I get a few emails through where people ask me if I make stuff up that’s on this and the Tailored web site.
Easy answer – Nope. Everything I write is 100% true.
At the risk of sounding like I’m trying to promote my fantastic e-book on using public speaking to generate quality leads (which, by the way, is here!) – someone emailed me yesterday and asked if public speaking was truly effective.
Here’s some numbers for you.
Last week I gave a speech to 25 businesspeople. I’ve quoted on 3 small jobs totally just over $15,000.
Last night I spoke to 12 Rotary Club members – from that I have 3 very strong leads (they came and chatted after the speech, gave me their business cards and asked me to contact them about redoing/doing their web sites).
Yes, public speaking works and it works better than just about anything.
Regards
Brendon
(I just posted this on the Tailored site too but thought it would be relevant here as well.)
Because we do so many web sites I’m very aware of overcoming the client’s resistance to buying because of the perceived risk. One way we try and demonstrate our quality and expertise is by providing current client names and numbers to potential clients.
What generally happens is the potential client rings a current client and finds out how we do business in practice (because we all say we’re fantastic in the meeting!).
This Is What One Of Our Clients Did Yesterday
One of our clients (I’ll call him Ross………because that’s his name!) spoke with a business owner we’d been meeting with about a web site. Ross spent 15 minutes on the phone telling this client how we’d performed with him over over the past year or so.
I was very appreciative of Ross taking the time to chat to our potential client.
Yesterday, Ross was driving past our potential client’s business and decided to drop in. So in he went and introduced himself to our potential client in person.
They had another chat about us (Tailored Consulting).
Will We Get The Job?
My mum always told me not to count my chickens before they hatched, but the chances for our success would have increased significantly because of Ross’ efforts.
That’s the first time a client has ever gone way out of their way like that to help us get a job and I’m thrilled Ross has thought so much about our business to help so much.
And I’d usually end off with a comment about how we can repeat the process, but I really don’t know. It’s not as if we can ask our clients to visit potential clients and praise us up!
Or can we??!
References are good. Testimonials are fantastic. In person visits to provide a testimonial is unbelievable. Thanks Ross!
Brendon
I quite enjoy the music of Robbie Williams, the English singer. And Robbie himself seems like quite an interesting character!
I saw him interviewed by the brilliant Michael Parkinson one Saturday evening and it was brilliant stuff. Michael asked Robbie about his well documented battles with alcohol and drugs.
Robbie answered with something like this:
“What I do comes so easily to me that I simply cannot truly believe that people think it’s so brilliant. I don’t see it as anything worthwhile, so I cannot see what is all the fuss about, or why people pay me millions of dollars to do it. I drank and took drugs so that I would fail and prove myself right. Prove that I wasn’t really worthy of all this adulation.”
And who would have thought that anything Robbie Williams would say would be relevant in marketing your business??!
Do you undervalue your skills?
* A friend who is an Orthodonist once told me he feels a little guilty charging for his work as it’s just so easy (he trained for close on 10 years to be as expert as he is!)
* I do marketing things all day long and find it mostly very easy. It’s almost intuitive for me these days.
* The wonderful woman who does most of our programming work can do things in 5 minutes that would take most people an hour to do – and she finds it an absolute breeze.
Just because doing what you and I do is easy to us, doesn’t mean it’s easy.
Don’t undervalue the skills required for the service or products you provide
It may have taken years of experience, hours and hours and hours of study or plenty of training to get as good as you are. Charge a good price for you to make a good profit and grow your business.
Brendon
In the book Free Agent Nation, as well as in most public opinion surveys, the biggest downside of self employment identified by most people is having to market themselves.
Whilst that’s not good news for you (and probably great news for businesses like mine) it’s completely understandable. But it can be a bit limiting.
Take this web site as an example. Ever since I put this blog on so I could update each day, it’s become increasingly popular (at least x 10 more visitors each day). And the overwhelming feedback I get is it helps that it’s more personal.
A web site we manage starting selling more product when we added profiles on the staff members.
We completed a lot of research for a resort site we manage and found that the visitors wanted names, photos and direct email addresses for the reception staff – the reason? They said it makes it more personal.
Personalising your business could make it more successful. People like to know who they are dealing with. Market yourself and your business will grow more.
Hope you have a good day.
BTW, here’s a pic of me and a close friend. You’ll personally see why I get such great Christmas gifts.
Brendon
I know I’ve mentioned in these articles before about asking the ‘golden’ question.
That question is “Why should the customer do business with you?”
