Chapter Three
Customers, Cash Flow, List Building and Lead Generation
There are so many free places where you can get customers and prospects. Always be looking for a free sales force. Those are people who like you, love you, and trust you because they buy from you.
There are people who like you and know who you are, but they are not necessarily your customers. They’re not buying your particular product or service, but they are happy to help you grow your business and refer you, so don’t forget about that.
When people are marketing their book or selling their product or trying to introduce their services, they may encounter several obstacles. These obstacles might be, “Where do I find a customer? Where do I find a new prospect? What am I going to do?”
Clarence Blasier said, “The obstacles you face are mental barriers which can be broken by adopting a more positive approach.”
What are the obstacles you think you’re facing? What are the mental barriers? Are they real barriers? If so, how can they be broken? How are we going to take a more positive approach?
Focus On the Marketing
You need to be determined in your marketing to get new customers and new prospects.
Beth Howland said, “For a long time it seemed to me that real life was about to begin, but there was always some obstacle in the way. Something had to be gotten through first; some unfinished business, time still to be served, a dept to be paid, then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.”
How does that say about marketing? You have to market every day. The life of your business is marketing; the life of your business is to get a new customer; the life of your business is to get paid something today.
I’ve had customers and clients who focus on the process of their business. They’re investing in their business. They’re renting furniture and office space and having lots of meetings about what their brochure is going to look like and picking a supplier for their manufacturing and so on.
They spend so much time on the process of getting ready to serve people that sometimes they end up going out of business before they even open their doors. They’ve invested so much in preparing that they never actually got people in the door. Again, let’s focus on the marketing.
You need to be marketing every day, “What am I doing to attract new business? What two things did I do today?” Just pick two small things everyday, “What am I going to do today?”
Wouldn’t it be exciting if you knew exactly how to get customers automatically? So many people don’t like cold calling, they don’t like hard selling, and certainly don’t like spending a lot of money on investing to get new customers and clients.
If you create a television or radio show, or you create a retail location, you have to get attention. You don’t want to be the lemonade stand in the desert.
List Building
Let’s look at a list building formula called F × Q × R.
F is for frequency, Q is for quality, and R is for relationship. When you put those things together and multiply them, you get trust. A lot of people say that money is in the list, the gold is in the list.
Let me clarify that. The money is in the relationship you have with the people on the list, and the word relationship is used instead of trust. So if you have a list of people who trust you when you introduce new products and services, guess what? They’re going to buy from you because they trust you.
Now you have to earn that. How do you earn trust? You earn that with frequency of communication, the quality of the information that you bring them, and the relationship that you build.
A lot of online Internet marketers send out e-mails, but they’re only selling. They rarely give away free information. If they do give away stuff free, they don’t do it often enough or it’s not very valuable.
You want to do a number of things to build trust with your list. In list building there are different types of lists that we need to have. Our biggest, most general list is going to be our list of suspects.
This is basically anybody who’s got a pulse; anybody who, based on your assumption and best guess, may be interested in your product or service.
The next one is a prospect. A prospect is more valuable. They’ve raised their hand. They might have taken some action. They may have phoned you or gone to your Web site. If you’re capturing their name and e-mail, which of course you should, they’ve taken some action; they’ve invested something, time, effort or money.
If they go to your Web site, they’ve invested their time and effort. If they go to your Web site and they buy a trial offer, then they’re investing their money.
You could have a dollar trial offer or a seven dollar trial offer or thirty dollars for three months trial offer. Whatever it is, they’re still a prospect because they’re still sampling your product or service.
But they’re highly qualified once they’ve taken out their credit card. If they take out their credit card for a dollar or seven dollars or thirty dollars, then they are a hot prospect. They are somebody who has started down that road to building a relationship, to building trust with you.
Next is a customer. Now this is “Yee-haw!” time. This is when you ding the bell because they actually made a purchase.
Customer vs. Client
Let’s say you have a customer who makes a one-time purchase on your Web site or in your retail store. This isn’t a very efficient way to do marketing. We want to get them, but we want to try and keep them as long as possible to turn them into a client.
A client makes multiple purchases. They are with you for a long time. It could be a long term contract, if you’re a consultant. It could be buying six to twelve sessions of your coaching program.
