As we head into the season of giving, now is a great time to show appreciation to your clients and customers. Taking the time to give thanks to your clients will set you apart, increase loyalty, improve retention, inspire more sales, and deepen relationships that last long after the initial sale.
Here are 10 easy ways you can say thank you to your clients:
1. Greeting Cards
My husband often teases me that I should own stock in Hallmark for the amount of money I spend a year on cards. I love to send cards, for a specific reason or for no reason at all.
For business, you've probably heard of SendOutCards (and no, I'm not an affiliate or a distributor). I get a lot of cards this way, from colleagues, and it definitely deepens the relationship for me. And it is a super-easy way for you to do that with your customers too.
2. Personal Notes
I love to send personal notes too. I have specially designed notecards that I send when I just want to connect with someone after a particularly powerful coaching call, when someone makes an investment in Platinum, when I've made a special connection with someone in person, or when a client just needs a little cheer.
3. Invitations
One of the things you can do for your top clients is to invite them to a special event just for them. It can be a lunch or dinner at an event you'll all be at, or carve out a portion of your own live event to spend time just with them.
You can also invite them to special teleseminar or webinar where you offer them free content just for being your top clients.
4. Small Gifts
Flowers, books, a mug, or something more specific are all thoughtful gifts for clients. They can be sent for certain occasions or just because (that's actually my favorite way to send a gift).
5. Gift Cards
These days you can get gift cards for almost any product or service. Some companies, like Starbucks, offer having your logo or business name imprinted on them. Other ideas besides coffee include restaurants, movies, bookstores, office supplies and online vendors like Amazon.
6. Referral and Affiliate Rewards
Even if your referral or affiliate programs offer a commission on each referral, sending a personalized note along with it will go further in encouraging your network to continue to promote your offers into the future.
7. Reverse Referrals
Whenever appropriate, refer your clients and customers to others whom they will benefit from. Making this a part of the way you run your business will come back to you ten-fold as it shows the Universe your belief in abundance.
8. Customer Appreciation Days
Pick one day a year to designate as a Customer Appreciation Day to celebrate your clients. Make a special offer only to them and make a lasting impression.
9. Host Events
Host a gathering at the next event where your clients and customers are likely to gather. A Tweetup is a popular way to connect with both current and prospective clients and they are super-simple to set up and cost you nothing but a bit of time. You can also hold a virtual event anytime you want to bring your clients and customers together.
10. Life Events
Weddings, baby showers, major moves, book contracts, big speaking gigs, TV spots, or any other major event warrrants an acknowledgment. A nice card or personal note, or even a quick phone call, will make you memorable for sure.
In what ways are you showing gratitude to your clients and customers? Feel free to share below!
(c) 2009 Alicia Forest
About the author: Alicia M Forest, MBA, 6-Figure Business Breakthrough Mentor, teaches self-employed professionals how to attract more clients, create profit-making products and services, make more sales, and ultimately live the life they desire and deserve. For FREE tips on how to create wild abundance in your business, visit http://www.ClientAbundance.com
Last week, I shared the 3 a-ha's I had from attending Ali Brown's Online Success Blueprint Workshop about a year ago (if you missed it, you can read it here).
Now I'd like to share with you some of the insights I came away with from attending SHINE (other than the fact that I really dislike Vegas – ugh).
1. I'm still not a joiner…
After Ali's event last year, I realized that I'm not a joiner. It became very clear to me how much an individual I am at that event – in a good way. Meaning that I've become very comfortable and confident in my own skin, in who I am as a person, both personally and professionally, without even realizing it. And my mindshift then was this, "My success does not depend on the 5 people I surround myself with. My success depends on me."
I've since modified it to this:
Mindset Shift: My success depends on me, AND is enhanced dramatically when I surround myself with the right people.
2. I'm still not a competitor…
Once again, I met so many success-driven AND purposeful business owners who validated my belief in abundance, that there is more than enough for everyone – and then some.
My mindshift a year ago was "I don't compete. I don't compare. I just am."
A slight modification now…
Mindset Shift: I don't compete. I don't compare. I just am shining my unique brilliance.
3. I'm still not your average mompreneur
Ok, this one actually did shift quite a bit for me. There were some amazing women at the event who also have families. Women who've built milllion-dollar businesses in just the last year or two. And I admire and applaud them for what it must have taken to make that happen.
What I realized is that, for me, is either I'm not that driven, competitive or want to work that hard. Perception is everything, and this is simply my own.
Mindset Shift: I'll make my million – on my terms, in my time.
So what do these mean? For me, it means that I'm stepping into the next higher vision of myself and my business, in the way that is most meaningful and authentic to me. It means that I'm embracing the role of the woman business owner who is as serious about her business as she is about her family, and that her family comes first.
It means I'm ready to blaze the trail and keep the light burning for those who want to design their successful business around what's most important to them. For me, that's my family. For you, it might be something else.
