Just the other day I was thinking marketing and my thoughts turned to relationships. In business the overriding emphasis is placed on finding new customers, selling more products, and making more money.
I have a problem with this classical view of business and seem to be swimming like a fish against the tide. My emphasis in business has changed over the last few years and today my focus, and going on record here is dangerous, is on making better relationships rather than just making more relationships. The reason it is dangerous for me to go on record as saying “my focus is on making better relationships” is I lay myself open to criticism.
My preference would be to maintain and improve 10 existing relationships by adding value than trying to add 10 new relationships. It is easier to maintain a relationship than it is to add a new one.
One of the most influential books I’ve read in recent years is The Five Love Languages – It is a Christian book but contains such practical wisdom that it should be standard reading for everyone in a long term relationship. I actually learnt how my wife prefers to be communicated with. My preferences are quite different and just understanding that difference has made the world of difference in our relationship.
You may have created the best website in the world and have the product everyone wants or needs but unless you get found by the search engines then it will take months if not years to build the traffic to your site. We talked in the past about Squidoo (if you are not yet registered click the preceding link) , Gumtree, US Free Ads, backlinks, signatures, business cards but just this last weekend I came across a post on a website that I follow that was very interesting and can be massively helpful in generating traffic.
Before I share with you the site I just want you to think about something really important. If you come across something really good you have 3 options 1. keep it to yourself , 2. share it with others close to you or option 3. copy it and pretend you are the author.
Options 1. is plain selfish and can’t be justified. Option 2 is OK but you don’t really get the best return and option 3 – well it is not the right thing to do.
The post I found this weekend is on a site called Maxblogpress.com and has been a site that I’ve watched and used for several years. It is foccsed on wordpress blogs and has produced some great little ideas but the article today is all about being found by the search engines and is so topical today that I can’t tell you how excited i am about it all. It shows you how to get several key websites to list your sites and thatway get more traffic and more potential sales. The post to go and have a look at is called how to be listed by killer startups.
makes very interesting reading and is well worth the time to explore. Please also sign up for the Maxblogpress.com newsletter which has been of consistently high quality.
I’ve been in business for several years now and have the privilege of working alongside some of the brightest minds in business.These are people who have real experience of doing things that lead to success. I remember one lady Louise Fowler, who I worked with for 2 years and who to my knowledge built 2 £1/5 million businesses, who said “the fortune is in the follow-up” and it took me a while to really grasp what she meant. Follow-up is often talked about as part of the marketing process but in reality it is far more about building relationships and enabling people to trust you.
Follow-up can be broken down into two areas Active and Passive:
Active Follow-up might include:
picking up the phone and calling a prospective customer/client and asking some very un-sales like questions like: “How are you doing”? If they’ve been on holiday ask them how the trip went. If you know that they had a daughter getting married ask how the wedding went. Don’t try to sell them anything – just ask them some open questions. Just find out what they like doing – kite surfing, flower arranging, extreme sports – just find out what they like doing. Continue Reading…
I saw this article on the New Economics Foundation Website and thought it made some real sense. The banks seem to think they are not only above the law but also above control. The idea that their function should be split 3 ways , personal customers, business banking and securities dealing, makes such common sense and give control back to the people that use their services. That a bank should be for profit for me runs against the grain – there is something just not quite right. That brings me onto the whole subject on money – is it real or is it a myth.
If we all went to the Bank of England and asked to exchange a £10 note for £10 in cash – we’d get a big surprise. The statement on bank notes ” I promise to pay the bearer on demand…” – has gone. So what is the currency of money – does it even exist? If you like philosophy just google the phrase ‘does money exist’ and see what comes up.
I’m very interested in the concept of micro finance as practised by several organisations in Africa – I wonder if that could be a model for the western countries so devastated by the banking system collapse.
Break up the banks to restore lending and revive the economy from the bottom up, says think tank
Economic rescue efforts – including quantitative easing – will not work until the fundamental problem that Britain’s banks have become “unfit for purpose” is addressed, says nef (the new economics foundation).
In a report published today, Tuesday 10 March 2009, – the day the British Bankers Association chief is to answer to a parliamentary investigation of banking supervision and regulation1 – nef argues that the shift in the shape and business model of banks over the last generation helped both cause and perpetuate the present financial crisis. Continue Reading…
Ok – now I know that to talk about business cards might seem a little like teaching granny to suck eggs but there is far more to having and using a business card than you might at first imagine. So what should your business card have on it:
your name – not you and your partners – just your name
your contact details – telephone and e mail are the best
make sure your e mail is not paul@freeserve.net but use a domain name
use a freephone number – it improves the response rate by 100%
what you do – particularly important if your business name doesn’t give a clue – Mclune Associates
bespoke accounting software
importer of designer label childrens wear
business start up advisor
health coach
software retailer
IT Wireless Networks
A Tag Line or Memory Hook
So take some time and make your card work for you. One last tip never give out your card without getting one first!
Vista Print do some of the best cards you can get and very often all you pay is the postage
If you’ve ever been in the position of having a happy customer bring or refer a friend or relative to you and your services then you’ll know just how good it feels. Conversely we never find out how many people have a less than satisfactory experience with our businesses and then go on to either tell no one or worse still tell 10 people how poor your service was. In may cases bad customer experiences can break a business – but that’s another story.
