The Fastest Way To Generate New Business

Often you can be so hard working in your business that the critical task of generating new business gets put on the back-burner.

Then one day you wake to realise there are no fresh leads or sales coming through the door.

This can be a very sobering moment for a small business owner.

• Bills still have to be paid.
• Payroll has to be met.
• And you start to feel all your hard work could be for nothing if you can’t generate some fresh business.

But you can easily avoid this with some forward planning and great customer service.

Repeat Customer Gold Mines

Ideally what you want is to build such great relationships with your past customers that anytime you need you can tap into your database and generate new sales.

Sounds good, but how do you do that?

So many business owners are so concerned about bringing in fresh business that they don’t realise by putting in just a little extra time with the people they are currently serving they can create valuable lifetime customers.

Must Have Tools For Building Lifetime Customers

Technology has made it very easy and very affordable to build strong, profitable customer relationships.

These are the tools I use to generate a consistent stream of repeat and referral clients.

Email Marketing Software:

Websites such as Mailchimp, Aweber and Constant Contact provide a cheap effective solution for building an email database of past clients. Sign up is free and you can get a full-featured account for around $10.

You want to create segmented lists. One for customers and one for leads and prospects. Then you can set up an email autoresponder.

This is a pre written sequence of emails that can be scheduled to go out at intervals you determine.

You can basically write 10 customer follow up emails enter them into you auto responder and set them to be delivered to clients over the next 3 months after they buy.

This means you are always front of mind next time they need your services.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

A good CRM is perfect for setting reminders and automating customer communication. Personally I use ZOHO CRM, which I have set up to remind me to contact past clients at set intervals. I’ll call 2 weeks after a project is listed as complete, I’ll send an email one month later and I’ll be reminded to give them another call 3 months after our work together.

Can you imagine what people are thinking when someone they hired 3 months ago is still checking in to make sure everything is ok? These simple emails and phone calls generate new or referral work about 50% of the time.

What would that do for your business if 50% of your clients or customers bought with you within 3 months of their first purchase?

Australia Post

Many people say that direct mail is dead. And I love it when they do.

With everyone and their dog heading online to market their business, good old fashion direct mail is a great way to make your business stand out from the crowd.

Yes it may be a little more expensive but when your past customers receive a personalised letter in the mail with an offer, or information about a new product it makes a much bigger impact than an email.

The Takeaway

Tools are simply that, tools.

The most important thing I want you to take away from this post is that you need to start building your customer relationships now so you can reap the rewards in the future.

Can you send a sincere thank you email to a high value client? You don’t have to have an angle. Just do it to really say “Thanks for your business”.

Will making a simple follow up call to 5 of your best customers a day take that much of your time? Maybe 30 minutes Max. But what if 2 of them were to turn into sales?

These are the type of results you can expect if you really focus on outstanding customer service and consistently follow up with your past buyers and prospects.

Or you could spend thousands of dollars getting your business in front of people who don’t know you, don’t trust you and may not even have a need for whatever you sell.

I know which one I’d prefer and I know (from experience) which strategy is more profitable too.

So go contact 3 of your best past customers right now and then leave a comment on this Blog about what happens next, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Cheers,

James Brine
The Barefoot Marketer