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‘Image Suicide’ is an expression used by marketing legend, the late Gary Halbert. It is so important. Virtually all small businesses do ‘image advertising’ where the impression of the company is more important than anything else. They hope to portray their company image as “professional”.

Yet prospective customers do not care at all about your image or your logo. They only want to know “what’s in it for them.” And that’s what they respond to.

Marketing is like fishing...and you are really ‘fishing’ for customers. Image advertising is like fishing with a big fancy expensive pole and lure.

But what’s more effective? Having a fancy fishing pole with all the bells and whistles or just a simple rod with fat juicy bait on it? Which one do you think will attract more fish? Surely the bait is the most important thing. It’s what the fish really want. They don’t care about the rod at all.

And at the end of the day, you cannot go to your bank and deposit ‘image’...you can only deposit money!

So just how important is your image...that is, ‘getting your name out there’?

I think that the only time that image is important is if it is incongruent with what you’re trying to say to your market and therefore stops people from doing business with you.

I recently took a friend of mine to an emergency NHS dentist. We all know how to identify a dentist...he wears a blue or white gown and looks like a dentist! But this man had a pair of jeans on under his gown. It certainly made me think twice when I saw him. If he’d been a private dentist (ie ‘one you pay for’), I think I would have suggested going elsewhere as his image was simply incongruent with his message. He did not build trust.

So of course you should have a clean van and equipment and professional looking stationery, but still the most important thing as far as the customers is concerned is...“Can I trust you to give me what I want?”

It’s exactly as a CEO of an American airline once said: “If your toilets are dirty it means you don’t maintain you engines properly”. This is the link that a customer makes in his mind whether it’s rational or not. But it’s a link that affects whether they will use you or not!

So what is far more important than ‘getting your name out there’ with image type advertising?

Well, imagine if you could fly over your town and all the houses of people who were thinking of having their carpets cleaned next month lit up. That would be far more valuable to you.

This can be done with ‘lead-generation’ type advertising rather than ‘image’ advertising where prospective customers identify themselves, perhaps by phoning for some free information. After all, this is the bait that they really want. You could then target them with your message with very little waste as they would all be interested. So rather than thinking of ways to ‘get your name out there’ think of ways to ‘get their name in here,’ that is into your database so you can now target them with an opportunity to use your service.

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Here’s one of the simplest ways to come up with a profitable promotion that hardly takes any time at all.

Over the past few posts, we’ve seen how important it is to know our numbers...the number of enquiries from a given advert or flyer...the cost of acquiring a new client... how much it costs to get the job from each advert and so on. It’s important to know what’s really going on in your business.

Whereas tracking numbers is important...it’s equally important to monitor that information regularly. It’s a good idea to have this built into a system too, so that you can repeat successful ways of getting clients. And not waste more money on those that don’t.

I have a spreadsheet which tells me the results of each strategy I have used over the past eight years (and there were over 45 last year alone!). I know the cost of delivering my message to my prospects and I know how much revenue it generated to the penny. I then know the Return on Investment (ROI) for each strategy.

In January I was looking for a promotion that I could use to encourage new clients to try us out while it’s quiet. I didn’t mind if I really didn’t make any money at this time of year as I could always ‘work the back-end’ that is I would show a profit when they used us again, hopefully in 12 months or even when they referred us to a friend.

I realised that I had done what so many businesses do...use a strategy that works really well, get a ton of work off of it...and then never use it again! Which is strange really. After all, if you had a machine that consistently paid you out £5 every time you put a pound coin in...how much would you put in? The answer should be “ALL YOU’VE GOT” After all...why wouldn’t you?

I realised that although I had tracked all my numbers, I hadn’t reviewed some of them for some time. And I came across a strategy I hadn’t used for over five years. Last time I used it (in January 2003), it pulled in 88 enquiries in just 3 days! I remember repeatedly having to take the phone off the hook just to be able to enter customers’ details on the computer before the phone rang again.

And yet I’ve never used it since.

I have a system of reviewing all my numbers on a monthly basis but for some reason I just hadn’t noticed this phenomenal strategy.

The lesson? Look back over all your advertising and marketing strategies and see if any of them did really well. If they did – just do it again or roll it out on a larger scale! It’s that simple yet hardly anyone does it.

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In last post I looked at the need for a selling system in your business. This time I want to focus on two very important parts of this system. In fact, without them you’re almost certainly leaving money behind on the table that could very easily be yours.

