Talk to your Customers

Call your 40 best customers and talk to them one to one. A novel idea? Or maybe you do this all the time. But this time enter into the conversation with a few simple questions – and an open mind.

Ask them what they need. What do they need from you and what do they need to make their business more effective or to help them make more profit.

For high profile, big spending customers go and see them – ask them whether you are doing a good job and what you could do to improve. Ask them if they are happy with the service your company is providing – and if they say yes make sure you ask for referrals and more business. If they say no, listen and go back to them with a plan for how you will improve.

If you don’t have 40 customers – try the same type of approach with prospects or business contacts. Talking to people costs nothing and can generate some instant results.

Speak in Public

Put yourself forward as an expert on a particular subject and see if you can get a speaking slot at a relevant business or consumer event. This is a great way to raise your personal profile but also the profile of your business. It’s also a good way to demonstrate what you do and how you operate. Of course public speaking isn’t for the uninitiated and you must prepare well. As with anything however there are a few simple rules to follow – and if you abide by them you won’t go far wrong. Firstly – find out as much as you can about the audience you will be speaking to and ask yourself what they’ll be interested in. If you are speaking to CEOs of large companies they’ll have a very different interest than the personnel managers of similar companies. Likewise if you are speaking to small business owners there’s no point talking about issues that interest only major plcs. Get to know your audience and tailor your presentation to their needs.

Secondly keep it brief but provide examples and case studies. Don’t go into immense amounts of technical detail but do make your point come alive with stories and examples that your audience can relate to.

Avoid ‘death by PowerPoint’, that is hundreds of slides with detailed text that you simply read out. My rule of thumb is to keep slide content brief – never have whole paragraphs of text. Use the slides to sign post where you are taking your audience and to keep them engaged. If you have a complicated idea to get across illustrate it in some way with a picture, diagram or chart. Bear in mind different people take in information in different ways so whilst some will listen intently to what you have to say others will need the slide content to aid their comprehension. 

I recently gave a presentation on Direct Mail as a guest speaker at the local Chamber of Commerce and as a result raised my profile with the audience of 60 or so business people, increased my ezine subscribers and have been contacted by members of the audience with requests for meetings to discuss how I might help them. It does work – and it costs nothing.

Test an Increase in your Prices

A modest 5% increase is well worth having but you may discover that a more substantial increase is possible. Of course any increase should be backed up – you will need to reinforce the benefits that you are offering to customers and be ready to justify your increases. 

You must plan for any price increase and handle communications effectively – certainly there should be no nasty surprises. In fact one approach is to foreworn customers of an increase in prices and give them with an opportunity to buy at today’s rates.

Network

Get out there and talk to people. Find out what’s happening in your local business community and the markets in which your customers operate. This is a very low cost form of market research – and is essential if you are to stay ahead of the game. Prepare by thinking about what information you are looking to gather. Come up with 2 or 3 key questions you want the answers to and explore the best ways to gather this information. You might even combine this with the point above and use it to price check what other players are charging, explore what factors clients look for when choosing a supplier or ask outright what their response would be if one of their suppliers (who they liked working with and did a good job) raised their rates by say 5%. You may be surprised at the answers.

Your can obviously go out there and proactively network for immediate new business – although in my experience this rarely generates the results you might hope for. Instead, if you see networking as an investment in the future success of your business, you develop meaningful business contacts and links with trusted suppliers you can reap some serious rewards for your networking efforts.

Networking – A Sure Fire Way to Grow Your Business provides some additional ideas on this topic. 

If you think about it for long enough I am sure you too can come up with additional ideas for marketing your business on a very small or nil budget. The main thing is to give time to marketing. Do this, and spend the time in the right way and you will be rewarded.

Article written by Teresa Harris, Second Opinion Marketing. Teresa is an independent marketing consultant working with professional practices, small businesses and public sector bodies to develop effective marketing plans which achieve their business objectives. 

As a marketing coach Teresa works with new marketing managers and small business owners to enhance their marketing performance.

Contact Teresa on 01789 740396 or by email: tah@secondopinionmarketing.co.uk

© Second Opinion Marketing 2007. All rights reserved.