How Not to Feel Like a Fish Out of Water at Your Next Networking Event

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Networking events such as Business After Hours and organizations like BNI and Meetup.com provide great opportunities to meet and mingle with other, like-minded businesspeople outside their place of business in a more relaxed and non-threatening environment.

Unfortunately, some entrepreneurs do not get the most of this great opportunity because they feel awkward or simply don’t know what to say or do. Instead of getting excited to start building relationships, they end up heading for a quick exit, the buffet line, the bar, or the restroom. If this describes you, there is a better way.

To make this type of networking event feel comfortable and more enjoyable, you need to have a plan. When you’re prepared, you’ll feel more in control. Being in control can help relieve the anxiety of being in a new setting and situation.

Your plan should include making new friends, building relationships, giving before asking, and looking for opportunities to grow your business. It’s important to attend business networking events. They have a social aspect but are primarily created as places to develop mutually beneficial business relationships.

4 Simple but Powerful Questions to Ask of Every New Contact

  1. “What do you do?”
  2. “How long have you been doing that?”
  3. “What do you like best about what you do?”
  4. “How would I know if someone in my circle of contacts would be a good referral for you?”

The first three questions provide an opportunity for the other person to talk about themselves, which everyone likes doing. They also allow you to start building a bond and relationship by getting to know about the other person and their interests.

The last question is the key. It will make you stand out and also serve notice to the other person that you want to help them grow their business. (Remember: you give before you get.) At the same time, it plants a seed in their mind that this in turn is also what you are there to do.

You now have a simple but very effective network marketing plan.

At your next networking event, remember to ask these four simple questions. Doing so will give you the confidence to feel like you’re where you want to be and know exactly what you’re doing there.

It’s the difference between feeling like a fish out of water and being a fisherman at the best fishing hole in town.

Please Don’t Ignore Me

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The bulk of marketing budgets is often reserved for acquiring new customers. Much energy, time, and money is spent pursuing prospects that have a marginally small chance of ever becoming a customer. There’s a flaw with this strategy.

The simplest and most effective way to boost your bottom line profits is to remember who brought you where you are today: your existing customers. If you aren’t consistently advertising and staying in touch with current and past clients, you’re missing out on the best way to continually grow your business.

For every month that goes by without making contact with your past and existing customer base, you’ll lose up to ten percent of the clients you’ve worked so hard to acquire. Retaining clients is therefore an extremely important business growth strategy.

Selling your services to new customers means earning their trust. It takes hard work to build this trust. When a prospect becomes a customer, you have only begun to earn their trust. You cannot expect to maintain that trust without consistent, frequent contact that adds some value for the customer.

One of the best ways to maintain and build that trust is to communicate regularly via a newsletter. An effective newsletter has a mix of about 80% infotainment (fun and informative content that may not have anything to do with your particular industry) and 20% information about your business or industry.

The recent trend of companies switching to all digital email newsletters is now reversing with the realization that actually getting the emails opened and read is far more difficult than many were led to believe. Also many survey respondents favor a printed newsletter that they can hold versus one more email that clutters their already overfilled inbox.

Sure, email newsletters are inexpensive and require no postage, but there is a cost involved when the recipients never see or open the messages. By contrast, a printed newsletter is still one of the most powerful and cost-effective ways to stay in front of your customers without overtly selling them.

The Lifetime Value of a Client

Perhaps one of the reasons past clients are ignored is because some business owners don’t really know the lifetime value of a client. An existing client who is treated right, is not ignored, and is communicated with on a regular basis will not only return to do more business themselves but will also refer your company to those around them. Therefore the actual lifetime value is often five, ten, twenty (or even more) times the value of an initial sale.

That’s the power of relationship marketing and the reason why your existing customers should get the bulk of your marketing budget. If you treat your existing customers well and communicate with them on a regular basis, you may not need to chase as many prospects as you have in the past.

To learn more about defining and understanding your lifetime customer value, please visit: http://hbsp.harvard.edu/multimedia/flashtools/cltv/ (requires Flash).

Marketing That Works Today

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There are two broad categories of marketing you can use for your company, and it’s important you understand the difference. These two types of marketing are called brand/image marketing and direct response marketing. Although both can have a place in marketing your business, for small businesses one (direct response) is much more effective and efficient than the other.