A few weeks ago I was looking for a holiday in Egypt for two weeks this February. I finally found a hotel I wanted, but it took me 2 weeks of procrastinating to finally book it. The reason why is interesting and has a direct bearing on whether or not our prospects will choose us or a competitor to clean their carpets...or even no-one at all!

After finding a hotel I liked, I ‘Googled’ it and looked at different reviews from other holidaymakers who had been there. (eg: tripadvisor.co.uk is an excellent site). But some of the reviews were of concern...”food was not very warm”...”food was repetitive after two weeks”...”staff were rude and unhelpful.”

It instantly stopped me in my tracks.

All buying decisions are emotional and we act in irrational ways at times.  One of the biggest motivators is fear...in this case fear of making a mistake. And it held me up for a couple of weeks from booking my holiday.

This is exactly the same for homeowners who want us to clean their carpets. They are afraid of making a mistake. (Isn’t this why we prefer to have someone recommended to us?). They have heard the horror stories of carpets wet for days, of rapid re-soiling, of shrinkage. They don’t want to make a mistake. They don’t want to pay too much...or too little. They don’t want their friends saying “You paid how much for that! I could have got you that for much less.” Not wanting to be seen to have made a mistake is a very powerful motivator for people NOT to take action now. The more we can remove that fear the more successful we will be at closing the sale.

So what can we do? I eventually booked the hotel after looking at other reviews and realising that the bad reviews were probably not accurate (even the best businesses have bad clients who complain). But what clinched it for me was when my sister-in-law said she had been there, knew the hotel and that it was one of the best in the area. In other words, a good TESTIMONIAL. It gave me the reassurance I needed.

Our customers are no different.

Have you ever had it said to you: “I wasn’t sure about you but then I found out that our neighbour has used you and that’s why I’m booking you.”

What can give them this reassurance so that they feel comfortable making a buying decision? Testimonials and a strong guarantee! They simply remove the fear of making a mistake.

Prospects probably have many questions that they are just not asking...about whether you really will do a good job...really will respect their home...and really are worth the extra cost. And if you are more expensive you need to give them the reasons why, so that they can explain to their friends why they have made the decision they have.

Testimonials and a bold guarantee are an important part of this and should be part of our structured selling system.

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Why should you have a system for selling in your business?

Well, have you ever had this situation?...

You arrive at a prospects home to give them a quotation for cleaning carpets or upholstery. As you pull up outside the home you know instantly that they will not be using your service.

The front garden is overgrown. The house needs painting. And there’s an old car in the drive in a state of disrepair. You ask yourself “What on earth am I doing here?”

It’s a situation I have had many times until I put in place a system for selling to prospects. Including most importantly, disqualifying those I don’t want. I only want to deal with high-probability prospects. That is, those who have a very good chance of using us.

Nowadays all our interactions with prospects and clients are written down in our Operations Manual and we are always in control, even if it appears that we aren’t.

So when a prospect phones us to ask “How much do you charge?” we have a scripted reply. We don’t just wing it. Even the way, that is, the manner of how we answer is documented. It’s a system and it works.

Selling is a process that begins with making sure we’re dealing with the right person. The attitude we want to have is not one of hard selling...trying to beat the prospect into submitting to our proposal. After all no-one likes being ‘sold’ to, but everyone does like to buy.

Our view should be "How can I help this person get what he wants through the use of my service?" That means that first we must be speaking to a qualified prospect.

But what exactly is a qualified prospect?

They are someone who:

  1. Must be able to buy
  2. Must be able to enjoy a benefit
  3. Must be the decision maker

So if you’re a high-priced, high-quality service, you don’t want to be wasting time going out and giving in-home quotes to tenants wanting their deposit back for instance. Or those who clearly can’t afford you. You will probably close one out of every hundred. Asking them if they could borrow the money off their brother so they can pay you is a lot harder work than simply finding the right person to start with. It’s simply not a good use of your time.

There are four steps to a selling system:

Step 1: Build trust and rapport.

Step 2: Find the need.  Probe to isolate needs, opportunities and wants. Isolate the dominant buying motive.

Step 3: Fill the need.  Present products and services that fill the dominant buying motive.

Step 4: Close.  i.e. Motivate them to take action.

Each of these steps needs to be carefully thought out and written down. Many small business owners have no earthly idea what they are going to say next to a prospect. Step 2 involves asking a lot of questions to find out what the prospect wants rather than us telling them what they should have or talking about ourselves and how great our company is. It’s also helpful to have a systemised way of dealing with ‘common objections’.

So how do you answer that question when a prospect phones to ask...”Can you give me a price for cleaning our carpets?”

