Archives for September 2012

Building Better Client Relationships via Social Media

September 25, 2012 by

Selling is and always has been first and foremost about relationships. When it comes to B2B sales, people buy from individuals first and the companies that they represent second. The advent of social media has given people in the B2B industry amazing opportunities when it comes to discovering possible new relationships, creating rapport and developing relationships and then expanding, maintaining and nurturing those relationships.

 You have more opportunities at your fingertips than any generation of B2B salespeople that has ever gone before, and you need to make the most of these opportunities that you have been given.

A good tip when it comes to developing relationships via social media is to make sure you are worthy of getting someone’s business. If you want their business, you have to earn it. Show them that you are a professional who knows how to both follow up and follow through. In other words, you have to work for it – but the rewards are plentiful when you do.

Filed Under: ezine

Make Your Work Day Happier

September 25, 2012 by

Everyone has one of those days – particularly on Mondays, when you have yet to get back into the swing after the weekend, and Fridays, when you just wish the weekend would hurry up and arrive – when work just seems to be getting you down. The good news is that when one of “those days” strikes, there are a few tips to help you get through and make the day happier.

One tip is to not react to the “urgent” requests of other people with the speed they might be hoping for. If someone asks needs your help, either with a project or some other form of “urgent” need, make sure you ask what their deadline actually is. Then schedule it for that day. The great majority of people upon being asked realise that it is not as urgent as they thought it was and will be happy to set it for a future date. Then you can get back to dealing with your top activities instead.

Filed Under: ezine

The Magic Of Retention

September 25, 2012 by

magic-of-customer-retention (Why an existing customer is way better than a new one)

I’d bet you a lifetime supply of pizza that (or anything else for that matter) if you have been in business and have studied marketing at more than a superficial level, that you’ve heard the cliché that it is seven times easier to sell an existing customer than it is to sell a new one.

Depending on your market in can be higher.

According to one of the world’s most highly paid copywriters (actually getting paid to write copy, not selling products with his copy) Clayton Makepeace:

“Existing satisfied customers are about ten times as responsive as cold prospects.”

“So why wouldn’t you be willing to spend FOUR Times your cost of acquisition cost to keep them.”

You are still ahead because your existing customers are so much more responsive.

That means four times your acquisition cost can be invested each year to keep your customers happy, responsive and looking forward to receiving marketing from you.

You can do this all sorts of ways:-

  1. Provide high value non-sales driven content
  2. Invest in gifts just for being your customers such as:-
    a.) Customer appreciation nights
    b.) Any sort of unrelated gifts that would be appreciated by your market – they would see as ‘Cool’
    c.) Free trial of use of your products
    d.) And so on
  3. Lost customer reactivation campaigns

As long as your customers remain responsive why wouldn’t you try really hard to keep them? It takes time to get a new customer to become really responsive to your marketing and to build up a relationship as strong as your have with many of your high value existing customers.

As part of our newsletter suitability audit we can help you work out what it makes sense to spend on customer retention vs. their lifetime value.  To arrange a newsletter suitability audit call 1300 120 006 or else go to www.newslettermarketingsystems.com.au/get-started We are looking forward to helping you get more out value out of your existing customers.

Filed Under: Blog

What Are You Thinking? – Questions from Business Owners.

September 6, 2012 by

Q: With everyone doing more and more marketing online today, should I move my newsletter online too?

A: Based on nearly a decade of marketing experience working on my own businesses and also helping other business owners growing their businesses, plus seeing the results they get from their online and offline marketing I can say, “You gotta be kidding, right?”

You need to be changing your business so that you can afford to be offline as well as online. Success guru Earl Nightingale said, “If you are ever in doubt about what to do in a situation then look at what everyone else is doing and do the opposite.”

There are three very important reasons as to why you should not follow the herd by moving your newsletter online.

1) 65% of people say they get too many emails in a day to read them all. Epsilon.

2) The open rate on email is 1/6th that of mail. Sending a printed newsletter is SIX times more likely to get read. That gives you a huge advantage in terms of potential response, likelihood of response and also relationship building

3) Because you spent money to get that newsletter to them it is much more respected. By definition – money spent earns respect and shows respect. You value your customers enough to spend real money to print and post them your newsletter. It is more valuable in their eyes than an email newsletter that someone probably slapped together in 20 minutes then hit the send button on.

4) People get ‘more’ from physical things. There was a study by Bangor University and they found a much deeper level of emotional processing and more activity in the area of the brain associated with visual and spatial processing, improving the embedding of images and ideas when they received a direct mail compared with electronic communications.

That is profound – people pay more attention to mailed newsletters than they do to electronic ones and a much more likely to respond when there is a something tangible.

