I got this short and to the point e-mail this morning. It came from a recent subscriber to my newsletter http://www.streetsmartmarketer.com/.  I don’t know what this person sells, but I believe it’s a more interesting question to address at a general level than at a specific level.

Here’s how I responded.

If you want to make money, the very first question you need to answer is what are you giving people in return for their money? If you are not offering people something they value and want, nothing else matters.

Once you have something of value for the hungry crowd, then here’s what I’d do:

1. Start collecting e-mail addresses and offer some valuable free information in return.

2. Build a relationship with the people who give you their e-mail addresses. You can do this through a newsletter that is not simply a promotion of your business, but continues to provide the subscriber with useful information.

3. Include occasional advertisements for your great product either with the newsletter, or send them separately to subscribers between issues. The key is a great product or service that people want. To get them to buy all you have got to do is create trust.

Read more articles on internet marketing

Creative business builders are always looking for better ways to serve customers. They know if they don’t constantly improve, they’ll be overtaken by swifter competitors

They continually ask themselves the following questions:

1. “What do potential customers need now? What’s not working for them? What worries them about current solutions? What would they be eager to buy?”

2. “How can we make our current customers more happy? How can we make the products we sell them more useful? More valuable?”

If you want to keep growing make sure you take the time to ask yourself these questions. And do it regularly. You can’t do it if you don’t set time aside for it, but it might just be the most important time you have. Its never wasted if your answers can advance your business?

Read more tips on new clients and customers

Every market has a smaller number of ideal buyers as opposed to all buyers. Ideal buyers are:

• easier to sell,
• easier to serve,
• more profitable,
• generate more referrals, 
•  likely to become the best clients.

Focusing on the relative few prospects who will probably be high revenue generators allows you to concentrate your resources on this critical group. In practice this means investing your marketing budget in pursuing the potential customers who will generate the most revenue. Your investment per prospect is your total marketing budget divided by the number of ideal buyers.

Converting Best Buyers Into Customers

To convert best buyers into customers, you must target them consistently and ferociously. This is a five stage process in which you shift your prospect’s attitude to your favour.

1. I’ve never heard of this person.
2. Who is this person?
3.  I think I’ve heard of this person.
4. Yes! I’ve heard of this person.
5. I want to meet this person!

Remember, the best clients are the easiest and most profitable to service. They buy more, spend more, and refer more.  Ideal Customers Buy FasterIf you focus on your ideal customers’ needs, you automatically tailor your business to meet their needs.

Once you have satisfied the best buyers, you have qualified yourself in two important ways. First by following one of the four ways of growing your business (), you can sell them more. And second, by asking them for referrals you can acquire more clients like them—the best clients.The Value of Ideal Buyers

Let’s say you have 1000 prospects and a monthly marketing budget of $10,000. If you target all prospects, you can spend $10 per prospect. However, if you target the critical 10%, the ideal buyers, you can spend your $10,000 on only 100 prospects. How much more marketing can you do for $100 per prospect?

Once prospects become customers, the same considerations apply. How much better service can you provide if you focus on totally satisfying 200 ideal customers rather than simply serving 1000? Clearly it is easier and less expensive to understand and meet the needs of 200 ideal customers than to try the same thing with 1000.

Successful businesses rely on recommendations by their existing contacts, customers and clients for future business. However, most entrepreneurs don’t know how or when to ask, or what to say.

Asking for referrals is an ongoing process, an essential element of what you do to grow your business. As such it should be an integral component of all of your dealings with clients.

In your early discussions with new customers, let them know that it’s your normal practice to look for referrals from satisfied clients. They might even be in a position to make referrals at that preliminary stage of the relationship. At the very least, this will prepare them for your asking for referrals from time to time.

Ideal times to ask for referrals are on completion of different stages of work or on receipt of a compliment from a client.

What’s the best way to get referrals? Ask for them, but earn them.

