Tag: strategic internet marketing

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Business Ideas

What Airplane Stewardess Can Teach You About Business Success

If you’ve been on an airplane, you’ve probably heard the airline stewardess give you the little safety spiel. How you buckle your seatbelt. What to do in case of a water landing. And what happens if those little oxygen masks drop down.

What you’re supposed to do is put your mask on first then put the masks on your children. That order. You, then your kids.

Why? Because if you pass out while trying to help your kids, you’ll help no one, least of all yourself and your kids.

Which is the point of my article today. Are you putting your clients’ needs above your own?

Now good customer care does require us to go above and beyond the call of duty. And sometimes we do have to work late or on weekends to help a good client out. That’s not what this is about. What this is about is if you’re consistently doing everything for your clients and nothing for yourself.

Let me give you some examples —

1. You’re never not available. Clients or prospects can call you anytime of the day or night and you’ll answer.

2. You don’t take a vacation (a real vacation) again because you want your clients to be able to get in touch with whenever they want.

3. You don’t spend anytime growing your business — the only time you do any sort of marketing is when your business is down. Otherwise you put your client work first. (Note — this can extend to other business tasks as well, such as getting your invoices out or doing your filing.)

This last one probably doesn’t seem so bad. “But I’m working on my clients’ projects, I can’t possibly spend time on my business when they’re paying me to work on stuff for them.” While on one hand that sounds good, it really isn’t.

Think about it. If your business is a mess because you never spend anytime on it — you’re late collecting on your invoices because you don’t send out billing, you’re stressed about cash flow and where your next client is coming from, etc. how can you possibly be taking care of your clients at the highest level possible? Only when you have your own house in order can you fully take care of your clients’ needs. (In other words, you have your oxygen mask on instead of being on the brink of passing out.)

And it’s the same with the first two as well. You need to take care of yourself first, and the only way to take care of yourself it to give yourself a breather every now and then. You need some time off to take care of you — else what good will you be? Do you think your clients really want to be working with an exhausted, stressed out version of yourself or do they want to work with someone who is excited and passionate about what they’re doing, even if it means they can’t reach them 24/7 and have to give them some unplugged time every now and again?

Look if this is you, don’t feel bad. I made all these mistakes myself when I was first starting out as a freelance copywriter. But over the years I realized the better I took care of myself and my business, the better I took care of my clients. That sounds counterintuitive but it’s true. Because I take time off, I’m healthier and have more energy. Because I treat my business like I would my one of my clients, I feel like I’m in integrity with the marketing principles I teach, plus I can share with my students and my clients what is working RIGHT NOW. I teach real-world tactics because I’m right there in the trenches with them.

I invite all of you to take a look at your relationship with your clients. Is there something you’re doing for them you’re not doing for yourself? Do you think it may be time to change that?

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Sales & Marketing

7 Simple Secrets to Reducing Your Refunds

There are few things in life as deflating as refund requests can be.

You’ve spent weeks or months (or years in some cases) creating a product. You work so hard to market it and get into your ideal clients’ hands. And they buy! It’s so exciting when you make sales.

And then you get a request for a refund. Argh!

Luckily I have good news. There are things you can do to reduce your refund rate. And many of them won’t cost you a dime. I’m going to walk you through these 7 simple steps about simple tweaks you can make to your product to make it more valuable and easy follow-up strategies.

Let’s get started.

1. Put a Quick Start CD or report in the product. Information products can be overwhelming. You open up the product and you have all these CDs and DVDs transcripts and worksheets and you don’t know where to start. A Quick Start guide (either audio or written) can give people a place to begin and it can help them consume the material more easily.

If people are feeling overwhelmed, they may just decide they don’t have time to figure this out after all and pack it all up and return to you.

(And yes, you can still include this even if the product is all digital.)

2. Include a Welcome letter or extra gift (or both). Let’s go through the Welcome letter first. A Welcome letter should:

* Reassure them they made a good decision by purchasing your product

* Get them excited about digging in and using the product

Welcome letters can also give them additional information and resources, or it can double as your “Quick Start guide” and give them instructions on how they should get started. Either way, it should make them feel good about their investment. (This again can and should be included with digital products.)

Now let’s look at gifts. A gift can be small, just a little extra bonus. Maybe it’s a promotional item, such as a pen or a bookmark. Or it could be an extra bonus, maybe an additional unadvertised report. Whatever it is, it just adds to the value and helps make your ideal clients feel like you’re overdelivering on value.

3. Send them an extra, unadvertised bonus at a later time. With this one, instead of bundling the bonus in the product, save it and send it to them later. This accomplishes a couple of things — your ideal clients feel taken care of plus it gives you another opportunity to reach out and connect with them again. This is a good way to further build the relationship with your ideal clients so they don’t feel like they’re simply a “walking wallet.”