5) In Australia, many people only receive four or so pieces of mail a week including bills. (Most Americans get a piece of personal mail 6 times a year). Some 60% of consumers enjoy checking their mail box and receiving mail. Do you reckon getting a newsletter in the mail addressed to them might be pretty exciting and not competing against too much clutter?

You can use your newsletter to create More Repeat Business and Referrals for your business. Go To www.morebusinessandreferrals.com and download, “The Business Owner’s Guide to Getting More Repeat Business and Referrals” to find out our exact blueprint to grow your business.

 

Filed Under: Newsletter

Business Ignorance Exposed: Questions about Customer Retention.

September 6, 2012 by

Look, I get asked things like “why would I bother with my existing customers. I can just go out and get new ones?” New customers are vital for a business and if you can’t get them then you will starve. Beyond that, customer retention becomes far more important than customer acquisition for three reasons.

Reason 1: Existing customers are more responsive than new customers. Existing customers can be up to ten times as responsive as new customers. So retaining them means you can sell more to them in higher volumes.

Making retention a priority means that you have an opportunity to do this for longer. This has got to be an ongoing focus if you want to create real wealth in your business.

After all, selling more to highly responsive customers is going to be more profitable than selling small quantities to less responsive customers like you do when you first acquire a customer.

Reason 2: The sale price of your business is driven by the ongoing value of your customers. It is called goodwill. Think about this, a real estate agency is valued entirely off of its rent roll. The commonest valuation is three times the rent roll. Sales volume counts for zero because it is an event – there is no equity in selling a house. It doesn’t create any future income.

Having customer retention strategies in place demonstrates that you are building ongoing value from your customers and that there is real value in buying that business from you.

Reason 3: Your existing customers will buy other products from you as well. Regardless of what you do, there are downstream opportunities to resell to your existing customers. Most of the time this is opportunity is neglected or prevented by the limiting beliefs of the business owner.

The one opportunity that every business will have access to is referrals. It is very likely that a good customer can refer other good customers to you.

Say you can get your customers to refer at a rate of one referral per customer per year. You’ll never have to find another new client another way. You’ll get all of your business by referral and that is the best way to get new customers. Don’t just take my word for it. Any seasoned business owner dreams of it but most don’t do the work in order to get the referrals.

Understanding the maths and reasons behind customer retention can mean massive changes and advantages for you and your business.

I bet you can find any number of related products to offer your customers aside from getting them to refer. To find out more about what other opportunities your existing customers represent go to www.morebusinessandreferrals.com and download the “The Business Owner’s Guide to Getting More Repeat Business and Referrals.”

Filed Under: Customer Retention

Print Newsletter Content Mistakes

September 6, 2012 by

Creating a newsletter that your customers want to read is very challenging. More than most people can imagine. And I see three very common mistakes repeated over and over again in many of the customer newsletters I see.

Mistake 1: Not taking advantage of the golden rule.

Frequency Trumps Quantity and Quality. Just getting a newsletter in the mail on the same day every month is the best way to ensure newsletter success. It creates readership just by being predictable – like a magazine they subscribe to.

Even if the quality of the content is relatively low, a predictably mailed newsletter will outperform an erratically or less frequently mailed higher quality newsletter. It is sad but true.

Mistake 2: Not making it about the recipient.

Many newsletters are used for self aggrandisement. Which is okay in small doses. But what does seem to happen is that the business doesn’t include any content which the recipient will want to read. Often times newsletter content can be translated into “me, me, me!”

So be sure to make content that is all about your customers and their lives and things they will find interesting rather than about pointless self promotion. It will increase readership when the content is about your customers and making their lives better.

Mistake 3: Making it all about what you do.

The truth is, no matter how much it hurts to hear it but nobody and I mean nobody, is as interested in what you do as you. If they are, you can create a subscription newsletter to go out every month that they will gladly pay for. Meaning that you get paid to send your newsletters – what a great idea.

Think of health and wellness newsletters as well as investment newsletters or business and marketing related newsletters. All are 8-24 pages of content on a specific topic and most of them charge between $39 and $99 a month for a subscription.

Most customer newsletters are not subscription driven so they shouldn’t be just about what you do. They can afford to be a lot more warm and fuzzy. Full of fun, happy, interesting content that will bring a smile to the face of your customer and build good will.

Most of the feedback I get indicated that ‘Reader’s Digest Lite’ content is better to receive than anything about what you do. So check your ego at the door and give ‘em what they want.

