1. Show up. Business opportunities can pop up anywhere. At trade shows, for instance, you not only have hundreds of companies attending, but their name tags and titles are right in your face. Whatever industry you’re in and whatever industry you’re going after will have a trade show or association. Show up and ask questions. Listen to what the companies and vendors are doing to build their businesses. Take copious notes at every qualified encounter so that when you follow up, you can reiterate the prospect’s key points.

2. Shut up. Sometimes, we’re so busy blabbing about what we do that the other person has shut us out two minutes into the conversation. When selling by telling, we often turn a warm call into a cold call. When you’re at networking events, dinners, golf outings and the like, stop pitching and start listening to the people around you and what they do. It’s so much easier to present your pitch after they see the interest you take in them. You’ve warmed them up.

3. Build from your base. Great salespeople follow up and follow through. They take the time after their products have been shipped or their service has been rendered to make sure there’s open communication. This ensures that cold calls become warm calls–and that new business will often end up coming from your customers themselves.

Once you’ve delivered your product or service to your customer, do the following:

* Ask when are the best times to stay in touch, and follow up on how you’re doing.
* Make sure that what you promised was delivered.
* Try to find ways to help build your customer’s business that they didn’t know they needed help with.
* Send them articles they will find useful.

These activities will help you build on the relationship so that when it comes time to recommend new products or ask for a referral, the customer is enthusiastic.

4. Do your homework. Do you really research people before you contact them? Do you read industry magazines or business magazines and cut out promotions or new business announcements for companies that could be qualified prospects? A little homework goes a long way. It’s not a guarantee, but when you do your homework, the prospect is more likely to listen to your ideas. You make people feel important when you come to them with knowledge about who they are and what they’ve done.

5. Ask around. When was the last time you asked the people around you–business associates, vendors, customers or colleagues–for leads? This works best when you have a good relationship with your customers and vendors; they are usually happy to help out. Perhaps it’s a customer you’ve delighted by overdelivering on your commitments, or maybe it’s a longtime vendor you’ve given business to over the years. Also ask for referrals from business associates you gave contacts and leads to in the past. Ask yourself: What incentives are you giving them to give back to you? We get what we give, and the people we serve well will return the favor.

Earning your second sale with a client has as much to do with the way you generated the lead, presented your value proposition and turned the prospect into a client as it does with any technique you employ after the sale.

Customer loyalty is often a natural byproduct of targeting the right client with the right solution and setting and exceeding their expectations throughout the sales or lead conversion process.

A lead conversion system relies on three distinct components:

1. Discovery: The central goal here is to find out if a prospect actually fits your ideal target market. If you’ve done a good job of marketing up to this point, you’ll usually attract qualified prospects. Your lead conversion system should help you quickly assess each prospect so you can continue to meet the expectations you’ve set with your initial lead generation activity, which generally consists of a process or script used when a prospect calls or sends in a web lead.

2. Presentation: Whether it’s across the desk or over the phone, most businesses need to present some kind of offer to the potential buyer. The Duct Tape Marketing tool of choice for this step is something I call “an internal seminar”–a quasiscripted presentation made during your initial client meeting. Everyone who presents to the potential customer should use the same presentation.

3. Transaction: The final leg of the lead conversion system is a planned “first purchase” transaction process–a well-thought-out and consistently executed way to take an order, deliver goods or execute an agreement. Put a little flair into this sometimes-awkward step in the relationship-building process, and you’ll be well on your way to orders two and three.

Many entrepreneurs spend months chasing new customers, but they have no processes in place to make sure they meet and exceed expectations after they land a customer. When clients sign on with your company, show them how to get the most from the new relationship or product with a new-customer kit. That’s right–your educational marketing approach doesn’t end once you make a sale. Your new-customer kit should include the following information:

* What was agreed on today
* How we invoice for our work
* A copy of our invoice
* What we need from you to get started
* How to get the most from your new product/service
* How to contact us if you have a question
* What to expect from us next

Nothing derails a client relationship faster than failing to set and meet your customer’s initial expectations. Creating a series of documents and having a system that allows you to communicate this information demonstrates a level of professionalism that many businesses lack. This is a customer loyalty-generating system based on solid marketing principles that anyone in your firm can operate.

Failure to isolate the most-qualified niche can waste marketing funds, time and energy. I get e-mails and phone calls from entrepreneurs who tell me “everybody” can use their product or service. The trouble is, even the most well-financed business can’t afford to reach everybody at once. And even if they somehow could, their message would have to be so generic that many different types of prospects wouldn’t feel motivated to take action.