4. Call them to thank them for their purchase. Yes, you read that right. Pick up the phone and give them a quick welcome call.

This can be a very powerful strategy for a number of reasons. First off, almost no one does it in the Internet world so you’re really going to stand out. Second, it’s another way to overdeliver value to your customers. Third, it’s a way to connect with them so they know they’re more to you then simply a sale.

I can hear all of you saying “I don’t have time.” That’s fine, have someone on your team do it. It doesn’t have to be a long call, just a quick phone call to welcome them into your community and to see if they have any questions or need anything from you. That 5 minutes can go a long way to really communicating a high level of customer care.

5. Set up a welcome auto-responder series. I’m currently working with a client to create a very integrated 30-day follow up email campaign. You don’t have to do something that elaborate, but even 5 or 7 follow up emails to help your customers get started with your product can go a long way. These emails can:

* Reassure them they made a good decision by purchasing your product

* Give them some additional tips for using the product

* Tease them about what’s in the product, to get them excited about diving in and getting started (remember, people who actually go through your product are far less likely to return it)

* Ask them for a testimonial or encourage them to refer a friend

* Upsell them to the next level

6. Add in live calls with you. There was a time where you could sell an information product and get top dollar for it and not include any interaction with you. Those days are gone. If you want to sell an information product with no calls or support from you, the price needs to be lower and be prepared for higher returns. But if you add in a couple of training and/or Q&A and live coaching calls, then you can raise the price plus it will reduce your refund rate.

People want accountability (and having those calls does add a level of accountability because they’ll need to go through the program to keep up with the calls) and they also want to interact with you. The more you can give people what they want, they more likely they’ll become loyal customers and raving fans.

7. Follow up with snail mail. I’ve found mailing people a postcard or a newsletter is a great way to build and deepen the relationship with my customers. Again, you’re reaching out to them outside the online world, sending something physical and doing this after the sale. So it’s a great way to stay connected with your clients. Of all the tips I gave, this one is the most costly, but over the long run, it can really pay off in a big way.

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Business Ideas

What Hollywood Can Teach You About Business Success (and Keeping Your Clients Happy)

A few weeks ago I decided to go to the movies with a girlfriend. We chose Prince of Persia.

As it happened, it was opening weekend so I hadn’t seen the reviews. However, I was a little worried about seeing it. The previews made it look sort of muddled and I was a bit puzzled by the choice of Jake Gyllenhaal as the lead. (He never struck me as the action adventure type hero.) Worse yet, it was based on a game.

Yee gads. Why did I agree to see this movie again?

Needless to say I walked into that theater with VERY low expectations.

So imagine how happy I was when the movie DIDN’T suck. Yes I know, it got some bad reviews. But truly, if you’re looking for a light, mindless, action-packed summer flick, Prince of Persia delivers. (And I was also pleasantly surprised at Jake Gyllenhaal — talk about some nice eye candy.)

The interesting part about all of this is I think my impression of that movie is higher than it should be. Why? Because my expectations were so low and the movie beat them so significantly — thus my overall impression is that it’s a good movie.

Now, let’s take another movie where I went in with HIGH expectations and the movie DIDN’T deliver. Like The English Patient. Won an Academy Award. Everyone was buzzing about it. I found it slow and terribly depressing. I also didn’t quite get why the Kristin Scott Thomas’s character would have an affair with the terribly depressing Ralph Fiennes’s character when her husband seemed like such a charming fellow. (This was before I saw the Seinfeld episode where Elaine fell asleep during the movie and was ostracized about it. Happy to know Elaine and I have something in common.)

So my overall impression of The English Patient is that it wasn’t a very good movie at all. Despite winning an Oscar. Because it came in so much lower than my expectations.

(And if you take this one step further, it certainly seems like I’m saying The Prince of Persia is better than The English Patient. Hmmm, maybe I shouldn’t go there.)

So what does all of this have to do with you and your business? Well, let’s take a look at your client and customer expectations.

If your customers and clients are hiring you or investing in your products and service with high expectations, and you aren’t meeting them, their overall impression is going to be they had an unpleasant experience with you. Even if your offerings are better than your competition, they’re still going to be disappointed.

But if your customers and clients come in with slightly lower expectations, and your products and services blow those expectations away, they’re going to be thrilled to death with you, tell all their friends and associates about you and maybe even write a newsletter article about you.

This is why it’s so important to underpromise and overdeliver. Especially now. Because people are becoming more careful with their money so the last thing you want to do is leave them with a sour taste in their mouth after doing business with you.

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Sales & Marketing

3 Steps to Filling Your Pipeline with Eager Clients and Customers

If your primary source of business revenue is selling services, there is no worse feeling than having an empty pipeline (especially when you’re completing projects with your current clients).