I really like the word clients because it implies an emotional connection. They’re people that you care for; they’re people that you’re going to share advice with. These are people you’re going to communicate with on a far more regular basis because you’re investing in them for your future business.
Let me stress that again. You’re investing in them with your time, your patience, your quality. So many people fail right here. They get the credit card and boom! You’re done with that customer and they’re gone. You need to take care of a customer to turn them into a client.
If you keep the client for an extended period of time, or even a short period of time, you can turn them into a raving fan. A raving fan is someone who buys everything you put out. They’re waiting for you to put out your next product or service.
Imagine having 100,000 people just waiting for your next book, class or service; just waiting for you to announce, “It’s available!”
That’s how you build a relationship. You can start telling them ahead of time, “By the way, because you’re a customer my next book is coming out and you’re going to be the first to get it. That’s right. I’m going to tell you. In fact, I’m going to share the first chapter with you and let you give me some feedback about the direction of the story and where you think it’s going to go.”
People want an experience. They want to interact with you, especially if they’re raving fans.
Look at the raving fan of a music artist. Garth Brooks was a super star in the music industry. He still is, but he’s not as much in the spotlight.
He has this group of raving fans who, even today, would love to just hear from his high school music teacher, from his bus driver from one of his concert tours. Those are raving fans.
In marketing we call raving fans a niche. They’re fanatical about their product or service that they bought or their hobby that they’re in and, if you serve them right, they’re going to buy from you.
So raving fans want to buy everything you’ve got, and they even defend you to nay sayers. Raving fans will defend you and your products and services. They become free sales people on the street marketing for you.
These are the objectives and the mindset that I want you to have. It’s the roadmap of where you want to go. You want to turn your customers into clients and raving fans.
Remember I said to follow a dollar or follow a person through your business. If a person’s going to come to your business, think about how they’re going to get there and how you’re going to keep them coming back.
Your Timeline
Where can you find your customers?
You need to have a mental map, a picture of how you’re going to come up with your marketing tactics. You can do this by creating a time line. Draw a straight horizontal line across the width of a sheet of paper. On that line put five marks. Put one mark in the center and then two on either side. Right in the center you can write “you and your customer.”
The reason I want you to draw this is to have a mental map, a picture of how you can come up with your tactical marketing plan to get customers.
Let me tell you a story which will help explain how the timeline works.
I used to sell telephone systems to businesses and schools. I sold the PBX switch, the box that sat in the phone room, and all the other phones were attached to it.
The best time to sell a telephone system to a business is when they’re brand new or when they’re moving to a new location. So to develop a marketing plan for this scenario, I would write “business telephone system” in the center of my time line.
Let’s think about what a business would do prior to moving. What would be an indicator that they were moving? What activities would they be involved in prior to moving?
One of the activities that was an indicator that they planned to move was that they had contacted a commercial real estate person. They were looking for new office space because they were growing and expanding.
There was a high probability that they would need to buy a new phone system. Since they planned to move because they were doubling in size, their old phone system didn’t meet they’re needs.
So one indicator was they contacted a commercial real estate agent.
What else would they need if they’re going to move? They would need a moving or truck rental company and possibly a commercial carpet company.
You’re asking yourself, “Why would I want to know that?” You want to know that because you could develop a relationship with a commercial carpet company and pay them a percentage of your sales.
I called a company that gave me information like the names and contact information of businesses that were moving in the next six months. Those leads were 46 cents per name I know you want to start with free resources, but this is an example of very affordable lead generation. Other people were paying the equivalent of Welcome Wagon who welcomes businesses to the community for $4.00 a lead. So 46 cents a lead versus four dollars a lead, you can see the savings there.
The reason I want you to have a timeline called “you and your customer” is so you can know who is touching your customer before you are. What is your customer doing before they come to you?
Don’t just think of your competition as someone who sells exactly what you sell. If I sell backyard pools, then I am competing against other companies who are looking for the same recreational dollar.
That could be a travel agent who’s selling a trip somewhere or a real estate person who’s selling a cottage or somebody selling a motor or power boat. Those are all competition for the same dollar in my prospect’s pocket.
So what are your customers doing before they come to you? If you’re a pool person, they’re probably going to a cottage and outdoor trade show. They may be subscribers to certain magazines.