Just look at the way big businesses individually target their niche. Wireless companies, for example, have marketing campaigns that pitch small businesses, families and young adults. Each of these audiences constitutes a different niche that warrants its own set of campaign tactics and messaging.

Ready to expand into a new niche market? Here are three important steps to get you started:

1. Sharpen Your Focus
Take a long, careful look at your current customer base and divide it into groups with similar characteristics. Figure out what your best prospects have in common. This will define a niche market of individuals who are more likely to become customers or to make repeat purchases. Fine-tune your media buys and target your marketing messages to have the greatest appeal to the core group.

Suppose in the past you marketed randomly by generally targeting all women 25 to 49. You’d examine your customer base and divide it into groups that manifest important qualifying criteria–whatever would classify them as being your best or ideal customers–such as women in that age group who work outside the home, book travel online, or dine out six times or more per month.

Next, as you segment your customer base into groups with similar characteristics you may find that some of the groups that presently account for a small percentage of your sales show potential. These can become separate niche markets that will warrant unique marketing campaigns with different messages or offers.

2. Fill a Need
Sometimes you have no past customer history to go on when choosing a new market niche. In that case, you must make some preliminary assumptions about your prospect base. Focus on the customer you want to reach. Who has an identified need for what you market? Who is buying something similar now? It’s easier to fill a need than to create one, so smart marketers look for potential buyers who know what they want and are buying it elsewhere.

Once you’ve identified prospects that have a need for what you market, evaluate the offers made by your potential competitors. The only way to beat them is to know them well and provide a product or service enhancements that are presently unavailable to their customers in that potential market niche. The key is to enter the new niche with a product or service that is widely accepted, yet add an original value proposition that prospects can’t refuse.

3. Keep Entry Costs Down
There is another significant advantage to entering niche markets comprised of customers who are already buying something similar to what you provide. The fact is, it’s virtually always easier for small businesses to be second (or third, fourth or even later) to enter a market, rather than to be the first. Being first is expensive–there’s an entire educational curve to fund, particularly with new products–and it can take quite a bit of time to break through.

For example, suppose you wanted to offer a product to engineering firms and law offices, but the engineering firms had never bought anything like it, while the law firms were using something similar with limited results. Your smartest bet would be to tackle the legal office niche first by providing a product with significant enhancements or more attractive offers than what the lawyers were presently buying. You wouldn’t need to educate the legal prospects on the way your product would fill their needs and go through the long startup period that would be required to get results from marketing to the engineering firms.

Niche by niche, growth comes from taking measured risks that start with an assessment of your best potential customers and their needs. And you’ll succeed by making valuable offers to carefully targeted, qualified prospects who are prepared to buy.

My favorite example of a contact sphere is the caterer, the florist, the photographer and the travel agent. I call this the “wedding mafia”! If one gets a referral to a wedding, then they all get a referral to the wedding. These professions, more than most, have truly learned how to work their contact sphere.

Here are some other examples of contact spheres:

1. Business services: printers, graphic artists, specialty advertising agents and marketing consultants.
2. Real estate services: residential and commercial agents, escrow companies, title companies and mortgage brokers.
3. Contractors: painters, carpenters, plumbers, landscapers, electricians and interior designers.
4. Health care: chiropractors, physical therapists, acupuncturists and nutritionists.

Let’s take a computer sales and service company as an example. That contact sphere may include sales reps for telecommunications hardware firms and photocopier companies. Also, contractors who specialize in installing wiring may fit within this contact sphere to assist in wiring installations. Also, don’t forget the computer trainers, who work with people and their computers on a daily basis, as well as business coaches and accountants, who may have clients that need to improve their company’s technology.

To get the most out of your contact sphere:

1. Identify as many professions as possible that fit within your company’s contact sphere. Take a look at what professions your industry tends to work with to get an idea of repetitive and reciprocal referrals. Create a list of these professions.

2. Identify specific individuals who could fit into your contact sphere. Go to various networking groups and consult your business card file and database.

3. Invite these people to participate in networking groups with you so you can formalize your relationship and have a way to stay in regular contact. Maintaining the relationship is key. A good way to do that is to participate in groups that put you together on a regular basis.

4. Evaluate the professionals in your contact sphere that you are presently referring. If they are not reciprocating, you may have the wrong profession or the wrong person. Fill the spot with someone who is willing to reciprocate.