Brand or image marketing works off the premise that you can create awareness for your business or products by building name recognition. As Wikipedia explains it, branding “involves associating a product name or image with certain qualities in the minds of consumers.” Successful brand marketing needs mass media like TV, radio, and billboards to push the message to a broad audience. For large companies with big ad budgets, this can be effective. Unfortunately, institutional marketing like this is difficult to track, making it hard to quantify a return on investment.

Fortunately for small businesses, there is a better way. It’s called direct response marketing, and it’s designed to generate an immediate response. This type of marketing has a message that — when delivered correctly — compels the receiver to respond by calling the business, walking into the business, or visiting the company’s website for a special offer.

Direct response marketing is typically delivered via print (catalogs, sales flyers, postcards, etc), radio, and the Internet. Ads are results-driven, so it’s easy to find out quickly if the campaign was successful or not. As a result, it’s much more effective for most businesses because it can be measured, tracked, and held accountable for its performance.

There are several effective direct response formulas. One of the most popular is: Attention, Interest, Desire and Action (AIDA).

Attention is captured with a compelling headline. The best headlines focus on benefits to the customer.

Interest is generated by telling a story. Explaining the process and care that goes into each of your products is an example of content that can generate interest to read further.

Desire is created with a compelling offer.

Action is prompted with a deadline (time sensitive: respond by) and a call to action (call today, come by to redeem, visit the website).

Whatever the formula, good direct response marketing uses reasons other than just price to get customers to call or visit. Using direct response marketing to tell your company’s unique story is a powerful weapon to help you stand apart from your competitors and increase the effectiveness of your ad campaigns.

Beating Email Overwhelm

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Most business owners have a love/hate relationship with their email. Mostly hate. But like it or not, business owners and executives often “live” in their email inbox, so it makes sense to learn to control the beast before it controls us.

The first step in getting past email overwhelm is to clearly define who the boss is in this relationship: you or your email. That might sound like a silly question, but ask yourself if:

  • Your email client is set to automatically check for new messages every few minutes.
  • You read your email on multiple devices — computer, smartphone, iPad, etc.
  • You feel a compulsive need to see who is sending you email as soon as you hear the sound that indicates a new message has arrived.

If you answered yes to any of those questions, then you are not in control of your email. It is in control of you, and you need to fix that.

Begin by setting a schedule for checking and responding to your email. That might mean 30 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes at noon, and 30 minutes at the end of the work day. Choosing specific times to check your email isn’t as important as making an effort to not allow email to remain the time thief it currently is. You set the schedule. That’s the first and most important step.

When you begin to follow this schedule consistently, you train customers and friends who have come to expect an immediate response to realize that even though you don’t respond instantly anymore, you will respond… but on your schedule.

The urgent messages will still find you. You can let your important clients know about your schedule and that they can still call you if there’s something that truly can’t wait. Also consider setting up folders and rules. Use your email client to automatically sort your email into folders based on the subject or sender, then when it’s time to check your mail, you will easily be able to find the most important messages first.

Getting past email overwhelm isn’t hard, but it does require conscious decisions and actions on your part. The first step is to simply decide to take control over your inbox.

The next step is to create a system to control the incoming daily emails. Make four folders and label them “to read,” “to do,” “to answer,” and “maybe.” File your emails accordingly. Your goal is to leave your inbox with zero messages by the end of each day. Now, during your allotted email time, you can first respond to any new and urgent emails and then file the rest. In the time you have left, you can begin working your way through the folders.

When it comes to taming the email inbox, there are three points to keep in mind:

  1. Be the boss — don’t let email have control over your life.
  2. Use email the way it was intended — and use other tools to handle the jobs email isn’t very good at.
  3. Keep your inbox clean — as with your office desk, clutter accumulates, so do your best to keep up with it.

Start mastering these simple concepts, and you’ll be well on your way to getting rid of email overwhelm for good.

Please Don’t Buy!

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One of the most important steps you have to take in order to attract ideal customers and grow your business is to actually know who those ideal customers are. That’s the first step that many understand. But there’s another, less understood and talked about step you should also consider, and it begins with a question:

What kind of customer should you repel?

That’s right. You need to figure out what types of customers you don’t want to attract and do business with. As counterintuitive as that sounds, it can be just as important as knowing who you want to attract.

