Who Will Buy Your Professional Services?
By: Sandy Barris

Are you an engineer, IT consultant or a dentist? How about a business coach, facilities manager, project manager or any of the thousands of professional services wanted by millions of businesses?

Have you recently been downsized or layed off? Or, have you retired and are climbing the walls wanting to get back in the game.

If so, stop and pull out your magic wand, wave it around a few times and imagine creating the perfect professional services business —without fear of failing—what would it look like?

Got it pictured. Now, take your magic wand and break it in half because whatever professional service business you choose to create, you’ll always be in sales and marketing business.

Why, because if you won’t market and close business deals, you’ll have a rough time staying in business.

Of course, one of the keys to your success in a professional service business is knowing, without a doubt, who will want and can afford to buy whatever it is you are offering.

One of the ways to get started is to figure out what and who the perfect client may look like to you:

• What business niche are they in?
• What markets do they serve?
• Who supplies that business niche with goods & services
• Where is that niche located?
• Are there enough businesses in that niche to be profitable?
• Can they afford your services?
• Who would recommend their products or services

Answer these questions and you’ll be well on your way to discovering exactly who’ll want your services.

Next, market to your perfect client using many different marketing approaches. Some will work better than others. Some will start out like gang busters then fad off. Others will crash and burn with no ROI. It’s all good because every success and failure is a lesson and brings you closer to succeeding in your business.

The key here is to create an overall marketing strategy that includes 15 or more marketing tactics. The more marketing tactic you try, the greater your chance of getting in front of the perfect future client.

Keep in mind people absorb information in different modes. Some people like information presented verbally. Talk to them face-to-face; send them a CD/DVD or an Mp3 they can listen to in their car.  Others want info visually; they like to see videos, graphs, charts and pictures to fully understand what you offer.

You should test many different marketing tactics.

• Build an optimized website and use the Internet to describe the benefits of your service using video, audio and the written word.
• Go to networking events.
• Approach your suppliers for referrals.
• Host webinars and pod casts because they are the 21 Century brochure.
• Grow your database
• Email market your growing database
• Create a local Pay-per-click internet marketing campaign
• Develop a social media marketing plan
• Join LinkedIn, Facebook and 3-4 of the other top SMM sites.
• And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Whatever marketing you do, provide a compelling reason to try out your services. If a future client has a choice between many similar services or does not have a compelling need to buy your service, your company will not grow fast.

Targeting big business? Your ideal future client may be hidden deep within the corporate structure. Professional service providers have sometimes found it was easier to sell at a department level rather than target the CFO.

But, it can pay to go to the top first, so you can name drop to the rungs down under. Granted, it’s a lot harder to get to the CXO’s. Is it worth the effort, you’ll have to be the judge. Now, keep in mind that when you do get in front of the CXO, birds of a feather flock together and it could be your ticket into many more C-level opportunities.

Discover what your perfect future client looks like, and how to get in front of him/her and you’ll be well on your way to growing a successful professional service business.

Why did you lose your last ten clients?

How often has this question been asked by you, your boss, your sales manager, or someone else?

The only one who really knows the answer is your former client.

So, why don’t you ask this person why s/he no longer buys from your company?

You might get lucky and find a customer who is prepared to talk, but keep in mind that s/he has moved on and may not want to talk to you.

Also, your customer probably will give you only one reason, then thank you for your efforts and wish you well. How much have you learned? Not much at all.

“Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.”
- Anonymous

I once lost a client for whom I had created a successful direct-mail campaign. This marketing effort had produced a nice 1,148.85% Return on Investment (ROI).
I found out from my client that she was upset with the slow response that she was getting from me regarding a marketing questionnaire for which she had paid. After answering the questions, my client wanted her marketing analysis, but we just couldn’t seem to find a mutually convenient time to get together. Ultimately, I gave her a refund on the questionnaire and we parted friends.

However, to this day I feel that there had to be something more. Maybe there was a hidden “decision-maker,” someone else who had a final say about who my client does business with or who harbored some ill feeling. I felt very bad when I lost my client because I was hoping that there would be a long and profitable relationship for both of us.

Sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint the definite reason why someone chooses to stop giving you his/her business. It can be hard to determine what complaints s/he had about you that led to the decision.

Oftentimes, you are left with very little information.

Working backwards to discover what went wrong can be very difficult. However, if you are prepared to ask a new client for a little time after the first sale or, even better, after s/he has been buying from you for awhile, then you probably can determine the things that keep him or her coming back and buying from you.

After the relationship with your client gets past the new phase and is “long-term,” ask him/her why you get his/her business.

There will be many reasons, not just one or two.

You may have to probe a little, so ask some open-ended questions. I’m sure that it will be worth it.

Build a file or a database of the answers that you get—the reasons why your clients came to you, of course, but also (if possible) the reasons that they stopped using your competition.

Learn from their answers and discover what you can do to prevent clients from going somewhere else

“ One man’s loss is another man’s gain.”
- Unknown

You can benefit by using what you have learned with your next prospect.
This information will help you to convert him or her into a new client.

What are you willing to ask your clients about

Who Is In Your Sights?

Understanding that you can’t market to everyone is very important to your business survival.

To many business owners want to market to anyone who can steam a mirror.

But you can’t afford to market to anyone who can steam a mirror.

You don’t want to waste your valu­able time and marketing dollars.

There are people who won’t want what you are selling and perhaps others who can’t afford it.

It is a lot easier to sell to people who already have bought a similar product and either want more of it or want a different or improved version.

Known users of products/services like yours are easy to locate in your library’s reference database. They also can be located on the Internet, in the many news groups, on-line groups or blogs to which people with specific interests belong.

Find these groups. The people who belong to them are “high ­purchase probability” prospects.

Get your hands on a contact list of people you know for sure, want and can afford what you are offering, then start your marketing process.

Do whatever it takes to reach these contacts.

Who wants what you are offering?

Do you know any of the “little things?”

Do you know her birthday?

Do you know the name of his spouse or kids?

How about hometown, favorite store, or favorite sport?

What about your client’s hobbies?

Do you have similar musical tastes?

Do he like cigars? What is her favorite adult beverage, or is she a nondrinker?

Does your client have a favorite perfume or cologne?

When you learn even the smallest detail about your clients and prospects, record those things into your contact management system.

It is especially important to note the details about your clients that are unrelated to business.
You can use this carefully gathered information in many ways-for example, sending them cards on their birthdays or anniversaries; alerting them to newspaper stories, magazine articles, and Internet links about things in which they are interested; giving them tickets to events that they enjoy; and many other things, all of which are related to your discoveries of their interests.

When you remember the smallest details, you will be amazed at how your clients will remember and appreciate your thoughtfulness. These acts of caring on your part can lead to a genuine, longlasting relationship with your client.

Everyone is different, and each relationship has a different dynamic that builds and changes over time. Marketing is relationship building. Every great business person understands this and works at building longterm relationships with his/her clients.

The most important sale that you ever will get from a customer is the second sale because it is the start of a lasting relationship. In addition, the second sale can lead to a profitable future, perhaps as much in friendship as in business.

How well are you getting to know your clients and prospects?

]]> http://sellmoreofyour.com/secret-no-25-what-details-do-you-know-about-your-newest-client/feed/ 0 http://sellmoreofyour.com/secret-no-6-what-is-the-most-important-and-valuable-asset-that-your-business-has/ http://sellmoreofyour.com/secret-no-6-what-is-the-most-important-and-valuable-asset-that-your-business-has/#comments Sun, 18 Mar 2007 19:17:00 +0000 http://97marketingsecrets.wordpress.com/2007/03/18/secret-no-6-what-is-the-most-important-and-valuable-asset-that-your-business-has/

Is it the beautiful building in which you are located?

Is it the money that you have in your business account at the bank?

Is it all of the products on your merchandising shelves?

Is it the stock in your warehouse?

How about your great employees? Is it them?