Our answer is always “No.” Well not quite like that. Here’s what we do and it’s written down on a scripted form. Our target market is high-end residential who can pay our prices for high quality work. We are not interested in price shoppers or tenants wanting their deposit back...so we have a script so that we don’t waste our valuable time with them.

Our system is very simple: we first try to disqualify them!

In other words, we ask them questions to make them jump through a few hoops to prove that ‘we’re made for each other’. And we tell them why we are asking these questions. We don’t want to waste each others time. Every week we turn away many phone enquirers because we tell them that “we are not the company for them.” After all, there’s no point in walking into a BMW dealer with £5000 to buy a brand new 3-series. We will just be wasting each others time.

In fact, a failure to target a market (high end residential, budget or whatever) and qualify them, is one of the biggest time wasters that most carpet cleaners make and the reason why many are exhausted and frustrated by the end of the week. Our systemised scripts mean it’s not a problem for us.

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I’ve found that one of the first questions carpet cleaners ask other carpet cleaners is “How much do you charge per square foot or per square metre?” along with “What are you turning over at the moment?” as though this is a measure of success.

I come across cleaners who are turning over £50,000, £100,000 and above. Maybe even £200,000. But does that mean that they are successful? The answer has to do with how much are they taking home? And how much do they have to do to get it?

It’s amazing how many small business owners are simply unaware of the cost of running their business. It reminds me of the old sales story that’s done the rounds for many years and goes something like this: A lady buys apples at 10p each and sells them at £1 a dozen. When asked how that works she explains “I make it up in volume!”

But business is not all about volume...it’s about margins and profit.

Strangely enough, many carpet cleaners think it’s all about volume. If only their business was systemised, they would know that they might be better off dealing only with high-end clients who are prepared to pay for high quality work. It’s far easier to make money by selling half as much but at double the price.

One of the interesting statistics to come out of my ‘numbers’ over the last year has been that my sales are down by about 10% but profit has risen. This has been accomplished largely by ‘qualifying’ people who enquire about my service. In other words, I’m not wasting as much time and money as before dealing with unqualified prospects. Our policy is to get phone enquirers to ‘prove’ that they are worthy of us giving them our time before we ever decide to give them a quotation. In other words, they have to qualify themselves first.

I’m amazed at how many carpet cleaners are very busy but are absolutely wearing themselves out. Several jobs a day then coming home to pick up enquiries then off to do in home quotations. Many cleaners would be better off with a job getting over 4 weeks holiday every year and being able to forget the job when you leave at the end of the day.

My advice? Concentrate on the profit not the gross sales! Work out exactly how much you are making on each job (that means ‘knowing your numbers’). Business is all about margins not gross sales. What’s important is not gross sales or price per sq ft but what you’re left with at the end of the day. Provide a high quality service to those who want and are prepared to pay more for it. Don’t meet with anyone who is not a good quality prospect. And use phone scripts with questions that filter out all the time-wasters (ie the ‘price shoppers’).

 

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Over the last year I’ve used over 45 strategies to get new and repeat clients to use my company for their cleaning. I like Dan Kennedy’s story about one of his students who was asked “What ONE way would he recommend to get 100 new clients?”  His reply “I don’t know ONE way to get 100 new clients but I do know 100 ways to get one new client and I use them all”

You should maintain contact with your existing customers such as:

·    Putting in place a system of regular contact where you can mention additional products and services that might be of interest to your customers

·    Consider using tools of communication like postcards, newsletters, thank-you cards and sales letters

·    Sending out regular reminder cards with an offer

·    Providing helpful tips or passing along related information your customers may find useful

But how do you find time run 45 strategies and keep in touch with your existing clients while running a profitable carpet cleaning business?

I’ve found that the only way to accomplish all this is to have a system. And the most effective way to plan all this is to have a ‘Marketing Calendar’.

In other words, plan out exactly what marketing you will do over the next twelve months. Otherwise work just gets in the way. And before you know it, you’ve gone from being rushed off your feet to having hardly any work booked in. Of course in this business you will always have some sort of peaks and troughs. But advance planning in this way can at least level them out to some degree.

So how does a Marketing Calendar work?

It’s simply a case of having a plan of your advertising and marketing for the next twelve months. This could be done on a whiteboard on your office wall. And of course you must be sure to implement it.

Here’s a very simple example.