Imagine having one customer who goes out and tells one person in the next 12 months how good your service and product are. Now just stop and look at what that would do to your business over the next 12 months – it would have a small effect. What would happen if one in 5 customers did just that – your business would grow by 20%.
Imagine if every customer referred one potential customer a year to you – the business would double in a year. The truth is that many satisfied customers would happily tell others about your wonderful product and service every day.
My Point is this in these days of recession and downturn the companies that will remain and even prosper are those that provide outstanding service and who recognise the value of referrals. So what is your strategy to get referrals?
OK the customer referrals are rather nice and take a while to develop but they alone can save your business. What if you knew the ‘type of person or business’ you’d like to be referred to. What would a customer/client be worth to you? I remember a colleague who received a referral from a carpet cleaner which turned out to be worth £2 Million in the next 12 months. Now that’s the exception but it illustrates the point.
OK lets look at a couple of real examples. If I’m a mortgage broker I might make £2000/mortgage I arrange and i can write 5 every month on average. But the customer is also likely to want the services of other tradesmen so lets have a look at some of them:
insurance for the new home
carpets cleaned
plumber to put in washing machine/dishwasher
electrician – to add in a cooker point
gardener to tame an overgrown garden
a removal company
are the family moving to downsize because children have gone off to university – might be a referral to a pension specilist
builder for some modifications
bank manager because they prefer to bank locally
garage for servicing the car
telephone supplier
The list could go on and on but the initial business was worth £2000 but the spin off referrals could be worth many times that amount. Have you ever noticed that once one house in the road has a new driveway laid the same people then often do the same for other people down the road. The same goes for roofing – one does a good job and gets several referrals from friends and neighbours.
The Mortgage broker (if they are any good) will often have a very close working relationship with solicitors, insurance specialists, estate agents and business that naturally refer people to each other. So the big question is what would your ideal referral be? What would they look like, what sector would they be working in?
Know Exactly What You are Looking For
I’m in business to help people set up their own businesses and very often those people are looking for a change in direction, they are looking to make the best use of their time. The people I’m looking for fit into one of several groups:
Group 1: they have time on their hands and want to start something that they can call their own and looking for a new challenge in life. Most often they are women and they are interested in their own health and that of their family. They may have been in business in some way in the past. They are predominantly in the 50-60 age bracket.
Group 2: they are people who are 25-35 age group and realise that their pension provision is less than what they would like. Not affraid of a little hard work and are teachable and have good sticking power. They quite often have a young family at the early stages of school and have a bit of time on their hands now one or more children are in full time school.
So how do you put that into words to tell people? Let me give you an idea of what I might say or have in the back of my mind.
“I’m looking for people who have taken early retirement or who are nearly at that point and who want to do something gainful with their newly found free time.
They may have children who are getting married very soon and be living away from home.”
If I had a product oriented business I might ask my customers the following question?
“We’ve just introduced a new product which is great for people with ‘tired eyes’
and we are asking all our existing customers if they know anyone who they think might like to try a sample.”
It’s been said that we all have roughly 200 contacts, people we know relatively well, and its those people that we know that are the potential customers that we can refer others too. So if you are part of a group of 10 people who all subscribe to the ‘business by referral’ principle then you have indirect access to 2000 potential customers. One word of warning if you are referring someone to a close or very valuable client then take care if you’ve not used the services of the person you are referring. Say something like “I’ve not used their services personally but they come very highly recommended” or if you are unsure say “I’ve not used their services but I thought you might like to explore if they might be of value”.
Unless you know what you are looking for in terms of referrals then you are in the realms of hoping that you get one or two good ones. Why not learn to be specific and ask people for the choicest referrals?
The seminal work, in my opinion, is this book by Ivan Misner the founder of BNI
I use twitter to follow many people and today I was checking a couple of tweets and saw one that made me want to look further. The site is all about people’s experiences of getting laid off or made redundant and is well worth a look. It recently was featured in the Wall Street Journal and I sadly note that in many states in the USA unemployment is running at 10% or more and that’s only the beginning in my opinion.
We have to become more supportive of the people we know who have or are struggling with being laid off and offer them hope. That’s what this site and the community behind it are all about – offering hope, support and the belief that there is a better way.
Don’t forget you can always contribute and join the community and in doing so we may well be able to offer to give you or people you know the lift up in life they need to get back on their feet – Don’t forget our Free Web Hosting offer for those who deserve it.
Ok – its been a long time coming but what started out as a simple monday morning call with some freinds who shared a common goal (health in this case) has become something much more. Start Something Today is a beginning that might just lead anywhere – It depends on what we want to do and what we want to start – hence the name.
In todays economic climate we have recognised that we need to be proactive and actively create what matters to us. If we don’t do that we run the risk of getting stuck in a passive state where we watch the hurting world pass by and do nothing about it.
The key categories we have put in place ( we can add more later on) are the things we talk about most often. So here we are at the beginning of what I hope and Trust will be a wild ride where a few people get together to make a real difference and have a lot of fun in the process.
We will have some editorial guidelines to put in place but we have to start some where.
Paul Barton – excitedly
WE have today lived up to the title of the site START SOMETHING TODAY
My preference would be to maintain and improve 10 existing relationships by adding value than trying to add 10 new relationships. It is easier to maintain a relationship than it is to add a new one.