Although developing a solid contact sphere will greatly increase your business, you must remember that it alone is not enough. Because contact spheres consist of small groups, you’re not likely to gain exposure to a large number of individuals. Hence, work on developing your overall network of contacts at the same time you are developing your contact sphere.

Good luck. Contact spheres are a great way to start building your professional network.

You Won’t Please Everyone - Basing your decisions on how people will respond is a recipe for disaster. Yes, it is critical to get input. Yes, your stakeholders are important. However, any decision of importance will bother some people. They may lose resources, status or question your abilities. However, you have to focus on whether the choice is right for your organization or business unit first.

Not Choosing is a Choice - Not deciding is a decision. In some cases it may be the right choice. If the issue is not important or you know that you will get more information later then it’s a good idea to wait. However, when you don’t make a decision you usually avoid taking action. And only action leads to results.

You Probably Won’t Get Enough Information - There will always be things you don’t know when making a decision. Avoid “analysis paralysis” by setting a deadline for the decision and identifying the information you don’t have.

Who Fails Faster Wins - When decisions turn out to be wrong (and some always will) the best leaders learn quickly and keep deciding. Have the discipline to examine your assumptions and find the error in your thinking or execution. See your failures as learning opportunities. And then move on.

Decision Making is a Skill - The only way to get better at decision-making is to learn from every decision. Look in your journal or schedule - look at the decisions you made last year and take the time to reflect. Was your decision well thought out? Was it action oriented? Were your assumptions correct? Only by asking yourself “how can I make this better?” can you master this critical skill.

Casual Contact Networks
The first of the six types of networking groups are casual contact networks. These are business groups that allow many people from various overlapping professions. There are no restrictions on the number of people represented in any profession. These groups usually meet monthly and often hold mixers where everyone mingles informally. Casual contact networks may hold other meetings where there are presentations by guest speakers on important business topics or discussions on issues concerning legislation, community affairs or local business programs.

The best examples of these groups are the thousands of Chambers of Commerce and similar groups active worldwide. These groups offer participants an opportunity to make valuable contacts with many other entrepreneurs in the community. They offer significant breadth to your goal of developing a word-of-mouth-based business because they enable you to meet hundreds of other businesspeople.

Strong Contact Networks
Strong contact networks are groups that meet weekly for the primary purpose of exchanging referrals. They often restrict membership to only one person per profession or specialty and tend to be more structured in their meeting formats than casual contact networks. Their meetings include open networking; short presentations by everyone; a longer, more detailed presentation by one or two members; and time devoted solely to passing business referrals.

Such organizations require a far greater commitment from their membership. They usually have a set agenda, with part of the meeting dedicated to actually passing referrals you’ve picked up for members during the previous week. A good example of this type of organization is BNI, a group I founded in 1985 that is now one of the largest of its kind.

Community Service Clubs
Community service clubs give you an opportunity to put something back into the community where you do business while making valuable contacts and receiving good PR to boot. Community service clubs can be fairly good sources of word-of-mouth business. Such groups exist primarily to serve the community; however, they can also provide an excellent opportunity for businesspeople to meet regularly and develop relationships.

Although there is almost no overt networking, long-term friendships, which are critical to the success of a solid word-of-mouth-based business, are established. Good examples of these groups include Rotary, Lions and Kiwanis Clubs. In many ways, community service clubs were the original networks. The oldest, Rotary, was established in 1905 by Chicago lawyer Paul Harris with the idea that one person from each profession would belong and members would, among other things, help each other in business.

Professional Associations
Professional associations, or what futurist and author John Naisbitt calls “Knowledge Networks,” have existed for many years. Association members tend to be from one specific type of industry, such as banking, architecture, personnel, accounting or health. The primary purpose of a professional association is to exchange information and ideas.

Your goal in tapping into such networks is to join groups that contain your potential clients or target markets. A simple procedure for targeting key groups is to ask your best clients or customers which groups they belong to. This will give you an immediate list of at least three, and probably as many as 10 to 12, groups from which to choose.

Your best customers retain membership in the associations that offer the greatest value or for which there is some key strategic or competitive advantage. Similarly, the prospects you wish to target may, in many ways, operate like your best customers and have many of the same needs.

Social/Business Organizations
Each year, more groups spring up that serve as both business and social organizations. Groups such as the Jaycees and various singles/business clubs openly combine social activities with business or networking, giving you an opportunity to combine work with a little pleasure. If you’re interested in combining work with social activities, I recommend the Jaycees. They tend to be very focused and professional.

