Archive for Productivity Tools
Stay Connected With Your Customers
Posted by: | CommentsYou know all those emails you keep getting from people you’ve bought from or expressed an interest in buying from – the one’s with special offers, coupons, and general information that you find helpful?
Those businesses are staying in front of you – many for pennies a pop.
Are you doing the same with your customers and prospective customers?
Over the last few posts, we’ve talked about targeting the right kind of people and keeping them in one place so you can begin to use some of the new technology to both retain current customers and get new ones. In this post, let’s talk about the technology that keeps you in front of them on a regular basis.
Before we jump in to the technological backend, let’s look at a few things you’ll need to think about in terms of what you’re going to say to them.
A great way to do this is to sit down with a calendar and look at what is happening in the world and in particular with your customers. For example, if I were a CPA, January is a time for getting documents together and setting an appointment to get your taxes done; it also ties in with the New Year and getting the year started off right. February is Valentine’s day – fall in love with your CPA and get your refund fast!
Each of you has something to say about the season and how it can positively impact your clients. You may even offer incentives to people who normally procrastinate (if that’s a trend you see). For example, a floor cleaning company sees people put off until the last minute cleaning their carpets before the Winter Holiday Season. The proprietor may offer a 10% discount for anyone on their list who gets their carpets cleaned by the 10th of November. This drives people into earlier time slots, creates more room for appointments later in the month, and increases revenues.
So sit down and create a calendar of what you want to say and offer to your clients for every month of the year. Even if you decide to only touch them once a month, chances are you’ll be in front of them closer to them time they really need your services and you will be at the top of their mind – the key to winning more repeat business.
Think about this – the most expensive thing to do in client development is to get a new client. Once you’ve got them, chances are they will need your services again. By staying in front of them regularly, you’ll drastically reduce your overall cost per new service sold.
Now about the technology. There are all kinds of software and online services that offer ways for you to stay in touch with your customers via email. You can schedule email campaigns, send electronic newsletters, offer surveys, etc. The technology behind these systems are generally called auto-responders. They are very powerful tools to keep and get new customers. Here’s a link to a few of the most popular. Alternatively, you can always do an online search for “auto-responder” and choose the one that best fits your needs and budget.
Many auto-responders have built in templates which allow you to plug in your text and pictures, upload your list, and be off and running. Choosing the right one can be a bit tricky, but with some research, some testing, and some good old fashioned planning and execution, you could easily up and running in a few hours.
In upcoming posts, we’ll talk about blogs and Social Media sites like Facebook®, LinkedIn, and Twitter® and how to tie them into the various features of your auto-responders. So don’t be shy – jump in. The water’s fine.
If you need some guidance, don’t hesitate to reach out to me and schedule some time to get you set up to stay in touch with your customers via auto-responder.
There’s Magic In Your List
Posted by: | CommentsYou know all those people who’ve bought your products and services? We talked about them in a previous post – they’re your customers.
But do you have them all in one place?
Do you have a database with their contact information – email address? Home address? Phone number?
If you answered no – why not?
Chances are you never got around to it. Or you’re not sure about the best place to start or how to even capture that information.
Starting from scratch, I advise my clients to start with what they have. Most have Microsoft Outlook already on their computers. While it’s not the optimum platform for getting online, it works to gather all the information you already have from various sources (spreadsheets, business cards, emails, etc) and get them all into one place. There are tools which can help you grab addresses from emails. Simply Google “address grabber” and there are pages of them. You can then easily export that data into a format that can be moved to any online system you end up using. It’s difficult to use social media tools like Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook without at least a database of First Name and email address. It’s impossible to email market without this data.
I recently worked with a law firm that had some client and vendor data in paper files, in emails, and in their billing system. But nowhere did they have ALL of the data they needed to consistently reach out and communicate
If you answered yes – you’re doing great! And there’s much more you can be doing with your information.
Once you have basic contact info for your list, you can begin to use the new media tools, like newsletters or email marketing, to be in front of your customers and prospects on a regular basis.
And once you get going, you can always get more sophisticated. There are even services which will help you “clone” your client database and help you market to them offline to bring them into your pipeline online.
People ask me about buying lists, and this can be a great way to build your business – if you are working with a reputable list broker and you know what you are doing. I always recommend that you start with what you have. Figure out what’s going to work marketing-wise with your current customers, and then think about expanding outwards. At least that way you are not wasting valuable time and resources on a hope or a prayer.
Ask yourself this question – How many people have done business with you at least once? How many of those have come back to you a second or third time? What if you could double that number? You already acquired them once. You lost a large number of them the next time around because you didn’t have a system in place to STAY in front of them until they needed you again. It’s a costly mistake. One I myself have made in the past.
It can be daunting to get started. The number one thing I see with small businesses is that they simply fail to get started because they don’t know what they don’t know – so they do nothing. If you find yourself in that place, please reach out to get some help. Because the only thing standing between you and increased profitability is your inaction.
Contact me to find out more about getting your project started.
Xobni – An Outlook Tool to Transform Your Experience of the E-mail Jungle
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Inbox spelled backwards – it does just that. It turns your experience of your email on it’s ear. And it’s FREE
Instead of having to fish through thousands of emails in your inbox, or setting up complex rules – that sometime work, sometimes don’t work – Xobni’s add-on to outlook shows you all the key data related to your contact, the 
communication you’ve had with that contact, and the documents that you’ve exchanged between you.
All this happens outside of Outlook itself – in Xobni’s indexing process. This means that you can preview all of these pieces of the interaction jungle before you need to open any relevant communications.
You can easily search for people with their built in search bar and it calculate the pattern for when you receive emails from the contact. That way you know when you are most likely to catch them at their computer. The analytics tell you how many emails you’ve sent, how many you’ve received, and ranks the contact via the number of communications you’ve had. .
Are you interacting enough with the key people in your network? Quite an eye opener
Another very cool function is the "Schedule time with" link. It will check your Outlook calendar and open up an email with your availability for the next 5 business days so you can send it to your contact to set meeting. Very Handy!
Xobni also has a built-in LinkedIn function which allows you to click right over to a contact’s LinkedIn Profile.
All in all a very handy tool
A special thanks to N2N Student Toni Allen who called me raving about it’s functionality.
Raymond Chip Lambert
Network 2 Networth
Your Outsourced Business Development Training Partner
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