Generate More Customers!
by Marcy Marro | 3 April 2023 12:00 am
The More Trust, the Easier the Sale!
The more your potential customer trusts you, the closer you can get to a sale. Trust is earned over time via constant contact. Some companies use advertising on television to broadcast their message over and over again. This gets customers to eventually begin to remember their offer and call them when they need their product or service. Others take out ads in their trade publications. Over time, customers get familiar with their company and start to trust them more and more. Some construction companies start by bidding work to prospects. Over time they get to know their potential customers and eventually are trusted enough to be awarded lots of contracts.
Focus Your Message on Solutions!
When you decide you need to buy a product or service, do you really care who provides it or where you get it, if all else is equal? Not really. Plumbing is plumbing. Carpentry is carpentry. Trucks are trucks. But if you know someone at the company and trust them, you’ll seek them out to purchase from them. And if they are customer focused and help you meet your goals, then you’ll most likely buy from exclusively. I have an insurance agent I trust and buy all of our insurance from. I don’t even want or solicit other quotes from different companies because my agent helps me meet my overall company and personal goals. I trust him.
Think about what you sell. Do you sell plumbing, carpentry, trucks or insurance? Or do you sell solutions to your customer’s problems? When you show how you solve customer’s problems in your advertising, marketing, selling, proposals, and bids, you’ll start to build trusted customer relationships which will generate more profitable revenue. When you offer the lowest price as your only differentiating factor between your company and your competitors, it’s very difficult to grow your loyal customer list, make a profit and turn leads into contracts.
How do you package and promote solutions to your customer’s problems? Your goal is to attract new customers who have problems you can solve.
Turning Targets into Customers!
To get started generating more customers, you’ll need a system to turn leads or customer targets into actual customers who buy from you. Think of your system as a funnel where you fill the top with as many qualified leads as possible and a few profitable customers come out the bottom. To keep your business flowing, you’ve got to keep filling the top of your sales funnel with new potential customers and leads. Without this constant flow, your sales revenue funnel will stop generating more customers and eventually dry up. You also want to move the flow of customers through the sales funnel at a fast and steady pace through a series of steps that sorts them out, ranks them, and keeps the best ones moving toward the exit or revenue end of your funnel.
After identifying what you did to help solve your customer’s problems, next start thinking about what other potential customers need these extra things you can provide to help them as well. This is more than a list of every customer target you can find. It is a list of who has the problems you solve and whom you can help. Your goal is to get in the door by offering unique and different solutions to customer’s problems that your competitors don’t offer. You’ve got to give customers a reason to give you a chance to provide products and services other than providing the minimum expected at the lowest price.
Tell Customers How You’ll Help Them!
Once you identify your target customer, your first job is to tell them how you can solve problems for them. Give them an offer focused on solutions. Your goal is to get a signed contract or build a trusted relationship by mutually benefiting each other.
Your second job is to focus on getting customers to respond to your message and contact you for help. Offer guarantees, free reports, or special one-time trials. Your goal is to get potential customers to call you, so you can then go and meet them, and begin the flow down the funnel.
Get Your Sales Success Funnel Flowing!
Now the job is yours. Start by identifying a long list of customer targets you can contact over the next year or two. Over time, you can qualify them and eliminate those who don’t need what you provide. Continue adding to the customer target list as some are deleted. Contact them regularly with your message of how you can solve their problems or make their life easier. Also offer special promotions to get your phone ringing faster. Follow up on every lead with an appointment setting phone call. Go meet these potential customers and listen to what they want. Then deliver. By following this system, you will keep your funnel full, your top-line growing, and your bottom-line expanding.
George Hedley, CSP, CPBC, helps contractors grow and profit as a professional business coach, popular speaker and peer group leader. He is the author of “Get Your Construction Business to Always Make a Profit!” and “Hardhat BIZSCHOOL Online University,” available on his website. Visit www.hardhatbizschool.com[1] for more information.
- www.hardhatbizschool.com: http://www.hardhatbizschool.com
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