Sales Information |
Diverting the Flow of Customers to Your Business
I was a lucky kid when I grew up. Lucky, because I had a big back yard for playing. It was about 28 acres big. My siblings, friends and I spent many days exploring, building, digging and hiding in the vast outback. Geographically disadvantaged as a flatlander, there were no rushing mountain streams or flowing rivers in the valley for exploration and water play. There were only a few ditches that the rain and snow runoff would eventually pool in to create a kid's river. Kids' rivers are navigable by toy boats and are only inches deep at flood stage. It was in the kids' rivers of the flat lands that I began to understand the principles of controlling water flow. Mudding about in the puddles and ditches, I could create my own mini rivers, dams and lakes with just a shovel. One of the few things that man has been able to count on through time is the fact that water always runs downhill in the path of least resistance. Customers like a little help from gravity and low resistance just like flowing water. They almost always choose the easy way, the shortcut, whenever they make their purchase choices. As examples, the drive-in window for morning coffee attracts more customers than the walk-in convenience store. The mall parking lot is preferred over parallel parking on the street. The business that offers consistent, friendly service attracts lifetime customers. Creating the path of least resistance to divert the flow of customers to your front door, whether your business front door is real or virtual, can be done easily. Here are some suggestions: 1. Create well placed, easy to read signage. 2. Add Mapquest or a similar directions link to your website. 3. Maintain easy parking or offer to pay for customer parking. 4. Use large type for telephone numbers on printed material and business cards. 5. Use self addressed stamped envelopes to return mail to you. 6. Provide product use information on your website to help after the purchase. 7. Keep the building entrance well lit, clean and inviting. 8. Have an answering machine for after hours messages and business hours. 9. Provide comfortable chairs in the waiting area. 10. Ask your customers what else you can do to make it easy to do business with you. Understanding the path of least resistance for your customers is nothing more than child's play. Start working on diverting more of the customer income stream into your business today. See you in the mud puddles. Doug Emerson trains consults and coaches business owners on how to make more profit in less time using 8 key strategies. He writes a free electronic newsletter about the business of life called Getting to the Point. Free subscription available at the homepage. http://www.douglasemerson.com
MORE RESOURCES: Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting |
RELATED ARTICLES
Everything Follows the Pitch If you asked me to point to the heart and soul of a startup company, I would not say it's the people, the culture, or even the product. I would say it's the pitch. Breaking the Ice and Winning Over the Client Wherever you turn these days you'll find articles covering every business strategy and tactic available to man from how to make a great presentation to strategies for success all the way to negotiations and prospecting and getting a client to commit. But hardly anyone touches on the subject of breaking the ice with a new client and winning them over. Referrals: Getting Good Business By Doing Good Business Whether you're a conventional sales person, a professional - such as a dentist or lawyer or doctor - or a business owner, you've got to have clients to stay in business. There are several ways to do this: either continue to find new customers, keep all of the customers you've ever had, get old clients to return, or get customers to send in referrals. How to Blow Rapport Really Fast Do you have 5, 10, or 20 years of sales experience? Or do you have 1 year of sales experience 5, 10, or 20 times? Many salespeople never advance beyond ancient outdated sales lines like "If I do this for you, will you give me the order?" Or "What do I have to do to get your business?" Lines like these are why salespeople have a reputation near lawyers in our society. Everyone learns lines like these in sales at some time or another. Ask for the Business Many times in the process of making a sales presentation to a potential client, we will break down our product piece by piece, explaining all of the features and benefits it has to offer, then we expect our customer to have immediate buy in, and purchase our product based on the presentation they just heard.Unfortunately, it does not work that way. Dr. Seuss's 3-Step Selling Process Hello Everyone: Here's a unique look at learning how tosell: "I am Sam. Sam I am. Save Your Breath: How To Sell In Trade Shows Without Pitching You stand there, in front of your great presentation material, wearing just the right suit or logo shirt, handing out some gimmick with your company name on it, wearing just the right smile or look of professionalism. You might even have a fishbowl at the table - or some type of contest material - to collect business cards of passers by for later use in your sales process. The Trusted Advisor Relationship: What Is It, and What Should It Be? For the past months, maybe a year, I've been hearing sales groups talk about the need to become Trusted Advisors (I'll call them TAs). I suspect that the problems cropping up in the sales arena these days - the increased length of the sales cycle, the increased levels of competition - are leading sales management to base their initiatives on being of true service to prospects, as a way to seem different from the competition. Five Keys to Make Your Cold Calls Sizzle Do you clam up on the telephone? An advertising rep called the other day to sell some ad space in a local news magazine. After I said, "Hello," there was nothing but monotone dialog until I interrupted him a minute later. Everything in Life is Selling Robert Louis Stevenson said 'Everything in Life is Selling' and it is. Whether as a child you cry until you get what you want; whether as an adult you provide a service to your employer in return for payment; or whether as an individual you make sure that you look your best before meeting someone on a date, they can all be defined as selling. The Struggle to Decide: The Paths Customers Take to Solve Problems Usually my essays discuss the issues that the 'sales' method initiates, methods such as over-long buying cycles, product and brand differentiation problems, price competition, and objections. This article focuses on the buyer: what, precisely, is the real problem they face; and how you lose differentiation/competitive edge/time through your faulty assumption that a sale can be achieved through a clear-cut equation:problem + appropriate product + professional sales effort = sale. Asking The Right Questions On an introductory call, how do you gather all of the information that you need from a prospect? An introductory call is usually fairly short, just a few minutes. You generally do not have the time to thoroughly question your prospect and then also move on to your next step, setting that introductory meeting. Sealing The Deal Over The Business Meal Doing business over meals is a ritual that has existed for centuries. Taking clients to breakfast, lunch or dinner has long been an effective way to build relationships, make the sale or seal the deal. Sex Sells! An attractive woman has a decided advantage as sales representative over her male counterpart. This "selling edge" is primarily due to the existence of the "glass ceiling" found in most business organizations today. How to Build Sales With Extended Benefits An area that can become profitable for many businesses in building the offer within sales copy is selling (or "upselling" customers with) extended services, products or packages, also often called the "extended warranty."Extended warranties are subtle forms of insurance policies that guarantee a product or service's performance, especially after an initial period of time. Web Promotion: 10 Amazing Web Promotion Ways To Jump Start Your Sales Hello, do you have a website and sell something on the internet?If yes, may I offer you 10 amazing web promotion secrets to jump start your salesat your website!1. Find a strategic business partner. Persuading Learners to Buy: 7 Groups There are seven major reasons why adults continue their pursuit to learn. Each of the reasons play into the way you want to present your sales information. Sell With KISS, As In Keep It Simple, Stupid One of the most useful and fundamental communications lessons that has been repeated to me over the years, ever since my earliest days of formal business training, is the fabled, famous, and fabulous "KISS" formula.In my college marketing class we were told "Keep It Simple, Stupid!" When I entered my three-month sales-training orientation at New York Telephone way back in 1968, it was a more refined "Keep It Short and Simple. Dont Call Me The March, 2004, issue of Psychology Today reports on an experiment involving identical business negotiations between test subjects. The only difference was that half started the transactions with a brief phone call and completed it with email. How To Profit From Initial Consultations "I'd love to work with you, but?"How many times have you heard these words? As a professional service provider looking to grow your business, isn't it sometimes frustrating to hold an initial session with someone who you'd love to work with but the potential client has a whole list of reasons why s/he would love to work with you, but??As in, "I'd love to, but.. |
home | site map | contact us |