Women’s Business Organizations
Women’s business organizations have been instrumental in shaping the nature of contemporary networking organizations. With the proliferation of women business owners in the 1970s and ’80s and the difficulties they had in joining the “old-boys’ networks” in place, many women formed structured, well-organized groups that met to network and provide professional support. These groups were created not as service clubs but as bona fide networking organizations. Many made no pretenses; the members were there to network, and everything else was secondary.

Women’s business organizations are very diverse. The one thing they have in common is that they tend to be concerned with education and professional development as well as networking. Some are casual contact networks; some are strong contact networks. Others are industry-specific professional associations, such as Women in Construction. The benefits of membership depend on the type of group you join.

For many women, such groups can be an excellent and nonthreatening way to increase their business. Surprisingly, many women’s organizations allow men in their membership. Assuming the man conducts himself professionally, he can truly benefit from membership and participation because he’ll be more widely recognized within.

Despite all that we’ve covered thus far, some people tell me they simply don’t have time to go to business meetings regularly. I understand that objection well. If you feel this way, let me suggest that you stop reading this article, pick up your telephone and start making cold calls instead. Or, if you prefer, open your checkbook and start writing checks for more advertising. If you’re serious about developing word-of-mouth business, there is no quick fix; you must meet people in a planned and structured way.

Which groups should you join? Don’t let chance decide where you’re going to spend your time and effort. Remember, the key is to diversify your activities. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket; one type of business organization won’t serve all your needs. Consciously select a well-rounded mix of organizations, with no two of the same type. If you have associates, partners or employees, consider their participation when deciding which groups each of you will target.

Some people think that word-of-mouth is a little like the weather: fairly important, but not much they can do about it. Many others think that it’s just about good customer service, but it’s not. Don’t get me wrong-good customer service is critical for the success of any business, but if you expect happy customers to talk about you a lot, think again.

For the past two decades, I’ve talked to tens of thousands of business professionals about word-of-mouth marketing and customer service. I’ve described how the “average unhappy client” can talk to dozens of people about their bad experience. I’ve then asked my audiences if their “average happy client” truly talks to as many people as a potential unhappy client. In two decades, no one has ever said yes to that question!

Unfortunately, people are more likely to talk about your business when they are unhappy than when they are happy or satisfied. Therefore, good customer service generally reduces “negative” word-of-mouth. However, the good news is, there are many things entrepreneurs and business professionals can do to positively impact their business through word-of-mouth.

Below are the three most important things that a business professional can do to start the process of increasing their business through word-of-mouth.

1. Diversify your networks. I believe that most business professionals are cave dwellers. They get up each morning in a large cave with a big-screen TV called their home. They go out to their garage and get into a little cave with four wheels called their car. They go to another really big cave with plenty of computers called their office. At the end of the day, they get back into their little cave with four wheels and drive back to the large cave with the big-screen TV, and they can’t figure out why no one is referring them. If you want to build your business through word-of-mouth, you have to be visible and active in the community by participating in various networking groups and/or professional associations.

2. Develop your contact spheres. Contact Spheres are businesses that are symbiotic and noncompetitive to you. For example: a lawyer, an accountant, a financial planner and a banker. All of them have clients with overlapping similar needs. They can all work with and refer each other easily. Another good example is what I call the wedding mafia: a florist, a photographer, a travel agent and a jeweler. A referral for one of them becomes a referral for all of them. You should immediately determine what professions fit within your Contact Spheres and start developing relationships with them.

3. Word-of-mouth is more about farming than it is about hunting. Building your business through word-of-mouth is about cultivating relationships with people who get to know you and trust you. People do business with people they have confidence in. One of the most important things I’ve learned in the past two decades is this: It’s not what you know, or who you know, it’s how well you know them that counts. If you go into this process understanding this one key point, you will have a better opportunity to build your business through word-of-mouth.

Working from home has its own unique rewards and challenges. And although most of the networking techniques that work for any business work for most homebased businesses, there are at least two important issues that I think apply to a homebased business more than any other.

The first relates to introducing yourself to others in networking environments. One important thing I learned while being a homebased business owner related to how I promoted myself at networking groups or when meeting people one on one.

My opinion in this area rubs some homebased business owners the wrong way, but I feel strongly about it: When networking, I don’t recommend you share that you run a homebased business. I believe this characteristic is what I call a “neutral/negative” feature of your business. That is, telling people you meet in networking environments that you “work from home” has either a neutral or a negative impact because it either doesn’t matter to them, or they’re not impressed that you operate your business out of your house.

