Hi Champ!

Today we’ll start a new series talking all about Word of Mouth and how it can make or break your business in an extremely short amount of time. In this first lesson we’ll get a feel for what exactly word of mouth is.

Word of Mouth (also known as advocacy as a result of an ideal customer experience) is easily the most powerful form of marketing and is absolutely free. People talk about ads they see, experiences they have and the products they purchase. If you treat people right and spread the word about your new products/services in a positive way, you’ll attract the right customers and clients who will sustain your business for a long time.

Now, as positive as word of mouth can be for your business, the other side of the coin is how negative it can be as well. Bad news seems invariably to travel faster than good news and if you have a less than high-quality product or weak customer service system, then your customers will tell everyone they know to not...

Hi Champ!

In the last post we talked about three more ways you can work on maximizing your current resources. They included:

• Reveal your business’ soul
• From breaking even to breaking the bank
• Stand up and stand out

Today we’ll talk about the last three areas you can work on to maximize your current resources. They are:

• An offer they can’t refuse
• Would you like fries with that?
• Stay away from the edge of the cliff

An Offer They Can’t Refuse

The secret to success is to stay ahead of your competitors- maintain the competitive edge. To do that you need make it easier for your customers/clients to say “yes” rather than “no”. You do this by eliminating all the psychological, financial, physical, emotional and other roadblocks they may have.

You can take the risks for them by offering warranties and guarantees that make the customer feel more confident in you, your business and your products/services. You also must be serious about your...

HI Champ!

The Rule of 1% is simply defined as adding to your customer service one percent at a time. Before you can do this you must have your consistency perfected or it will never work. This one percent may seem small, but if you approach the vision for your company with baby steps, you will find a huge increase over a solid chunk of time. It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.

Avoid doing too much at one or you’ll set yourself up for failure. Think of the confidence you and your employees will have when you improve one percent each week. By the end of a year, you’ll have improved more than 50%!

While, rules and standards are necessary for growth, always be flexible with your best customers. Most retailers only allow a set number of items into a dressing room to reduce the risk of shoplifting, but it generally restricts the large percentage of people who are not stealing from you. Flexibility is the key to what you deliver to your customers and consistency is...

Hi Champ!

In the last post we talked about the first secret to building a solid customer service plan and how to decide what your vision is.

Today we’ll talk about the second secret in taking your satisfied customers to raving fans. You must know what your customers want. Know who your customers are and you will know better how to serve them. Demographics are really important here. An upper-class woman in her 30’s is going to have completely different expectations than a working class man in his 50’s.

There are four main areas you need to consider and plan when figuring out what your customers want:

• Listen to Your Customers
• Ask Your Customers Sincerely
• Offer More than Just a Product/Service
• Know When to Ignore Them

These are all important when deciding what your customers want out of their buying experience.

Listen to Your Customers

You need to listen to both what they say and what they don’t say. Customers may say they want one thing and really mean...

There are three key areas of public relations you can use to boost your advertising results ten-fold over your paid advertising.

The key to public relations lie in:

• Public relation or publicity
• Merchandising
• Promotions

With a solid plan in place that encompasses all these areas, you’ll have a great approach to use public relations in the best way possible.

Public relations include all that is the media. Don’t limit yourself. The attention of newspapers, television, radio, magazines, bloggers, ezines and more are all equally powerful. Online marketing is just as, if not more, important as conventional media.

Here are the steps to get noticed by the media:

1. Put together a press release for your company. The press release should be relevant to your target market and address consumer interest, not just announce your business.
2. Compact your press release to include one hook and one angle. Choose the most attention-getting to make sure the media person you are sending it to...

It’s extremely important to build relationships with your vendors and those around you can bring in new customers/clients and increase awareness of your company branding.

The people you work directly with on your products and services are really the ones with the most to gain when you find success. By taking the time to get to know them, you’ll find a whole host of opportunities you didn’t realize were there.

Look for great ways to offer your vendors rewards for helping grow your business and everyone wins. One of ways you can do this is by offering performance based incentives and strategic alignment strategies that are much larger than their normal charges.

Here’s the step-by-step process to putting together a strategic partnership with a vendor:

1. Approach all the vendors you work with and offer an incentive based on performance.
2. Put the generous incentive plan together from their perspective, even take suggestions.
3. Develop a clear, concise and easy to...

If your marketing is doing its job, you should have qualified sales leads/prospects interested in learning more and becoming future customers. There are a few key ways to draw them in and seal the deal. You need to be:

• Inviting
• Informative
• Enjoyable 

The biggest fear of most new customers is buyer’s remorse. You want to avoid this at all costs and this should be mitigated if you’ve provided a quality product/service that delivers on the marketing claims you’ve made.

However, this can still occur. There are a two ways to deal with this:

• Offer to refund money-no questions asked
• Offer a bonus they can keep even if they return the product

These offers alone will also mitigate buyer’s remorse because the customer will trust you more, just for offering these things.

There are number of other ways to turn a prospect into a customer:

1. Offer a special price as an opportunity for you to test the market.
2. Offer a referral incentive.
3. Offer a smaller, more...

There is a lot of crap out there these days.  We have so many ways that advertisers, marketers, and salespeople are using to fight for our attention we are becoming numb.  That is until something POPS and we see something of value.  Something other than the same old crap.  There are 5 major components to good advertising copy that breaks through the CRAP-O-SPHERE: (The order of these is essential to success)

• Command Attention
• Showcase Benefits of Products/Services with Insights
• Prove the Benefits
• Persuade People to Embrace the Benefits
• Call to Action

Advertising is sales in print. So, you need to think about the unique benefits your products/services offer and showcase that in a persuasive way. You need to emphasize results, not features.

Let’s take a minute to talk about each of these components:

1. Command Attention: This is usually accomplished with the headline. You need an attention-getter that makes people want to know more about your...

As an advertising sales representative at the Dallas Business Journal in the early 2000’s I sold ads to business owners who were always interested in direct response.  Advertising is necessary but there is more you need to do for achieving direct response success.

Direct response marketing is a marketing method that demands a direct response from your potential customers. This type of marketing is used to answer questions, present your branding, products and the reason you do what you do. Customers are offered the opportunity to respond, whether that be in the way of signing up for a newsletter, posting a comment on your site or blog, or purchasing a product from you.

So, what does direct response marketing look like? Well, it comes in many forms, including:

• Direct mail
• Print and Social Media ads
• Radio and TV ads
• Coupons or other incentives
• Telemarketing

Some of the advantages of direct marketing are:

• A great way to use free time during lulls in business
• Productive way...

Today I’d like to teach you about the three most important startup marketing tools you need to get and keep new customers.  By the way, these startup tools should be a checklist for those of you who have been in business for over 2 years.  If you don't have these keys to success you should plug the holes and use this as a roadmap for success.  

Get ready for value and some behaviors to help you Sell Like A Champ!

In person:

It’s essential you meet with customers/clients in person whenever possible. This shows you respect them and take the time to work with your clients to give personal attention to each of them.

Follow up letter:

Always take a moment to send a follow up letter or email about what you talked about, new agreements or partnerships made and to thank them for taking the time to meet with you. Likewise, you should always send thank you letters or small gifts to partners you find success with.

Phone call:

Use a telephone call to follow up...