Keep all of these things in mind as you move forward on your timeline because it’s important to figure out the places you can get free leads and free customers to build your list.
The question marks after “you and your customer” are more related to how you can make money after your customer has done business with you. Who is going to deal with your customer after you and how can you benefit from it?
A great example of this would be a kitchen remodeling business. What would happen if a customer hires this business to remodel their kitchen and a couple months later they call the same business to get their living room or family room done?
The more you can increase your relationship with each customer, the bigger your list size will grow. Actually, even if the list size doesn’t grow, the greater the relationship, the tighter the target, and the more money you can make from your list.
I have sent an online e-mail campaign to 2,000 - 7,000 people. These people were highly targeted because I have built a good relationship with them, they’re communicated with often, and there is trust.
I would make more money by emailing these people than sending an email out to a list of a million people who signed up for a free e-book or just to be notified when something happens. They’re not very qualified.
Important Questions
You need to ask yourself some questions. Where do your best customers accumulate? Where would your best prospect be? Define what your best customer looks like. How much money do they make? How many employees they have? Again, returning to that timeline, are they going to move? Are they not going to move? What are the odds?
Marketing is a numbers game. So many people try for 100% all the time. You really just need that magical 1% to 5% conversion rate to be very successful. In marketing you need to contact a lot of people, but you need to convert a very small number to actually be quite successful.
Where do your best customers accumulate? What’s your stadium? If you’re online, it could be a social networking site like YouTube. That is a very general, broad, wide audience. I don’t know the exact demographics, but generally speaking it’s a younger audience; it’s a little bit hip. More businesses are using the social sites successfully.
www.YouTube.com is where they have lots of videos. They tend to be very consumer related, entertaining and fun.
If you were an author who wrote books of a similar nature; fiction, murder mystery, biography, business or non-fiction, you could get another author to introduce you to their list.
How can you as the author and the customers of the other author benefit? Online we talk about affiliate program. That’s where the other author with a customer list would get a percentage of the sale. Offline you can do commissions as well.
Another thing businesses look for is customer retention. When Microsoft sponsored a radio show I did, they weren’t looking to make more money by having a radio show with people calling in to buy, they were looking for PR.
They look for positive relationship. When they’re interviewed by someone else somewhere in another country they can say, “We support the small business community; they should trust us and buy our new program.”
People don’t always look for money. They look for customer retention, customer loyalty and an opportunity to have something newsworthy going on. So if you can get someone to sponsor you when you speak somewhere, then that gives them the opportunity to create a publicity piece.
There are lots of other reasons why other businesses would want to do business with you besides money. Find out what those are.
If the other business only has one product, this is where you can benefit greatly. If you know of someone who only has one product and they’re very slow at developing their next one, if they’re going to keep a relationship with their list, they need to provide them with something. This is where you can offer a bonus or your product or service to keep giving them something to talk about.
What can you sell today? So many people plan and plan and plan to do a product launch next month, but what can you sell today?
I have a friend who did training session. She didn’t have any actual hard goods and products to ship. I recommended that she sell a teleseminar. She created the curriculum prior to the event; she talked about the benefits of getting her information. She told people about her past experience and how people would benefit from being on her live teleseminar.
What can you sell today? Think about that. It will help you prioritize the tactics you want to use. What type of list do you want to end up with? Think about your objective, then come up with a process or a strategy, and then come up with the tactics. Write your objective down. Deciding on your objective is top priority. This will help your productivity.
“I’m going to build this Web site because I want twenty new leads a week. I’m going to build this Web site because I want to have a platform to communicate. I’m going to build this Web site for credibility purposes.” Maybe you already have a retail location that’s doing very well, but you haven’t really taken advantage of the Internet yet.
The next thing to determine is how large a list of people do you want?
You can have a list of not very qualified people who just download something or they co- registered through another site. An example of online co-registration is when you sign up for a free Yahoo mail account, and automatically a page opens.
You’re given a list of twelve to twenty different online or offline magazines. They tell you that if you want information on consumer electronic goods, click here. If you want information on parenting, click there. That’s a co-registration list.