What to come along? Feel free to leave your comments below…
(c) 2009 Alicia Forest
About the author: Alicia M Forest, MBA, 6-Figure Business Breakthrough Mentor, teaches self-employed professionals how to attract more clients, create profit-making products and services, make more sales, and ultimately live the life they desire and deserve. For FREE tips on how to create wild abundance in your business, visit http://www.ClientAbundance.com
Creating a profitable business online is a process, just like creating any other business. Regardless of what it is that you're offering, your cash flow is based on your sales. Once you know and implement the online business sales cycle (which anyone can follow), you'll be able to create consistent cash flow for your business, too.
Here are the six basic steps in the online business sales cycle:
Step 1. Choose Your Prospects
"Prospects" is basically business-speak for potential clients and/or customers. So, who is the person who is ideally suited for your product, program or service? Who's your ideal client or customer? Who makes up your target market? Is it parents, health professionals, copywriters, dancers, artists, entrepreneurs, boat owners?
It's critical for the success of any business to choose a group of people to work with, even if that group is very broad at first. As you become more and more aware of what kind of client or customer shows up for you, you'll be able to more narrowly target that portion of the market, which will make your marketing a lot easier and bring you cash flow a lot quicker.
Step 2. Invite Them into Your Funnel
Once you know who your prospects are, you'll want to invite them into your Marketing & Product Funnel by giving them a free taste of what it is that you offer in exchange for their email address.
There are many ways to do this – using your email signature, offering free introductory teleseminars, speaking, co-registration programs, Google Adwords, writing and submitting articles, listing with directories, participating in discussion lists, etc.
Step 3. Keep in Touch
Once your prospects are in your funnel, you'll want to keep in touch with them on a consistent basis. Common marketing knowledge tells us that it takes a minimum of 5-12 times for your prospects to see your message before it even registers. That's why so many direct marketers will send you postcard after postcard with the same offer. They know that the only way to get you to take action on their offer is to expose you to the same or similar message over and over until you're ready to hear it.
A very effective way to keep in touch with your prospects then is via an ezine. Because following up with your prospects is vital to making sales from them, publishing an ezine on a consistent basis does this work for you. The bonus is that you can follow up with all of your prospects at once, instead of one by one, which leverages your time – something you should always be striving for.
Step 4. Make Offers
And because we want to leverage our time, if we're putting in the work to write and publish an ezine regularly, then we want to make sure that we are getting a return on that investment. To do so, you want to make at least one offer in your ezine that can result in sales for you.
You want to be sure to provide valuable content, but you also want to make sure that you invite people to take advantage of one or more of your offerings in each issue. If you don't make the ask, you won't make the money. So, if you're uncomfortable asking for the sale, my best suggestion is to get over it fast if you want to stay in business for the long haul.
Step 5. Master the Upsell
It takes most new small business owners awhile to grasp the concept of an upsell, but once they do, it takes their business to a whole new level.
Once you have one offering to make to your prospects, start putting together your next offering. You always want to have a place for them to go to next, always have something else to invite them to or to take advantage of. Find out what else they want from you, then create and offer it to them.
The more products you have to offer, the more sales you'll make because, instead of having to find new people all the time to buy your one product, you can upsell your current clients and customers into your other offerings. And selling to people who have already bought from you is much easier than converting new prospects all the time.
Step 6. Repeat the Process
The online business sales cycle is pretty simple really. Once you've done it once, it's very easy to repeat. As you're creating your own sales cycle, I suggest documenting what you do as you go along to make it that much easier to duplicate the next time around. Each time you repeat the process, your list of prospects will grow and so will your income!
(c) 2009 Alicia Forest
About the author: Alicia M Forest, MBA, 6-Figure Business Breakthrough Mentor, teaches self-employed professionals how to attract more clients, create profit-making products and services, make more sales, and ultimately live the life they desire and deserve. For FREE tips on how to create wild abundance in your business, visit http://www.ClientAbundance.com
During the first class in my 21 Easy & Essential Steps to Online Success Take Action Group, there's a palpable sigh of relief when I lead them through a realistic timeline to creating cash flow and success with their online business. So even though I tell them that sometimes it can take up to a year before they'll start seeing some consistent income (if they're real newbies), the pressure lifts and they can embrace the possibility of their business vision becoming real.
There are, of course, ways that you can accelerate this timeline. Here are just 5 of my favorite proven acceleration tips:
Tip 1. Put up your Free Taste and Invite Site asap.
The sooner you get that up, the sooner your list will grow, the sooner your revenue will grow. Get it out now (not perfect – just done!); you can always revise it (and you will).
Tip 2. Make sure your Free Taste really is just a taste of your offering.
It's something you should be able to put together within just a couple of days, if not hours. Make it finite and not something you need to keep working on. A mini-ecourse is a good example. Then introduce your ezine later.
Tip 3. Build your list
Take a piece of paper, write BUILD LIST big and bold, and stick it on your computer, on the wall next to your desk, or somewhere else you will see it and focus on it every day. The quickest way to build to the point of revenue generation in your business is to build your list.