To find out how you can get a customer newsletter out the door every month full of fun and interesting content that your customers will love reading and at the same time increase repeat business and referrals, download the Business Owners Guide to Getting more repeat business and Referrals from www.morebusinessandreferals.com

Filed Under: Newsletter

Getting Into The Zone

September 5, 2012 by

Everyone in business wants to get into what is referred to as “the zone”, the mental state in which you are able to perform at your best. The next time you wish to achieve your peak performance, there are a few tips to remember that may come in handy.

One such tip is that there is actually no such thing as “the zone” when it comes to new activities. Upon starting a new task, you are not going to be able to find flow. Being in “the zone” means the activation of a subconscious part of your brain, and this is not accessible if you have never done a certain activity before.

The right environment is also important for getting into “the zone”. Whether it is a quiet library or a crowded cafe, you need to work out the settings which best facilitate your flow and then work in them whenever you can.

Emotions are also very important to getting in “the zone”. You need to be able to find the emotions which allow your subconscious to take over. One way of activating such emotions is with music, so you might want to find artists, songs or albums that get you in the appropriate mood and can help you to block out distractions.

Filed Under: ezine

Keep Practicing Learning

September 5, 2012 by

One very important method of becoming a more effective learner is just to keep on learning. An article in the magazine “Nature” back in 2004 pointed out that people who learned juggling had increased how much gray matter they had in their occipital lobes, which is the part of the brain which is associated with visual memory. That gray matter then vanished again when the individuals ceased to practice their new skill!

If you are trying to learn something such as a new language, then continuing to practice is incredibly important so that you will be able to maintain the gains which you have managed to achieve. This phenomenon – referred to as “use it or lose it” – involves a brain process which is called “pruning”. Some pathways within the brain are maintained, while others are simply eliminated. If you want new information that you have just learned to stay there, then you need to keep on practicing and rehearsing it.

Filed Under: ezine

Making Personal Change Inevitable (It only takes a $10,000 cheque…)

September 5, 2012 by

making-personal-change-innevitable Recently I have become rather obsessive about my time management and productivity, I’ve invested a lot of my time listening to recordings of Eben Pagan’s productivity course ‘Wake Up Productive’ (Which I highly, highly, highly recommend to anyone and everyone).  I become engrossed in this course.

I learned a lot about myself and my habits, I realized how unproductive many of my habits were… So I created a rather extreme weekly routine, one that has my eating, drinking, breathing, meditation, working, and education all planned out. It’s so extreme it even tells me how many times I need to be chewing my food and how many deep breaths to take…

I asked myself: HOW CAN I LIVE LIKE THAT? So strict, so regimented? Well the reality is, I will only be following the strict routine for 30 days, then it will start to become new habits, eventually it will start to feel weird to not do it that way. Zac and I already have that sort of extreme structure in one area of our lives. Getting our client’s newsletters our on-time every month.

My aim is to re-calibrate my ‘default’ habits to something planned and productive, something that’s motivating and healthy. Something purposeful, not accidental.

Most of us have probably tried to stick to a healthy diet or exercise routine and know how hard it can be. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RLAGxUbp-U – this video perfectly explains my attempts at healthy eating in the past) – So you can imagine how hard it is to totally overhaul all my old habits.

What can I do to ensure that I don’t fail… How can I make my success inevitable?

The answer is accountability, reward and punishment! – using Eben Pagan’s model of inevitability thinking I have taken dramatic action to make sure there is absolutely no way I can fail. Because I know I am 100% capable of doing everything I’ve set out in my routine, it’s just my old habits that stop me most of the time.

I have written a $10,000 cheque to a political party that I don’t support and given it to a trusted friend who is keeping me accountable to my commitment. If I do not report to her about my daily results, she is to hand the cheque over as a donation.

Not to get out of bed in the morning at 6am, will cost me $10,000. Eat a greasy cheese-burger, or if I don’t do my daily exercise it will cost me $10,000. On top of this, I’m rewarding myself at the end of the month with a full body massage, plus all the health and wealth benefits that will come with establishing new habits.

This may seem extreme to some people, but it works. I know I won’t lose the $10,000 because I am confident in my ability, I know that the main reason I revert back to my old habits is because there is no short-term consequence… Now that there is a consequence I find change extremely easy!

One of the key things that I have built into my routine is doing the most leveraged thing in my business, first thing in the day, and that is writing relationship-building content for my newsletter and ezine. By writing my ezine first thing in the morning.

To take advantage of our highly regimented process for getting your monthly customer newsletter in the mail then call 1300 120 106 or email info@newslettermarketingsystems.com.au and so that you can take advantage of our highly effective system in your business – growing your customer loyalty, repeat business, referral rates and more.

Filed Under: Blog