Instead of asking for referrals when you need new revenues, develop referral systems that ensure you do the asking regularly.

The best referral systems involve turning your clients into voluntary sales people. Three key elements of your relationships with clients make this transformation possible.

1. In completing your initial sale to each client, you demonstrated that you could satisfy specific customers’ needs. Had you not done this, few clients would have even considered doing business with you.
2. As prospective customers, your clients liked you and your products. Remember the old saying: “If I like you I might do business with you; if I don’t I won’t.”
3. Your clients trusted you enough to buy from you and as your best clients, continue to do business with you.

Helping clients become sales people is the easiest and most effective approach to obtaining referrals. Satisfied clients are usually happy to make referrals to businesses that can also satisfy their friends and associates. In most cases, you only need to make the appropriate request and you will receive high-potential leads pre-screened by your voluntary sales people. In all likelihood, they will only make referrals that they expect will result in successful relationships between you and the people they are referring. Few people will deliberately make potentially problematic referrals, especially if the referral could jeopardize existing relationships.

Referrals from clients are also the least expensive, often obtained at no expense. And with no or very low acquisition cost, they can yield a very high lifetime value, which in turn will increase your profitability over the long term.

• 44% of sales people give up after only one call
• A further 34% give up after the second call
• Another 14% make it to the third call
• Only 12% make it to four calls

Consumer confidence in media has declined dramatically. Only 12% of consumers trust Television news, down from 55% 3 years ago. People who believe organizations are also down from 28% to 12%.
The simple and ugly fact is they don’t believe you as much as they used to. What makes these people so sceptical?
I believe there are two primary reasons:
1. North Americans are exposed to 4 times the amount of advertising Europeans are exposed to. One study shows the average North American decision maker receives upwards of 30,000 commercial messages per day. This mostly means messages get lost in the clutter.
2. Many college graduates have done at least one marketing course and so have a much better feel for hype and what’s going on. Too much marketing is simply hype and knowledgeable people see right through it.
So what can the average business owner do to combat this?  Read more

Certainly, building trusting relationships with clients makes it easier for them to buy from you. There is however, a more significant outcome of maintaining trusting relationships. As the trust continues to build, your clients will begin to see you as a trusted advisor. In fact, your goal is to ultimately become the most trusted advisor.

You will be their ‘go-to’ person whenever they think you can help them. Obviously, this continues to make it easy for your clients to do business with you, facilitating more frequent purchases and referrals. And as an added bonus, you might also benefit from referral fees earned by connecting your clients with strategic alliance partners.

Traditionally professionals like lawyers, accountants and financial advisors have willingly assumed the role of most trusted advisor. In this role, they lead, advise and serve their clients. They guide and advise clients on the best way to achieve their goals.

The concept of most trusted advisor is equally applicable to marketing.

With Strategic Nurturing, we discuss strategic nurturing as a technique to develop and enhance relationships. By strategically nurturing prospects, new customers and ongoing clients, you are in effect serving as their most trusted advisor. Obviously, if your clients are under your care and guidance, you have responsibility to look after them. In selflessly caring for your clients, you protect them from making costly mistakes and advise and support them in the pursuit of their goals.

Your back-end sales program, is an ideal opportunity to act as your clients’ most trusted advisor. It is your knowledge of your products and services that allows you to deliver value on your customers’ first purchases. This knowledge combined with your understanding of what satisfies clients enables you as most trusted advisor to anticipate their needs and offer solutions on a timely basis. In effect, your back-end program is your inventory of solutions to clients’ unmet needs that are related to their most recent purchases. And as most trusted advisor, you know what solutions are appropriate for individual clients as well as how and when to promote these solutions.

If done from the perspective of the most trusted advisor, where your sole purpose is to give clients exactly what they need (but no more or less) to succeed. It is not about pushing unwanted or unnecessary services on unsuspecting clients. It’s about finding ways to improve your client’s business or personal condition.