement some Fast
Fabulous Follow-up techniques in order to bring in the business. Follow-up is
more than simply sending out a pack of information on your business. It can be
a.) a phone call. b.) a mail out,c.) an email. But do it right away, the second
they call you. I can’t tell you how
many clients I’ve lost because it took me two weeks to two months to call them
back. When I compare that to my calling back the same day I see the difference?
Invariably, they come right over. PEOPLE like clean, fast communication cycles.
They like when you remember stuff they told you on the phone. They like
INTEREST. SO if a lady says, my child is not doing well, and I call back, I
CERTAINLY mention that issue, with feeling more than curiosity. With
sensitivity to the fact that she called me and mentioned it!
2. BE AN
AUTHOR! Get a website from drak.net for 3$ a month, these girls ROCK! And post
your articles, using the WEB
TRIX FOR DUMMIES SEMINAR I CREATED FOR YOU. When you attract new people online, from your list attending, from
your CRAIGS LIST ads, from folks who GOOGLE up your product or services, once
that phone or email contact is made, they usually come right in. But if they do
not, the important thing is to say in contact over a period of time where you
send her perhaps EMAILED ARTICLES…if I find something new on autism, or INDIGO
children, and you’re sitting in at an AUTISM BLOG or list, SEND IT TO THE
ENTIRE LIST, BLOG IT over there, put your WEBSITE and email address in the
BLOG. Also, get anybody who answers you thanking you on an email list. Create
an AUTISM LIST, an INDIGO MOTHER list or the ADD list.
Girls who call about romantic problems get on my LUCK IN LOVE list. As all addies are
bcc, they just see a letter from me. They don’t realize the list went to a
dozen ADD mothers or A FEW HUNDRED girls on my LOVE LIST. Send them things regularly, in order to
begin to establish a relationship with your potential client, allowing them to
get to know you, like you, and trust you. PLAN B: BE A READER. READ THE BOOKS OF MALCOLM GLADWELL on
SUCCESS!
3. Find out
what specific needs your potential client has and if you can indeed
serve them to help them meet their objectives. If your new client is looking
for a home job/ income, put her on your COTTAGE INDUSTRIES list and send
specific articles. Hopefully the people you attract MATCH what your own
websites/ writings and seminars are about. If you CROCHET CARCOATS/ SCARVES
MITTENS, you want to get BOUTIQUE owners, DEPARTMENT STORE BUYERS on your list
4. LITTLE BY LITTLE, Educate your potential client on what products or services you have to offer. As I offer
about twenty services, like Salome, I
slowly drop one veil, then the next. Establish yourself as an expert in your industry and
an invaluable partner to your potential client’s success. GET A DIGITAL CAMERA
and send GRAPHICS of your products occasionally. A gorgeous sweater and next to
it, TWO DOZEN will cost you x amount. One Dozen, x. amt. WHOLESALE PRICE.
5. GIVE TRADE BEADS! The gifts you give
for free linger on their desk or in their mind. They refresh their memory of
you. I give them away weekly, read how! This kind of thing will guarantee that
your potential client will remember you and your business when they need to by
sending frequent emails, gifts, calendars, useful stationery like PRE PRINTED
MEMO PADS IN my case, I send them their horoscope prettily drawn out. I email
them their chart readings weekly, colorized EMAILS, formatted, in htm.
6.
DEVELOP YOUR WEB
PRESENCE. This is authoring articles or finding relevant info on GOOGLE.,
posting them at your website. I teach how to do your own website, so don’t
worry. It’s THE EZ, DUMMIES
method that I use.
7. PRICE
RIGHT! Make sure your potential client can easily say yes to you when you
ask for the order. I do that by keeping my prices super low, and by making PAYPAL dot com available for instant
paying. I prefer a check as PAYPAL takes a huge % but if someone is buying on a
whim, I do tend to say I’ll start doing the math on the horoscopes and I’ll do
your typing work right away but do send a check to this addie. Rarely do they
forget. And if they do, I remind them.
8. NOW YOU FIND ME
CLIENTS!
Turn your potential client into a referral source for you whether or not they
do in fact become a client. I used to give a Bev Hills hairdresser a free
reading for himself after he got me a few clients. When following up with your
potential clients use these proven strategies in order to meet the eight
objectives of successful follow-up, and increase your business success:
9. Approach the biggies. Send a VHS TAPE or
DVD with a six minute VIDEO, letter, PLUG IN AND PLAY. But what are you
approaching them about? BEST BET is always FINANCING A BUSINESS EXPANSION.
