10 Ways To Get Your Message In Front Of Your Customers

Here is a checklist of 10 ways to get your message in front of your customers. 

1) Get New Business From Existing Customers. Ask existing clients for more biz before you try warming up a stone cold lead.  Ask the happy clients for referrals to people they know that you don’t – and be sure to keep track of who referred whom.

2) Pitch a Stranger. It’s like bad advertising when you blow hot air when pitching to a new prospect.  In face-to-face mediating you’ve got to know what to say, and say it with conviction.

3) Give It To Me Straight.  No one has time for the “warm-up”. Prepare well honed phrases and practice them in front of a mirror.  People like it when you can get to the point rapidly and intelligently.  If it’s by email, make sure they don’t have to scroll down to read it all.

4) Talk About Your Failures.  Seriously! It builds credibility.  Everyone can’t be perfect all the time, and when you can tell a prospect why you lost a client and what you’ve learned it’s a welcome change.  They appreciate not getting the usual hot air & razzle-dazzle.Then...tell them about a success.

5) Offer a “Loss-Leader”.  People are less and less apt to buy impulsively from a person if they don’t have a good feeling about them.  Offering a loss-leader allows the relationship to mature over time.  This is very important in B2B clients. (Loss-leader is the practice of offering a product or service at a considerable discount and loss of profit to attract future business.)

6) Get Sold Yourself.  Pick the most successful competitors in your area and let them sell you.  Play customer and be aware of how you feel during each step, and see why their approach works so well.  Auto-makers buy each others cars and break them down to nuts and bolts.  You can do the same thing in your space.

7) Start an E-mail Newsletter.  This is much like #5.  Give them useful information week in and week out, or month in and month out.  Make them happy to see your name in the “from” field.  If they only hear from you when you want something, they’ll turn you off when they hear from you.

8) Develop How-To video tips. If you don’t have a You Tube channel...create one. You Tube is the second largest search engine behind Google.

9) Offer Testimonials.  Satisfied clients or customers can say things about you that you can never believable say about yourself.  Use the person’s full name if possible when doing this.  “KM from Buffalo” isn’t nearly as strong as “Kenneth Moore from Buffalo”.

10) Ask Questions.  I can’t emphasize enough how important and how underused this tip is in business.  Simply allowing people to verbalize their needs makes them happy and tells them you listen.  It also allows you to hone in on the points to make when it’s your turn to talk.

It’s strange, but we become so busy doing business that we have a tendency to overlook what’s in front of our noses.  Most of the tips listed, would come about if we ever had the time to visit with our customers while doing business.

Change your Mindset and Change your Results,

Rich

Why We Need Mentors

As Gandhi once said, "Be the change you want to see in the world." Mentors can be a force of change and they can influence many people, including you.

"Mentoring", this Greek term has been used in countless ways but it all refers to the same idea, giving guidance and advice to another person. 

Let’s take a quick look at where and what it means to be a mentor. 

It comes from the story of Homer and when he left on his journey, he asked his friend “Mentor” to look after his son. 

It means that this is a committed relationship between a young person and an adult. The adult has the patience to teach the young person whatever he knows from life and about life. 

It is the adult's responsibility to provide support, assistance, and guidance as the younger one faces new challenges and problems everyday. 

Mentors usually take the role of the parents when the parent is busy or unavailable during the critical stages of a person's life. 

Mentors are needed because they can be a positive influence on the mentee who is learning from them. 

There are two types of mentoring; the first is natural mentoring and the second is planned mentoring. 

Natural mentoring can come from everyday situations where anyone can be your mentor. You can learn through friendship, through teaching, or through counseling. 

Planned mentoring comes from a structured program where the mentor and the mentee are matched through a formal procedure. 

Mentoring is becoming increasingly popular in the workforce as well as for personal development. 

This is partly due to various testimonials among people who have tried it and found it has many advantages they both got out of the mentoring program. 

Mentors give back to society and make career growth, personal development, or intellectual achievement possible for the person they are mentoring. 

Mentoring is very helpful in the workplace because mentors can provide the necessary insights and perspectives on what a person should do to achieve his goals. 

A mentor is also a very helpful option in your personal development because the mentor can help you during tough personal and social stress and offer guidance just when you need it the most.

Why become a Mentor?

Ralph Waldo Emerson stated that, "You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late." 

Mentors are doing kindness when they take on the responsibility of helping other people learn from their experiences. 

A very nice quote from an unknown author read, "A lot of people have gone further than they thought they could because someone else thought they could." 

The mentor does just that, they believe that their mentees can do it. This, in itself, is usually encouragement enough for the mentee to do their best to succeed in life.

Change your Mindset and Change your Results,

Rich