You can build a large list fairly quickly doing that, but those people are not qualified buyers. They’ll check anything. It doesn’t cost them anything and they’re not really thinking about it. That’s not a very qualified list.
A smaller, qualified list is a highly responsive list.
Lead Generation
What are all the free lead generation tactics you can use to build your business?
The first one is to build your own list. There’s nothing more powerful than people who have already met you, looked you in the eye, shaken your hand, or heard you speak.
You can build your own list one person at a time. Always have your antenna up.
I went out on the weekend with my family for dinner. We met someone that my wife knew. The husband of this lady’s daughter who sat at our table was the head guy of marketing for Yellow Pages Directory Company online, who I had been wanting to contact.
You never know. One at a time can work well.
The next lead generation tactic is collecting the names and email addresses of your Web site visitors. If you don’t have a way to capture the names and e-mail of your visitors, you have to add it.
I use www.HandsFreeBusiness.com. There’s a link in the resource page of this book. It’s my private label for the shopping cart system that I use. It uses a double opt-in system to make sure that you have the customer’s permission to contact them and it makes sure that you meet all the spam rules.
Next is networking. Networking is the most powerful online and offline tool to build your list. People who are centers of influence, people who are industry gurus, people who are considered leaders in the community, that’s who you want to meet when you are out there.
So many people make the mistake when they’re at a networking event of looking for customers. You are looking for customers, but I’d bet $50 to a dime every time that you’re prime customer is not necessarily at the networking event.
When you’re shaking someone’s hand, see how you can help them. Ask them what they do. What are they in charge of? What are they the president of? Being interested in them makes you far more interesting.
You’ll get far more mileage when you’re interested in people than trying to make yourself interesting and telling them what you do. The worst thing is to meet someone at a networking event and they give you their menu of services and products.
So be a better networker. It can lead to joint ventures. Networking allows you to meet more people.
Next is publicity. This is such a wonderful guerrilla marketing tactic for building your list.
To build your own list, make sure you’re doing publicity activities on a regular basis. My friend, Mark Victor Hansen, still commits to two publicity events per day if he can.
It doesn’t matter how small the radio or television station is or who the person is interviewing him, he’s committed to doing those things. It has built massive publicity for him to sell his books. I think he has somewhere over two million people on the Chicken Soup list.
The ability to sell and market books is just one example. It’s the same thing whether you’re marketing rental cranes or an online business, you can use publicity.
Use voicemail to invite people to go to your Web site. Invite people to sign up for your free thing-a-ma-jig in the signature of your e-mail. With all of these things, you need to have your eyes open and your antenna out to make sure that with everything you do, always direct traffic to your Web site.
You should always have three ways to get to your Web site; there should always be some way to mention it.
Customer Catcher Tip: When I introduce a speaker, I’m just up on stage for 30-60 seconds. USE this opportunity for what I call a “stolen marketing minute.” You can say, “Hi, my name is Martin Wales from www.CustomerCatcher.com. We help you get customers until you beg us to stop. We give free sales and marketing tips on our Web site www.CustomerCatcher.com. Tonight it’s my pleasure to introduce you to Bob Smith,” and on goes the show.
It’s this 30-second, little snippet that invites the whole audience, that was invited by someone else, to go to your Web site. Is 100% of the room going to go to your Web site? No! But you’re already on stage; you’re already in front of people, and you’ve already got a certain amount of credibility that you can leverage.
So build your own list.
If you’ve got a retail location or you’re online, people who just stumble across location are called “walk-in business.” What are you doing to leverage your walk-in business? How are you engaging those people? What questions are you asking them?
I believe that the number one question for engaging people in a retail location that eventually leads to a purchase is, “Have you been in here before?”
“Hello, have you been in here before?” That’s a question that starts a conversation.
“Yes, I have.”
“Fantastic, what did you like? Did you buy something? What was it?”
Or, “No, I haven’t been in here before.”
“Fantastic.” The answer is, “Fantastic,” both times.
“Fantastic. Well, let me show you this.” Or, “What can I help you find?”
Is this going to work all the time? No, but that is the question that works most of the time. It helps overcome barriers.
The next way to grow your list is with other people’s lists. A negative word I hear people say is “scrape;” scraping other people’s lists. Essentially, that’s co-sharing a list.