When I worked from home, I rarely, if ever, met anyone who said, “Oh, fantastic, you work from home–I must do business with you!” Working from home was just not something that I found made people “want” to do business with me; therefore, why should it be emphasized when meeting people through networking?

I open with this issue because it’s something that I see done to this day. Often, when I attend a networking function, I see someone stand, say what they do, how people can refer them and then add at the end that he or she runs a homebased business. I believe that bit of information will generally have no impact or a negative impact on what people think of your potential abilities–it almost never has a positive impact on people wanting to do business with you. (Please note that I never hid that my business was homebased. I simply didn’t bring it up until after I had a business relationship with the individual.)

The second issue relating to networking that I think is more important for homebased business owners than the average business owner is that it’s important to break out of what I call Cave-Dweller Syndrome.

I find that many homebased business owners seriously suffer from Cave-Dweller Syndrome. Here is how the non-homebased business owner suffers from this syndrome:

He gets up each morning in a large cave with a big-screen TV–his home. He goes out to his garage and gets into a little cave with four wheels–his car. He goes to another really big cave with plenty of computers–his office. At the end of the day, he gets back into his little cave with four wheels and drives back to the large cave with the big-screen TV and can’t figure out why no one is referring him.

For homebased business owners, it’s far worse because they don’t even leave their large cave with the big screen TV to go to the cave with the computers. They’re one and the same!

And it’s even harder for those working from home to get out of their caves. So for you homebased business owners who want to build your business through word of mouth, you have to be visible and active in the community by participating in various networking groups and/or professional associations. It’s critical for you to join organized networking groups and professional associations that will get you out of your cave. These kinds of groups include: Casual Contact Networks (like your local chamber of commerce), Business Development Networks (like BNI), professional organizations (almost all professions have one), and service clubs (like the Rotary or Lions Clubs).

Look for other ways to be very visible in your circle of influence. For example, be active in your child’s school PTA or your church. Keep your eye open for opportunities to be involved in groups of people who come together for a common cause.

These opportunities will afford you the chance to build relationships, and that’s what social capital is all about. Visibility leads to credibility which, in turn, leads to profitability.

The bottom line is, networking doesn’t change too much whether your business is based from home or a corporate location. But there are a few key points to remember that are specific to working from home. The dynamics of developing a strong word-of-mouth-based business transcend your business location. The caveat for the homebased business owner is that you’ll have to be even more diligent and focused about finding those networking opportunities.

1. Spread out your contacts. Regardless of the type of relationship with your clients, regular contact is generally good. Two short meetings or phone calls are more beneficial than one long session. Each meeting becomes an opportunity to strengthen the relationship and to enhance your visibility and recognition.

2. Schedule predictably. Stay in touch with your clients regularly. Train them to expect to hear from you at certain times. For example, if you usually contact certain customers during the first week of every quarter, they will come to expect it and will budget time for you. If they don’t hear from you, they may actually call to see how you are doing on their own.

3. Make each contact lead to the next. Before concluding a meeting or telephone conversation, schedule the date of your next contact. In written correspondence, close by stating the date your customer should expect to hear from you again: “I’ll send you a note or e-mail by the end of the quarter.” Having made the commitment, you’re more likely to follow through. This practice establishes a chain of contacts, with each meeting leading to the next.

4. Assume responsibility for making contact. You can’t control whether clients will contact you, but you can control when you contact them. Take the initiative; stay in touch with your customers. This is especially important for your most important clients. When clients or customers do not feel cared for, they are more likely to try someone else. By staying in touch with them, you are much more likely to head off potential problems down the road.

5. Invite them to networking events. One way of making sure to stay in contact with your customers is to invite select ones to some of the networking events that you go to. This is a great way to meet with them periodically while getting you out of your cave to network and to meet other people.

6. Stick to your plan. As you achieve success in establishing routines with your sources, some of them may begin taking initiative with contact. Don’t let this interfere with your contact schedule–that is, when they initiate the call, don’t count it as one of the contacts you’ve scheduled.

Having attended all the workshops and never missing a weekly meeting, I’ve really learnt a lot of things especially on how to focus and have a clear aim in mind. This has been applied to my business as well and I am now targeting and planning for the future.

All my chapter members are highly supportive and co-operative and we work closely as a team. My chapter’s motto is excellence and it has motivated me to be excellent too!

Jessica Tiu
016.220.2082