  1. Every month on the 1st of the month you could send out a client newsletter. That means that some time before that date there needs to be marked on the calendar when you will write articles for it, arrange to have it printed, stuffed and stamped and then posted. A lot of work? Yes but at least it’s a system. And one that can now become automatic. And because it’s systemised...it will actually get done...resulting in more jobs.
  2. Send out reminder cards or letters at regular intervals (eg every 12 months). With a computer this is actually very easy. Just write on the marketing calendar that on the 15th of every month you will instruct your computer to pull up a list of all clients that used you 12 months ago, 24 months ago and so on. Then simply send them a mail-merged letter reminding them of your service.
  3. Send out thank you letters a few days after every job. Again, simply write on the marketing calendar that at the end of every week (or month if you prefer) get the names of all clients from the week or month before and send them a thank you letter.

It’s always much better to have your marketing laid out in this way. A quick glance shows clearly what needs to be done and when. It’s a system that lines up new business for you automatically.

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The degree of success you enjoy in your business is directly related to your ability to continually attract new customers and to keep existing customers buying from you, again and again.

Whether you have 100 or 5000 customers, in order to get the maximum value you need to market to these customers again and again. So the best strategy is to continue efforts to attract first-time buyers…and to constantly stimulate sales from those who have purchased before. That’s where the real profits are.

The easiest and least costly sale you’ll ever make is to an existing customer. These people have already trusted you to deliver a product or service. You don’t have to sell them again on the merits of doing business with you instead of your competitor.

Existing customers are high-probability prospects for your next related product or service. Trust has already been established. When customers are satisfied with their purchases, they’re more likely to buy again and with much less scrutiny than the first time around.

To capitalize on the true value of your customer list, you need to be aware of how often they are likely to have their carpets cleaned and the average job value.

Let’s suppose that an average job ticket is £200. If that’s all “customer A” ever spends with you, the actual value of “customer A”, in terms of revenue, is just that...£200.

Now let’s say that this customer uses your company every year. Over five years, that customer is now worth £1000… or five times as much as the single-use customer!

Taking this one step further…since customer A is very satisfied with her purchase, she tells 3 of her friends about you. As a result these 3 friends also become 5-year customers. Now our original £200 customer is actually worth £4000… over the same five-year period! If those 3 newly acquired customers also referred others, the cash- generation picture gets even brighter. And it all started with a single £200 job ticket.

This is how a CD club can promise “5 CD’s for just £1”. They don’t make any money on the first transaction. In fact, they often lose money on the front end. But they also know that the value of a customer who purchases repeatedly is well worth the comparatively small up-front costs.

These companies are banking on building long-term relationships with customers. That’s the key! Successful marketing is about building positive, long-term relationships with people. Never forget that simple fact and it will serve you well in your business.

Repeat business is where the true fortune lies. That’s why honesty and integrity are so important to the business that wants to grow and flourish. Real profit is generated from subsequent sales beyond the initial purchase.

The first sale often absorbs most of the costs associated with customer acquisition. Therefore, each subsequent sale has a higher percentage of built-in profit, than the one before. It doesn’t take long before it’s all profit, less of course any overhead.

Seeing the potential value of cared-for customers can help you determine how much you’re willing to spend to acquire each new customer. Newer businesses who don’t yet have a sizable customer list, may need to spend more initially in order to establish a customer base of some kind.

Once you have customers, it’s always in your best interest to continually serve… communicate with… make offers to…and generally delight those who have already bought from you.

Keep in mind that satisfied customers usually welcome frequent contact from businesses that have delivered superior overall satisfaction in the recent past. Often, your frequent communications simply renew good feelings - something everyone likes to experience.

Following are a few ideas for maintaining contact with your customers:

·         Put in place a system of regular contact where you can mention additional products and services that might be of interest to your customers

·         Consider using tools of communication like postcards, newsletters, thank-you cards and sales letters

·         Keep the lines of communication open so customers can easily have their problems solved – regular contact makes you more seem more accessible to customers

·         Do whatever it takes to make your customers happy

·         Send out regular reminder cards with an offer

·         Provide helpful tips or pass along related information customers may find useful

In the last 12 months I’ve used over 45 strategies to get new and repeat clients to use my company again for their cleaning. I like Dan Kennedy’s story about one of his students who was asked “What ONE way would he recommend to get 100 new clients?”  His reply “I don’t know ONE way to get 100 new clients but I do know 100 ways to get one new client and I use them all”

Do whatever is necessary to stay in your customer’s thoughts. The ultimate goal is to be “top of mind”… that is to be the first (and perhaps only) source your customer thinks of, whenever she needs what you provide. This gives you a tremendous competitive edge over others and adds considerably to the true value of your business.

