Fast Ways to Have More Clients

By kphmc June 2nd, 2011 Have More Clients, Promotions, social media No Comments

There are five easy, no cost ways to have more clients. You may read them and think, I know these already. And, are you doing all these?

More buyers arrive when you are out there, making contacts with people of your client profile.

 

For each way, ask yourself:

1. Which of the ways are bringing in clients regularly?
2. Which activities bring in high value lifetime clients?
3. How much does it cost to gain these clients?

So, onto the five ways

1. Talk those people who already love you. These people will be a combination of clients, suppliers, prospects and people in allied professions.

Ask them what they particularly love about you and who, in their network, would also benefit from working with you.

By having this conversation you learn more about how they perceive you as well giving others the opportunity to be helpful and increase standing in their network.

This is such a fabulous way to attract buyers. You simply keep in touch with people. In doing so, you show appreciation and that feeds the next lot of referrals.

2. Approach companies serving your market with different products and services. There are a number of options here. Make sure you are clear what you want and can offer.  Presenting a win:win makes it an easier proposition.

Three options include:

• joint email promotion where they send an email to their list with one of your offers and you can offer to do the same.  Be prepared to disclose the size of your list and the responsiveness of it.
• deliver a seminar to their list where you present high value information of interest to their email base. Depending upon the list and your topic, this can either be a webinar or face to face. If there is a charge, list owner may want to have a higher than 50% share of the revenue.
• they become an affiliate for a service or product. You add a revenue stream to their business where you offer a percentage of each sale as commission.

3. Use Social Networking Sites to spread your sphere of influence. I am an advocate of social media. It really works, yet, requires time.   When considered as part of your marketing rather than something separate, it becomes manageable.

Look at the different sites and use the ones where your clients and market  are already. Keep an open mind on where you go. Many people say Facebook is just for consumers and LinkedIn is for business to business. Remember everyone is a consumer. People search for information and entertainment. So, if you can offer these on a Facebook Fan page, then set one up.  this is a great way of building a relationship up with new contacts. There are statistics showing people who a like a business page buy more and are more loyal than non-fans.

There is also cross over in the content presented to the social networks. Consider which are the drivers and deliverers for your market and business.

4. Remember the people in your network who like you. They may never buy but they can spread the word about your sensational services. Better still, ask them who in their network they can refer.  Simply ask them when meeting up whether they have the contact details with them. Can they make the contact now! There’s no better time to take action.  Similarly, you do the same for them. Reciprocity is a great bonding agent.

5. Approach networking groups and offer to deliver a high value talk at one of their gatherings. Plan your talk so you offer them more material in exchange for their email address or, better still, have a low cost product or service on offer at the event. People are already inspired by you, they are more open to buy than when they receive an email or phone call.  

Be bold, schedule time in your diary to complete each of these tasks over the next two weeks. Track what happens. Make changes to what hasn’t worked well. Do more of what did work.

While there is spare capacity, marketing activity should take up between 50 and 80% of the time available.

Setting up a Joint Venture

By Karen Purves February 13th, 2011 business growth No Comments

A great way to grow your business is through joint ventures.

What should be simple and straight forward can become a business owners worst nightmare.

Due Diligence

Take every care with making sure the person is of good character. Even though you may have known them as a friend and have mutual acquaintances, this is no reason to do your due diligence. Ask them to give details of their suppliers so you can talk about how they treat them, whether they pay on time and would the supplier give their client a testimonial. Yes, I know it may seem like the wrong way round, but you may be surprised in what you find for good, hopefully.

Next turn your attention to the business. How long has it been trading? Is it profitable? Consider what the problems could be if the turnover is low after a long time. Talk to your potential business partner and ask them what happened, if anything.  If there hasn’t been a loss of a major client or change in direction that may be reasons for the low turnover or low profitability. If there is nothing major, consider carefully whether doing a joint venture with a company that just doesn’t seem to be able to get its act together. There will be reasons for this and it won’t help your profitability.

The venture itself

Here are 8 points to work through

1. Have a shared goal for the joint venture

   There is nothing worse than one partner going to revenue while the other is looking for increased awareness. Unless that is how you are going to work and divide the profits accordingly.

2. Create an organisation chart of the jobs required for the goal to be achieved

   Just because someone does that role in their business, consider carefully whether this is appropriate for this joint venture.

3. Choose the structure at the outset

   Agree who is going to be the accountant and the structure of the joint venture. Have the relationship and agreement drawn up for signature. No signature, no JV!

4. Draw up Job descriptions

   Include the job descriptions and organisational chart as part of the joint venture

5. Agree the frequency of meetings

   There is nothing worse than finding that there is no structure for reporting the good news and the bad.

6. Agree what will happen if…

   Yes, this is hard because you are positive and optimistic about the joint venture and want it to be successful. But, believe me, it is much easier now to decide what will happen to overcome poor performance, non-payment of the partners or suppliers. Reacting when there is an issue is so much more difficult.

7. Make it clear who is in the relationship

   This may seem to be odd. But, I’ve had an experience where, even though there were only two signatures on the agreement, there was a third person in the relationship and business. This just complicates everything and may even lead to the demise of the JV.

8. Do the action as agreed

   Providing everyone does what they’ve agreed to do by the date they’ve agreed, there shouldn’t be any problems. A=If there are, use your reporting structure to flag up quickly…. too much time lapses and you may have a whole new set of problems.

This is my hitlist for making a joint venture successful. These have been drawn from my experience of having joint ventures. Armed with these, unfortunately, doesn’t guarantee success. But it will help! Enjoy!