Learn how to do an easy PROSPECTUS
as out of every 3 people you give it to, one will invest.
10. Publish articles in
your area of expertise, trade journals, internet sites. Then someone googles
your name, WOW, A WEB PRESENCE!
11. KNOW YOUR
COMPETITION. Seek them out, see their ads, websites, crib wording, take the
whole website, swallow it whole and stick in your graphics, your words. I know
an entrepreneur who didn't know w4ebsite design, she went to web monkeys for
kids, learned and did her own website. She took the cells and tables from a big website with a lot of pictures
arranged the way she wanted hers arranged. THE ORIGINAL OWNERS of that design
would not realize that their boxes, formatting is what she now has.
12. THINK LIKE YOU HAD NO
COMPETITION! DO NOT WORRY who your primary competitor is, useless. Those
are calories better spent on KNOWING WHO your primary customer IS! Know how to
reach them by email, postal mail and by designing words that ‘reach them.’ Know
their mind You have to be able to get your hands on those dials. You want your
business to double every month. TO DO THAT, you have to know how to target an
audience. You have to know what OTHER SERVICES would appeal to that PRIMARY
CUSTOMER. Entertaining at their parties? Doing BLACKBERRY consulting while they
sit at the OSCARS with their movie star chums? I’ve had both happen. My client
put Meg Ryan and Holly Hunter on the blackberry to get a chart done at the
OSCARS.
13. TARGET AUDIENCES. Know which chat
groups are up your alley. Hit the CRAIGS LIST free ads, seeking your kind of
people Same with blogs.
14. FIRE IN THE BELLY is important. You
can't just sit there, handling today's clients. WHERE is the fire to attract tomorrow's?
Good CEOs give their clients full attention, but also are working during part
of every day for tomorrow's clients! The Master Jules teaches how to have THIS MYSTERIOUS FIRE!
15. THINK HUNGRIER. Don’t be such a damn
BUDDHIST! What does it take to get fire in the belly?
AMBITION? It may be for one that you must INCULCATE jealousy of others in your
field. You must look at their superiority and hanker to have the edge. Read the
success stories of others in your field so that you salt and pepper your
creative fire, so it flares up. Read of the goodies, the big pay, the huge
revenues, IMAGINE the goodies you want, THAT ISLAND vacation, That farm with a
flock of goats, that swimming pool and Jacuzzi. LOOK AT THE FIRE IN THE BELLY
SITUATION. What else creates it? Love of our children? Parents? An urge to
convert the world to your view? HANG
graphics from magazines in meaningful collages, interspersed with your
children’s photos! Gardens, with palm trees, and your kids.
16. OUTWARD SIGNS of
SUCCESS.
Dress like a success. OUTWARD DRESSING. GROOMING. NOUVELLE, hot, TRENDY.
17. THE INNER beauty. ORGANIC situations
like food, diet. Spinach salad. Watercress, steak? between meals, a genuine raw
fruit, ripe. POWER foods. You really do have to OUTSOURCE energy for this leap
into being a MERCANTILIST CAPITALIST.
18. STUDIES, talking the talk is
easier if you can quote statistics. DO
YOUR GOOGLE RESEARCH. Save it to cache as text files. Learn to save info that
you find as text. Learn to turn text into html. THE WEB TRICKS INDEX FOR
DUMMIES.
19. Send out Interactive
Items Instead of sending out a refrigerator magnet or paperweight with your
phone number on it, (NEITHER OF WHICH IS BAD, really, if you can find any, do
it!) but also get creative, think outside the box! Give people something they
will use. A fluorescent whistle
keychain with your name and # or email on it.
Or shoot a quick pic of them at your house, in the garden with the
squirrel and the chicken and the cats and
their shocked face and you laughing and email it to them! They’ll never
forget the day they came to see you! DIGITAL IS SOOOOOOO GROOVY! You couldn’t/
wouldn’t do that with old time PHOTOS!
20. Give your clients
Value !