If somebody agrees to send an e-mail for you and their list receives that e-mail, some people on that list may decide to sign up for yours. Then you are getting people from a list that is already in your market space, already in that niche, and it’s got a high predictability.
If you were doing a publicity teleseminar teaching people how to write articles, and you joint ventured with someone who already had been teaching his list about how to handle interviews, then the likelihood of people on the list signing up for your email list is high. The key is to have a relationship with the other person.
Another tool to use for lead generation is a teleseminar. If you have the opportunity to introduce yourself at the beginning of a teleseminar, do so. State your name and where you’re from which is your Web site.
So, “Hi, this is John from www.GolfballsRUs.com located in Tallahassee.
Whenever you have an opportunity to attend live events, take advantage of it. Stand up and ask a question. Remember to give your name and Web site address. This helps to build your list. Sometimes when you attend live seminars, trade shows, or conferences, the organizers will share the list of the people attending.
I’ve been to Chamber of Commerce events where they print out the business card of everyone who’s in attendance. I’ve gotten as many as twelve pages of business cards of people who were at the same event. Then I had the opportunity to contact them and say, “Hey, I was at the event. What did you think?”
I have a rapport with them because I was a member of the same association. I have something to talk about because we were at the same event. Then I can introduce my products and services.
I have done cold calling to build a list as a sales person, too. It’s not the most fun thing to do, but it is a way to do it.
You can also use sponsors to build your list. You can get the sponsor to email their online list. If a sponsor does a monthly newsletter, they can talk about you in their upcoming events.
If you’re a musician who wants to sell CDs and you are going to play in a coffeehouse, that coffeehouse is a sponsor. They can put up signage with a slip to win your CD. Whatever it is, you can start getting a list built of people who attend that coffee shop on a regular basis.
So use your sponsors.
Direct mail is another tool. How do you do that for free?
One time there was a company that I did a direct mail piece with. Remember when we talked about the hotdog theory of marketing? Well, this company sent out 2,000 invoices every month on a regular basis with a charge for services that they provided. What we negotiated was for them to put a slip of paper about me in that direct mail piece.
You can print directly on the invoice so they can say, “Oh, by the way, as a valued customer of Bob’s Table Company, we’d like to give you a free special report on how to wax your table.” So if I was selling table wax, I would get that inserted on the invoice or print it on a separate piece of colored paper inside the invoice.
They may pay for the mailing because they’re already sending out invoices.
I would get them to do it based on the benefit to their customers. This is additional information, no charge, it extends the life of their product, and it extends the relationship with their clients and loyal customers.
This is the kind of mindset that I want you to have. I just gave you an example. What’s the win- win situation of the company sending out their invoices which isn’t always the most positive marketing piece to send out? “Hi, here’s the amount of money you owe us this month.” They want to put some good news in there.
“By the way, here’s the amount of money you owe us, but we’re going to give you something free to show you our appreciation.” You can set that up either online or offline clients?
You can also be in other people’s products. This is something that’s fairly unique and most people don’t take advantage of it. You can be inside software for a Mac computer or inside a Microsoft product. There are companies that end up inside other people’s software because they offer a trial version of something.
If you download a menu it says, “Here’s a version of Norton Security,” and it will only last a certain period of time. That’s a great example of the hotdog theory of marketing. They’re already selling millions of copies of software. They need stuff inside their software to enhance the “value.” They give away free trials and then you get to sell them from that point.
You could include a trial product or a bonus interview. If you’re selling an information based product and it includes teleseminars or someone else who is selling DVDs and CDs offline, why not give them a free CD to include as well.
In the direct mail business we call it a ride-along. A ride-along can be as simple as a sticker on a box. You pay for the stickers on the box, maybe, or they’ve already got a sticker on the box that says, “Open the box. But before you do that, get your free special thing-a-ma-jig at www.FreeThing.com.”
This is about creativity, it’s about a win-win situation; what can that direct mail company do to get their box or envelope opened sooner. Give away something free inside. It’s the prize inside.
Seth Godin wrote a book called Free Prize Inside. What’s the excitement you can build for other people’s products or services that will get people building and contacting you and becoming part of your list?
Publicly available lists are people who are already in your target market, already in your niche. If you’re into fishing,