No, it’s none of these things, though all of them are important.

The most important assets that your busi­ness has are its clients and customers! Period.

Without them, you have no business.

“One of the most important lessons
of business is the value of concentrating
on the customers you have.”
Tom Monaghan

I surely hope that you have all of your clients and customers logged into a carefully organized database. It makes it so much easier to stay in contact with your customers if you have all of them in a database.

In addition, it makes implementing many of the marketing methods discussed in this blog much simpler.

A client once hired me to write two marketing letters, one to his active customers and another to his inactive customers. When I had finished writing these letters, I asked my client to send me his database so that I could handle the task of mailing out the letters.

What a mess!

There were about fifteen hundred names in the data­base, which turned out to be his accounting database. The only contact person listed for each customer was the person in the customer’s office who was in charge of accounts payable!

I’m sure that it was important to know who that person was when my client had invoicing issues. However, an accounts payable contact was not the person to whom we wanted to send mail regarding a new product offering.

To make matters worse, my client’s “active contact” database had at least five thousand names in it. On top of that, prospects and active clients were thrown in together. In other words, there was no separation into “current client,” “inactive client,” or “prospective client” files. What a disaster!

Lesson learned: I should have asked my client how his database was structured before I wrote the let­ters for him. My mistake!

We had to put the project on hold until he could find the time to get his database organized with the correct contact names plugged in for each active and inactive customer.

As of this writing, we still haven’t mailed those letters.

Time is money. Please don’t make this mistake with your most valuable asset.

If you don’t have a customer database, or if your database is a mess, it will put your business at a compet­itive disadvantage.

What are you doing to maintain the database records for your #1 asset

I’ll bet you’re thinking it’s your first sale with a new client.

You’ll be surprised to find out that a secondtime buyer is at least twice as likely to buy from you again, when compared to a first time buyer.

The second time client will usually buy again because you have proved that you add value to his/her life. The customer who has had his/her wants and needs fulfilled comes back for more.

That said, it’s very important to know where your profits will be made.

They are either made on the “front end,” at the time of the first sale, or they are made on additional, “backend” sales.

Are your products/services the type that will result in repeat business? If so, your initial sale could be small, but be designed to lead to many larger and more profitable sales.

Most businesses profit more from additional sales than they do from first sales. For that reason, it’s important to know whether you want a customer for the long term or if you’re making a “oneshot” sale.

Is your marketing designed to generate additional sales, or is your focus more “single sale” oriented?

Although “backend” sales are vital to the survival of most businesses, one of the biggest mistakes that many businesses make is NOT capturing valuable client information so that they know which customers are returning to buy again.

If you don’t keep client information showing which customers are coming back to you, then you can’t use this information to stay in contact with them and sell them more products/services.

I have gone into a local hobby store several times during the last three weeks. Do you think they have ever asked me for any of my contact information? Do you think they are keeping track of the models or supplies that I have been purchasing?

Over the course of these three weeks I have easily spent at least $200.00 on various products/services for my son. You would think that they would want to make sure I had a good reason to come back.

If they had asked for my info and tracked the types of things I had purchased, they could then mail (or email) me marketing offers relating to what I had been buying. If they had my contact information, then they could let me know about upcoming sales or special offers.

And if they haven’t got my information, then they probably don’t have information on other customers either.

The point I’m making here is that by not capturing this information, they may be leaving a lot of money out of their cash register.

Many businesses are not overly concerned with making a profit on the first sale to a new client because they have calculated that their profits will come from future sales. In other words, they know that they will profit from repeat sales to existing clients.

If you know that one out of every three customers who makes a purchase from your business will purchase repeatedly, you can take a reasonable loss on your first sale.

The key is getting them in the door the first time. If you can do that, then you know that you will profit in the future. So some of your marketing efforts should be designed to “hook” the first time buyer.

But it is equally important that some of your marketing efforts are designed to bring repeat customers back to you.

Does your marketing strategy include efforts to both bring in new customers and keep the “backend” sales coming in?