 

You’ve already invested capital and energy to win over customers the first time. Once you have a customer, it’s up to you to keep them.

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There are only three ways to grow your business.

The three ways are:

  1. Increase the number of enquiries
  2. Increase the number of enquiries that become jobs (conversion rate)
  3. Increase the average value of each client

This will also work with your existing client base. Most businesses focus on growing their business by just getting more new customers, more new customers. But getting a new customer is one of the most expensive things you will ever do. Yet most businesses overlook the customers they already have, even though they have spent a great deal of time and money acquiring them.

The real leverage is in working the ’back-end.’ In other words, focusing on the customers you already have and selling them more of what you have or selling them a different service that they haven’t had from you.  Now, why does this make sense?

Well, it’s much harder to get a prospect to use you for the first time as opposed to getting an existing customer to use you again. Depending on which studies you read, I’ve seen reports stating that it’s between six to sixteen times easier to sell to your existing customers than it is to get a prospect to use you for the first time. Why is this?

It’s because you need to win them over... to get them to trust you. After all, we work in peoples private homes. And they are very careful who they let into their homes. Also we go where other contractors do not. We work in their bedrooms and other private places and see things that other workmen do not. They really do need to trust us before they let us do that. So it’s foolish to build up that trust and then simply let the relationship go.

But are you thinking “my customers are ‘loyal’ and will always know how to find me?”

In todays busy world, customers forget their suppliers very quickly...even if they are satisfied! It has been estimated that every month that passes by without contact, a customers loses 10% of their ability to recall who they bought from. So after a year...its all gone! That’s why it’s important to have regular customer communication, even if you have delighted customers.

This alone will increase your number of enquiries..and is much cheaper than the cost of getting new prospects to trust you. Your conversion rate should also be better than normal because these are customers who know and trust you. They already know the quality of your work and service. You are also increasing the average value of each client as the cost of acquiring them the second time is much lower. It may simply be the cost of a reminder letter after twelve months.

I’d recommend spending at least 70% of your marketing budget on marketing to your existing clients and only 30% on getting new customers. This shift alone will cause exponential growth in your business.

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Over the past few posts we’ve seen how important it is to ‘track your numbers’. What this means in practice is that there is certain information that you really must know if you want your business to improve. Remember, “everything measured improves.”

Now here’s three numbers that you really should be tracking:

  1. No of enquiries
  2. No of enquiries that become jobs (conversion rate)
  3. Average value of each client

Improving just these three numbers can result in dramatic exponential growth for a business. These numbers have to be seen to be believed.

Let’s say you have 500 enquiries each year and 300 of them become paying clients. That’s a conversion rate of 60% or six in ten. Not bad!

Now if the average job is say £200, that means gross sales for the year of 300 clients x £200 job average = £60,000.

Now, let’s see how we can increase all three of these numbers and the difference it will make on gross sales.

How can we increase enquiries? Perhaps by improving the effectiveness of our adverts or flyers or even by setting up referral systems so that our existing happy clients tell their friends. If we get enquiries up from 500 to 600 per year (20% increase) and conversion rate and job average remain the same, that means that number of jobs now becomes 360 (600 enquiries x 60%). At the same average job value of £200 our sales now increase to £72,000. An increase of £12,000, most of it clear profit.

What about if we increase our conversion rate only? Perhaps we can do this by not giving quotes over the phone and having a systemised structured selling process so that more prospects say ‘Yes’. If we increase our conversion rate by 20%, now we have 500 prospects but now a conversion rate of 72% resulting in 360 paying clients (500 clients x 72%). If the job average remains the same at £200, this will give us gross sales of £72,000 also (360 clients x £200).

Now what if we increase our average job ticket only? This could be achieved by offering protector on every job or offering clients the opportunity to add a room of cleaning on once we’re on the job. Let’s say that the average client now spends 20% more with us. Now the average job value is £240 instead of £200. If our number of enquiries stays the same at 500 per year and the conversion rate stays the same at 60% our gross sales will be 500 enquiries x 60% conversion = 300 paying clients at a job average of £240 which comes to £72,000 (300 clients x £240).

So there’s three ways to increase gross sales.

But what happens if we increase all three by 20% by doing all of the above? Here’s where it gets really interesting.

Now we have 600 enquiries per year and convert 72% of them to paying clients. If our new job average is £240 our new gross sales will be 600 enquiries x 72% converted to paying clients, giving us 432 new clients at a job average of £240 giving us gross sales of £103,680! That’s an increase of 72.8%!

Can you see the effect of ‘knowing your numbers’ now?