It’s an incredibly valuable question. Figure that one out and you’ll have a terrific business.
But I have another big question you should ask! And, as usual, I’m going to give you the answer in a story.
“What would you give us?”
A few years ago we finished a web site for a client. He was a delightful client and at the end of the project I asked him this question:
“What would you give us on a scale of 1 to 10 taking into account design, service, meeting deadlines, ease to work with, quality…….the entire experience?”
He was very happy with our service and the final product and he said we were great.
He gave us a 9 out of 10!
That’s great, right??
No, it’s not. It’s okay. But not great. If you have happy clients you could well fail.
You see your customers won’t come back to you if you are okay. I remember reading a study somewhere a couple of years ago that showed that if a business was rated above-average it had the same percentage of repeat customers and referred customers as an ‘average ‘ business. Only when the business was ranked ‘Excellent’ did the repeat customer rate increase and did the referred customer rate go through the roof.
This is what I said to our client
“Mmmm, we want a 10! What do we have to do to get a 10?”
I can’t really remember what he said, but they were a few minor things and we quickly did what he suggested. I went back to the client and said:
“Now would you give us a 10?!”
Nope! He had thought of a few more things whilst I was away dealing with the other issues! We quickly took care of his last concerns and he happily gave us a 10.
Now that’s what we want! And we want that as a business because we know that delighted clients will tell others about us. Satisfied clients probably won’t. And word of mouth referrals are the best way for most service businesses to grow their business.
Fast forward a month or two- (2) and I received a telephone call from a relative of the client who gave us the 10. He’d rung to say that he had been referred to us by our delighted client. (I love it when a plan comes together!)
He then proceeded to recount how impressed he was when his relative had detailed the “Out of 10” story!
We have since completed four- (4) (yep, 4!) web sites as a direct result of us asking that very simple question:
“What would you give us on a scale of 1 to 10?”
You don’t want happy clients!
Happy clients are just okay. But that’s all. You need absolutely delighted and overjoyed clients. They must want to shout your praises from the rooftops! That’s the way to really build your business.
And there is one- (1) easy way to get delighted clients. Ask them what you have to do for them to be delighted. Ask them what you have to do to get them to refer others to you. Ask the second golden question:
“What do we have to do to make you absolutely delighted with our service?”
Then do what they say.
Regards
Brendon
Howdy
Let me run this past you…….
As consumers, we all love personal service. We like knowing the people we deal with.
I think I’ve spotted a bit where a lot of businesses miss an opportunity. They don’t personalise their business.
Many people don’t trust businesses (perceived risk is a huge barrier to buying) – if you can personalise your business, your customers ‘know’ you and you’ll sell more. There’s less perceived risk for them.
This web site is pretty personal
You might notice that this web site is pretty personal. Quite a few posts mention my lovely wife Mel. A post on ‘the latest’ today mentioned my 2 sons – Jack and Harrison (I also have a daughter, Laura).
And I sometimes talk about what I’m doing, the fact that my wife gave me a hot chocolate drink with 3 marshmallows yesterday (mmmmmmmmmmmmm), etc.
The effect has been very interesting. I receive a lot of emails from people who read the site and really enjoy the laid back and personal approach. Much different feedback than if it was a typical boring business web site.
The personalisation of your business could have the same effect – people get to know you and like you (I hope you guys like me!). And that’s not only good for business, but a nice thing to do.
Cheers.
Brendon
We had an interesting one with a client today. Jo is developing a very sophisticated databased site for a new client. Part of the process was to have the client sign up with an external provider of a secure internet channel (Verisign).
Within hours of signing up the client had received an email and a telephone call offering part of the very same service we were providing at about half the price – and this from the exact same provider we were using (and had recommended) to the client. Our client was confused and dismayed with us.
After all, there was now doubt in our commitment to provide the client the best solution at a fair price.
After talking with the client for an hour, and having the Verisign rep call them as well, Jo was able to establish for the client the fact that the solution offered by the company would not meet their needs.
Because the ‘security’ company didn’t know exactly what the client wanted, they had offered a solution as a start to generate the very well qualified lead. But all that happened was the client became confused (and fair enough too).
Trust is the most crucial part of our relationships with our clients. If that’s lost, then so is the client.
Do everything you can to build trust with your clients. It’s well worth it.
Trust me!
Brendon
I was talking with a client on Tuesday and a question I asked was “What are the biggest challenges facing you that stop you selling more stuff?”