Ask yourself how you could educate your potential clients about your business
while giving them information they can use instantly. Ways I do this are
sending out both articles I have found online or those I’ve written on topics
that are of interest to my potential clients. I have had many clients in
eviction situations. I write meaningfully on this subject. EVICTION!
21. Invite People to Go
Where You Are Going When your potential clients spend time with you in a non
selling situation like a cocktail party, gallery opening, a picnic, this
meeting allows you to get to know them
and their needs in a non threatening situation. They get to see your sparkling PEOPLE
skills. Socializing together also sends a message to your potential client that
you care about them as well as their business. If you take a potential client
to an event where other people know you, they will often let your prospect know
how wonderful you are. They will sell you! I’ll never forget going to a perfume store opening with my new
best client, the matchmaker gal. There across the room we both see the Big
Movie Star wife who spots me, says ANITA and runs to shake my hand. MAN did my
stock go up. Another time I was taken to a $1,000 a plate dinner with a top
columnist from the Hollywood Reporter who was very snotty to me, as if I should
be grateful to know him. We sit at our table of say l0 people, and there across
from me is the MOVIE STAR WIFE with her husband, billionaire actor/producer.
She says “Anita, good to see you.” The columnist was floored. Never said a
word. Earlier at that party I’d read Michael Jordan’s hand and his wife, big
famous basketball player. The columnist
hadn’t liked my taking out my trade, even when I’d been asked to. Later at that
same party, I saw my mother’s best friend-couple from two decades earlier, with
his wife, and we touched bases. I was in tow that night, with the glum reporter
(a geriatric by the way,) but if I’d towed others to that party, could we have
afforded same, it would have been a stunningly useful night. But I’d never pay
over l0$ a plate for dinner!
22. Success Faxes are good to use
because they are informal and can be perceived as more personal than a
newsletter of direct mail piece the recipient knows was sent to many people.
Send out a weekly or monthly success fax to your clients with updates on your
business and industry information that they will find valuable. Fax them
information that comes across your desk related to their industry.
23. Be Innovative Always be looking
for an innovative ways to stay in touch.
Watch the TELEVISION PAGE, and when there’s a great show on your FAVE
SUBJECT, write your entire LIST. BY EMAIL. Include your ad as an attachment.
USE THE POSTAL SERVICE for EXCITING LOCAL PARTIES, even other people’s GALLERY
OPENINGS. In that case, don’t INVITE, just mention, I hope to see you at the
GALLERY OPENING from THE JAMES GALLERY, drinks and some great art. Use
postcards with COVER ART customized for your industry or PRODUCT. For me, it
would be emails as I hate postage fees. I’d get pictures of MOONS, SATURN, and galaxies and work them into an HTM FILE, here’s an
example of one, & drop them a note saying ‘hey, there’s a picnic Saturday
for the DEMOCRATS in VALLEY PARK. I’ll be there near the fountain with my kids.
Hope to see you. If you tell me you’re coming I’ll bring extra sandwiches!”
Then append your AD as an attachment. Or it can be as simple as an EMAIL
saying, “I know you love panning for Gold watch this on TV. Or “Don’t miss this
TV show on UFOS next THURSDAY, etc..
Send out cards for Valentines Day, New Years, and Halloween, birthdays,
having POEMS in your C:\POETRY directory or do it by POST if you like to spend
money. I can make funny cards out of USED
CHRISTMAS CARDS and I state as much on them.
24. Have a Plan Before
you do anything Sit down and write out a plan for every stage of your business,
P.R. Ads, ONLINE PRESENCE, CUSTOMER OUTREACH, ADS, COMMUNICATIONS, follow-up. Decide in advance what action you
are going to take and write out a list of what you need to do to accomplish
each of those tasks. Give yourself a deadline by when each action must be
complete.
25. Schedule It If it is not on your
calendar it will not happen. Block out time for Follow-up everyday. If you
don’t you will always be late with your follow-up and you will always be trying
to catch up. The period of time from initial follow-up to a closed sales can be
anywhere from five minutes to five years. If you want to bring in a potential
client it is important to be consistent and persistent with your follow-up. It
will take more than a phone call and a postcard. If you consistently use these
strategies for success on an ongoing basis you will find that soon everybody wants
you to be following up with them. They will be saying to you, “Thank you, I am
so glad you followed up”. This list was suggested by the work of Katerina Rando an entrepreneurial coach. I
rewrote her text.
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