The 80/20 rule tells us that in most businesses, 20% of the customers provide 80% of the profits. Knowing who you want to attract can help you greatly improve the odds of increasing the ratio.

At the same time, most businesses also have to deal with a percentage of customers who create the most headaches while providing little profit for the business. Knowing who you want to repel should help reduce the impact this group will have on you.

Knowing the types of customers you want to repel will have many side benefits besides simply increasing the bottom line. It will improve employee morale since coworkers will not have to deal with as many problem-causing customers each day. It will also allow you to spend more energy and resources on the customers who actually provide the most value and profits for your company.

Go through your existing customer list. Pick out the customers that provide the most headaches and the least profit for your company. Figuring out how to repel this type of customer could be as simple as raising prices enough to either make them not want to do business with you or, at the very least, make the pain of dealing with them more profitable and bearable.

The benefits of knowing what types of customers you don’t want can prove to be nearly as important as knowing who you would like as a client.

You Have to Be Easy

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Making it as easy as possible to do business with your company seems like a logical and simple concept, yet many businesses unwittingly create hurdle after hurdle for their customers to jump just for the privilege of doing business with them.

Customers are already overburdened with complexities, rules, and regulations. Companies that deliver with the least hassle win more business than others.

To be sure, there are some necessary steps and processes for each business transaction, but the task for every business should be to do away with as many of the unnecessary ones as possible.

Let’s take Apple computers and their packaging as just one example. An Apple product comes in a package that combines elegance, simplicity, and art. When you hold the typical Apple product package, you realize before even opening the box that this is a different kind of product. Everything has a place and reason. Much thought has gone into what is usually an afterthought with most companies.

Steve Jobs was known as an obsessive person. A big reason for his success was his obsession with removing complexity and simplifying. He knew that the company which removed the most confusion actually ended up gaining the most customers. Jobs wanted his products to be so simple and intuitive that they didn’t need an owner’s manual.

If you want to grow your business and for your clients to actually enjoy the buying process, you must obsessively work to continually remove as many obstacles as possible, while at the same time simplifying how customers buy from you.

Start by regularly asking yourself: “How can we make ordering from us even easier?”

It’s a process. You’ll know you’ve arrived when your customers actually have pleasant thoughts and smile when ordering instead of the typical angst most experience. Being the easiest to do business with will bring many long-term rewards.

Give Prospective Customers a Plan of Action

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One of the greatest mistakes marketers make is to assume that interested prospects will automatically know which steps to take next when they receive a marketing piece in the mail, via email, or from a salesperson. Without a clear plan of action, many of your prospects will simply discard your marketing piece and move on to a different company…most likely your competitor.

Too many people assume that once a prospect shows interest, the next step is to close the sale. But rather than rushing to that conclusion, perhaps the best thing to do is to field any questions the prospect might have. Once your prospects are more informed, they will be able to make an educated decision about pursuing your products and services.

With that in mind, here are some phrases (and related information) you should include in your marketing materials to let prospects know you are there to help, not just make a buck:

  • Stop in and see our products! Include an address, business hours, and directions for reaching your building. Make sure you include a Google map on your website or landing page, as well.
  • Call and ask for more information! Include a phone number, contact name, extension number (where applicable), and hours. If you have an after-hours phone number, include that, too.
  • Call to set up an appointment! Again, provide all of the pertinent details, including the best time to reach you.
  • Send us an email to request more information! For email and web-based communications, provide a link to a simple contact form where prospects can enter their details and receive confirmation that their request went through. On print pieces, include an email address, and consider adding a QR code that links directly to a contact form on your website.
  • Visit our website for more information! Make sure you provide your full website address. Again, consider a QR code that links to your homepage or (better yet) to a landing page designed specifically for the promotion you’re running, with additional details about your products, services, and any current specials you have available. An FAQ page is also helpful here, and don’t forget to include full contact details so the prospect can easily reach you with questions.

Making yourself available to answer questions and provide your prospects with more information will make a positive impression and help boost sales.

An Unconventional Way to Add Value for Your Customers

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While no business wants to lose its customers to the competition, you may be surprised how the opposite can occur when you focus less on keeping your customers away from your competition and focus more instead on adding value and truly helping your customers find what they want.