That’s a fairly normal sort of question we ask – all to try and help us figure out what the client’s problems are so we can provide them with solutions.
Today I found what’s probably my biggest frustration.
Here goes:
A previous client, for whom we had completed quite a deal of work for, rang to let me know that he and his wife were now managing a luxury hotel in the middle of Australia’s third largest city. My client is managing it for three- (3) months whilst the usual manager takes a break.
Just before leaving, the manager asked my client to get a web site done for the place (it’s recently opened). He’d already received a quote but wanted another one.
My client is smart
Now my client is a very smart operator. He knows the impact that a quality, well marketed web site could have on this business. And he knows that you pay a little extra for quality.
My client showed me the competitor quote and it’s very, very low. And it’s very, very low because the web developer has quoted to do a 6 page web site and that’s it. My proposal would be for a 30 pages site with expert copywriting, a back-end database, fully optimised for search engines, etc, etc.
He knows the quote is ridiculous
My client is smarter than that. He knows the quote is ridiculous. And he knows the value that a site like the one this person proposed would be minimal. And he accepts he will have to pay 5-6 times as much as this other quote for a decent site. Which is great.
And that’s our biggest frustration
In our meeting today I suddenly realised that this was probably my biggest frustration in business.
Trying to demonstrate the value of our proposal when compared to a quote that is very significantly cheaper.
You see, quite often the client is wary of you when you try and sell something. And they’ll often want to go for the cheaper quote to minimise the perceived risk to themselves.
The reason we’ll win the job is because our client has worked with us before and knows their is no risk at all in working with us. And they’ll get a great and valuable site at a great price.
Well that’s it for my biggest frustration. Not quite sure what the lesson is there – maybe demonstrate value and provide the best solution. And as always, keep in contact with old clients because they’ll keep giving you work.
Regards
Brendon
This week I have attracted a new client. It’s for a web site redevelopment. Nice little job that gives us a few dollars profit.
We’ve already done the work and he’s paid the bill.
Then what he did was ring a friend in the same industry who also has a web site in need of upgrading. Our client not only highly recommended us but even rang the friend whilst I was in his office and said “I have Brendon here now, I’ll put him on.”
I now have a meeting with this client’s friend after Easter.
Today we’ll be posting our client a “Thank you for your business” card along with a box of chocolates and a bottle of wine. All to say thanks for the business and also thanks for the referral.
Clients absolutely love it when you show your appreciation for their custom. Most clients feel hugely unappreciated and respond very positively to being thanked.
Plus it’s just good manners I think.
Give it a try with your next client and see how it goes.
Regards
Brendon
Over the next couple of months we’ll be implementing a UDS (Unaddressed Delivery Service) campaign – which is just a fancy term for saying we’ll be having our promotional literature place in business PO Boxes within our target areas.
Here’s the plan:
Day 1: DL promotional card with handwritten message delivered to the PO Box
Day 12: Same DL card delivered to PO with a different handwritten message
Day 30: Same DL card delivered to PO Box with different message
The DL cards cost us about 25 cents a piece.
In our initial assessment we had to review which area we would have our cards delivered to. We narrowed it down to 2 places:
1. Broadbeach – close to us and contains much of the market we target
2. Gold Coast Mail Centre – close to Broadbeach with a very similar market
Broadbeach has 471 PO Boxes, the Gold Coast Mail Centre has 1,478 Boxes.
Which one should we pick for the biggest impact? No idea!
So this is what I did.
I pulled out my calculator and figured out the cards alone would cost me $1,108.50 if I sent them to the Gold Coast Mail Centre. The cost for Broadbeach was $353.25.
The cost per delivery is 11 cents. That’s $487.74 for the Mail Centre and $155.43 for Broadbeach.
By looking at the numbers we can see that sending the cards to the Gold Coast Mail Centre would cost $1,000 more than if I sent them to Broadbeach.
Getting back to “Which one should we pick for the biggest impact? – I still have no idea.
And because I have no idea I’ll be smart (as smart as I can be!) and do a simple test.
1. I’ll run the campaign through Broadbeach PO Boxes.
2. I’ll measure the results.
3. If it is profitable I’ll run the same campaign into the large Gold Coast Mail Centre PO Boxes.
Because then I’d have some decent data to justify and back up the decsion to spend $1,500 on a marketing strategy.
Testing what you do when you market can save you money and heartache.
Measuring the results of any campaign is a gimme. Measuring provides the information you need to make a well-informed and logical decsion on all of your marketing strategies.
Good luck!
Regards
Brendon