Set time aside to implement your customer acquisition strategy
Acquiring new customers is all about opening up new relationships and that is all about how you present yourself and your company.
Here are eleven tips for acquiring new customers:
- Get new business from old business. Ask existing clients for more business before you try to warm up cold leads. Also ask them for referrals to people they now that you don’t.
- Pitch yourself properly. Don’t try to blow hot air in the faces of your prospects. Be honest, transparent and interested in the other person.
- Practice straight talking. Cut out the industry jargon and boardroom phrases and get to the point quickly.
- Talk about your failures. Believe it or not it builds credibility and its a change from the “everything’s wonderful” dialogue they will have with your competitors.
- Offer a “loss leader”. People will often buy impulsively from someone they have a good feeling about if the initial investment isn’t too high. Offering a loss-leader allows them to test you with minimal risk.
- Check out your competitors. By taking on the role of a prospective customer, see how they sell to you. Analyse their sales process and be aware of how you (as a customer) feels at each stage. You can experience first-hand how their approach works and maybe pick up some tips.
- Find your worst prospect to pitch to. Or even a past customer who left for no apparent reason. If you can find the most disagreeable person to pitch your product / service to, you can review their objections and criticisms to find out if anything they complained about has merit. You need to be totally detached during this process and not defend anything so you can learn from the pitch.
- Commit to an email newsletter. Give people useful information each week or month and start to build credibility as your list grows. They won’t always open your e-zine but at least you are a regular in their inbox.
- Offer testimonials. Ask satisfied customers if they are happy for you to quote them about their dealings with you. Give them full attribution (name, position, company) which is more powerful than AK, solicitor, Manchester.
- Ask questions. Allow people to verbalise their needs – it’s therapeutic for them and allows you to listen so that you can hone in on the points to make when its your turn to talk. If you have to ask follow-on questions to make sure you understand things, then do.
- Make notes. When you speak to somebody and they mention their child has a forthcoming stage debut for example, make a note on their record so that next time you speak to that person you can ask how it went. They will appreciate you caring as long as you are genuine and not “going through the motions” – and they can tell!
To discuss your own customer aquisition process, please contact me.