So how do you keep a full pipeline with eager clients and customers? Let me share 3 steps to get you started:

Step 1 — Know who your ideal client is. If you don’t know who you’re trying to put into your pipeline it’s going to be pretty hard to get them in there.

But this is deeper than just taking on anyone who waves a check in front of your face. If you want to fill your pipeline with clients who are EAGER to do business with you, you want to attract your IDEAL clients.

So what is your ideal client? Your ideal clients are the ones who you love to work with. They’re the ones who are a perfect fit for what you offer. They are NOT “women between the ages of 20 and 50 who are married with 2 children and trying to start a home-based business.” That’s a target market and that’s different from ideal client. Ideal clients are about an attitude, a shared vision or goal. An ideal client description would look more like this: “mothers who have been stay-at-home mothers but their children are now starting school and they’re ready to start working. But they don’t want a job, they want something they can do at home and have flexible hours so they can still put their kids first.”

See the difference in the description?

Now, you might be someone whose pipeline is empty and you REALLY need the cash flow, so while an ideal client is nice, you’d be happy with anyone who waves a check in front of your face.

First off, I get it. I’ve been there myself. However, as I know you know, taking on those less-than-ideal-clients while might be necessary for financial reasons, usually turn into a bigger headache than what you signed up for. I know you sometimes have to do this, but wouldn’t it be better to NOT have to? Start now focusing on attracting your ideal clients into your pipeline. Will a non-ideal client slip in from time to time? Of course. And if you so choose, you can take the on as a client. But start it off right by building that solid foundation first.

Step 2 — go where your ideal clients are. Now that you know who they are, it’s time to hang out where they’re hanging out. Don’t know where they are? Then go back to step 1 and do more digging. If you really know your ideal clients, you’ll know where to find them. Then you can focus your lead generating activities in the places where they are.

Step 3 — nurture your leads. Once you have your leads in the door, now it’s time to build a relationship with them. The best way to do this is through a consistent follow-up system, such as an ezine and/or direct mail piece. If you have a weekly ezine or something that goes out regularly to your leads, you don’t have to worry about remembering to contact them.

It takes AT LEAST 7-13 touches to turn a prospect into a client. In this “new economy” this number is even higher (I’ve found you need to be a little more aggressive to get the same level of sales as you would have a few years ago.) So if you have an easy and automatic way to stay in touch with your prospects, you’ll find building that relationship with your prospects that much simpler.

Categories
Business Ideas

3 Simple Steps To Taking a Quantum Leap in Your Biz

If you want to grow your business, there are 2 ways you can go about it.

Slow and fast.

Most people end up growing their business slowly. Now there’s nothing wrong with slow. It’s not easy to grow your business period, so even growing your business slowly is better than what a lot of entrepreneurs do.

So let’s talk about fast. Another way to view growing your business quickly is by taking a quantum leap, which basically means you leap frog ahead versus taking your growth one step at a time.

Taking a quantum leap means transforming your business quickly. It means going from $200,000 to a million in a year. It means seeing opportunities fly to you effortlessly.

So if you want a quantum leap, how do you get one? Here are 3 steps to get you started:

1. Think big. Taking a quantum leap isn’t going to work if you’re thinking small. So the first thing you need to do is make sure you’re thinking big. And, maybe even more than that, make sure you’re READY for your business to BECOME big. If you’re not comfortable or if there’s some blocks or obstacles around you growing your business to its fullest potential, you’ll never have a quantum leap.

2. Invest in yourself. There are different ways to invest in yourself. Do you need to build a team? Hire a consultant? Maybe you need to take time to go through a program or information product. Or you need to hire a coach or get into a coaching or mentorship program to move yourself ahead.

Money is a form of energy. And when you invest in a program or hiring a team, that could be the catalyst you need to move you forward in a big way. Because now you’ve put your money where your mouth is (so to speak). You’re taking yourself and your business seriously by investing in yourself.

So how do you know what you need to invest in? You know. You know right now what you need to invest in to grow your business. Whether or not you do it is another story.

3. Failures means you’re moving in the right direction. What?? I can hear you all saying. Here’s the thing. If you design your life and/or your business around never making a mistake, do you REALLY think you’re stepping outside your comfort zone? If you’re trying to never make mistakes, then there’s no possible way you can ever have a quantum leap. Quantum leaps require you to think differently than you have before, to try something you never have. And when you do that, you may end up having a failure or two (or ten) along the way.

Successful people don’t like failure anymore than you do. But they know if they don’t get out there in big way and try new things, they won’t be as successful overall, even though that means risking failure as well. It’s a choice they make because they know the payoff is worth it.

One way to deal with failure is to look beyond it. Focus on the end goal, where you want to end up. Then, when the failures happen, you’re not as concerned with them because you’re looking past them to the where you want to be.

But the biggest part of taking a quantum leap is just to do it. Take a deep breath and jump. And believe the net will appear.