Strange as it sounds, there may be times when referring a customer to your competition might be warranted. Here are four examples:

  • If you’re out of stock on an item that your customer wants immediately, suggest alternative places where they can find it. You may consider enticing customers to wait for your business by offering an exclusive discount when the item is back in stock, but allow them to make their own choices.
  • Refer customers to another business if you believe that company is better suited to serve the customer’s specific needs. It’s important to ask questions to ensure you understand customer expectations and decide if your business is the best fit for your customer.
  • For comparison shoppers, offer a chart that highlights the differences between your products and competing products. Be sure to include your strengths, as well as your competitor’s strengths. This is a great opportunity to promote higher-quality components or value-added services, such as a longer warranty, locally owned roots, lifetime tech support, or even bundled services at a discounted price. Informed customers make faster choices and are happier with their decisions.
  • Lastly, if you have a very difficult customer that proves to be more of a burden to your business than an asset, it may be time to let your competitor swoop them up.

By referring a customer in need to a competing business, you not only show confidence in your product and your business, but you also show honesty, integrity, and a willingness to put the customer’s needs ahead of your own. Customers will appreciate your effort and seek out your valued opinion on other issues as well.

Are You Building Your Business Like a House of Cards?

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You know the game.

You start with a deck of playing cards and slowly begin to stack them together, carefully leaning one card against another at just the right angle, until you’ve created a solid wall of cards. You build the house higher and higher, one card and one row at a time, all the while moving around carefully so the whole thing doesn’t come crashing down.

Building and growing a business can sometimes feel like building a house of cards. If you have one or two clients providing the bulk of your revenue, your business can begin to feel as precariously unstable as that playing card wall.

Wal-mart is a giant corporation. Stories abound of how they’ve made and also broken some of their vendors. But you don’t have to be a Wal-mart vendor to find your company in this tricky situation. No matter how safe you think your relationship with a large account might be, life tends to throw you curveballs. There are no guarantees. If that one large account leaves for any reason and you face ruin, then you have built a house of cards.

After the initial start-up phase is over, running a successful business becomes a matter of managing risks. Having a few clients account for the bulk of revenue can happen slowly over time, or it can come about in a flash. The role of the owner and directors is to recognize the inherent risks, then go about managing them.

The obvious solution is to find more clients in order to broaden the customer base. The trick is to do this while managing larger customer expectations and not failing in product and service delivery.

No one said being a company owner is an easy thing to do.

In financial circles, astute financial planners recommend owning a predefined percentage mix of stock and bond funds based on your age and risk tolerance. As you add more funds, the percentages can get out of balance in one part of the portfolio. A periodic review shows which part is out of balance. The solution is to sell the overloaded part and buy more of the other in order to bring the portfolio back into balance.

Owning and running a business correctly is similar to having a financial portfolio. You must understand and realize what your goals are at the beginning and review them regularly. Successful owners realize when one metric has gone out of balance and take immediate action to bring it back in line.

A business built like a house of cards will have no choice but to crash back down to earth no matter how high the stack has grown. Broadening your customer base while providing excellent customer service and product delivery will ensure that no wind of change will affect your business.

When you do that, you will have the added bonus of sleeping much easier at night.

What’s Your Call to Action?

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Every marketing piece should have a call to action that helps direct the reader to the next step. Whether you want them to click a link, download a file, or contact your business, here are a few tips to ensure your call to action gets noticed and utilized:

  • Keep it short and simple using action verbs, such as call, buy, register, donate, or subscribe.
  • Be specific about what you want readers to do. For example, if you want customers to contact you to set up an appointment, don’t just say “contact us.”
  • Make it easy for readers by using a direct shortcut link to your sign-up page or order form, versus sending them on a wild goose chase through your website.
  • Create urgency with a deadline such as “offer expires May 31” or “order now and get a free gift!”
  • Include a benefit for contacting you. Instead of saying “Download our whitepaper,” say “Expand your customer base with these 10 tips.”
  • Popularity sells. If your information is high demand, consider including the number of times a document has been downloaded.
  • Build trust by including customer logos or relevant testimonials near your call to action.
  • Provide your call to action multiple times throughout your website or marketing materials.
  • Size and location matter. Make sure your call to action is easily visible and prominently located so readers don’t miss it.

We’d love to help you create marketing materials that get noticed and increase sales. Check us out online for more creative ideas or to request a printing quote today!