Tip 4. Converge online and offline marketing efforts as much as possible.
If you're holding workshops, get email addresses. If you're sending direct mail, point the recipients to a URL to sign up for your list for your Free Taste.
Tip 5. Concentrate on building a core program.
Intensely create a core program that answers some of the main problems/solutions that your target market is struggling with to create a solid income stream (think Signature System). Then take pieces of that content and package it in various ways to create additional income streams.
Like these tips? I have even more specific strategies on how to set up and run your online business that creates cash flow consistently, which I'll be personally leading you through in my upcoming 21 Steps Take Action Group that starts on Wednesday, October 21, 2009. Spots are very limited, so reserve yours NOW.
(c) 2009 Alicia Forest
About the author: Alicia M Forest, MBA, 6-Figure Business Breakthrough Mentor, teaches self-employed professionals how to attract more clients, create profit-making products and services, make more sales, and ultimately live the life they desire and deserve. For FREE tips on how to create wild abundance in your business, visit http://www.ClientAbundance.com
Are you like many online business owners who are confused or stuck when it comes to creating a unique, memorable, and authentic brand? If so, you're not alone. I've been there myself, so I understand the frustration of feeling stuck on this whole branding thing.
But once I discovered that if I looked at it from a completely different perspective, that my brand wasn't just about my business, but about ME, everything shifted.
Creating your brand from the inside out allows you to fully step into your business identity in a truly authentic way. It's also the easiest way to stand out in the sea of others who do what you do.
So, if you're stuck, let me give you three things you must be clear on in order to create a truly compelling and unique business brand.
Strategy 1: What results do your clients experience from your service?
One of the exercises I do with my Platinum clients is have them generate a long list of the results their clients get from working with them.
You can easily do this right now. Just complete this sentence 30 times:
The results my clients get from working with me are ___________________________.
If you get stuck, here's my secret: Send this question to your clients so they can tell you the kind of results you're helping them create!
For example, when I asked my own clients this question, here's some of what they shared:
"The results I get from working with Alicia are…
– clear, easy to follow instructions on strategic Internet marketing techniques
– insightful advice from a trusted mentor who understands my business
– generous knowledge and expertise, honest feedback and support, focus and direction
– more clarity on which steps to take to experience more alignment with my business/life purpose
– I now see the bigger picture and base my decisions on the whole of my business, rather than just the next thing.
– stretching me in ways and areas that I could/would not do on my own.
– more clients, more money and more fun in working with my business.
– getting me out of my comfort zone so that I discover what is possible when I play a bigger game.
– more clarity and awareness around time sucking activities that I am engaging in so that I can STOP doing them.
Strategy 2: What are you an expert at?
Once you have a solid and in-depth grasp of the value you bring to you clients and the results you help create with them, you should easily be able to define what it is you're an expert at.
Complete this sentence: "I'm an expert at________________________."
Strategy 3: What does your brand promise?
Let's take it one step further…
Your brand promise is a statement that is pretty specific. It's true regardless of the program, product or service you may offer. No matter what the program, product or service, it always fulfills your brand promise.
And just to be clear, I'm not talking about your marketing tagline. What I'm talking about goes much deeper than that, to the very core of what it is that you are so passionate about providing to others.
My brand promise is, "I passionately inspire women entrepreneurs to breakthroughs in their business so they create the life they ache for."
So, my Platinum programs, Online Business Breakthrough Brainery, 21 Easy & Essential Steps to Online Success System and Take Action Group, Coaching Cafe, and the rest of my offerings all fulfill this brand promise.
Here's one from one of my Online Business Breakthrough clients, Dale Carter at TransitionAgingParents.com:
"I provide trusted information and personal insight to inspire adult children to passionately pursue, for their aging parents, the quality of life their parents hunger for."
So everything that Dale offers to her specific market fulfills this overarching promise. Dale knows what she is an expert at and that shows up in her brand promise very clearly.
So, what does your brand promise? What is it that your clients can count on you for?
The formula for an effective, compelling, memorable, authentic, fun and fabulous brand is really very simple:
"I get X results for my clients, which makes me an expert at Y, which means they can count on me to provide Z."
Voila!
(c) 2009 Alicia Forest
About the author: Alicia M Forest, MBA, 6-Figure Business Breakthrough Mentor, teaches self-employed professionals how to attract more clients, create profit-making products and services, make more sales, and ultimately live the life they desire and deserve. For FREE tips on how to create wild abundance in your business, visit http://www.ClientAbundance.com
Whenever someone new visits your website, your #1 goal is to get them on your email list. That way you have a method of keeping them up-to-date on your latest offerings, so when they're ready to hire you or buy your product, you're right there in their inbox.
And having a way for them to join your list that is both simple and effective will dramatically increase both your list numbers and your sales.
Here are the three biggest mistakes I see regularly on business websites:
1. Not having a way to capture your visitors. Most people don't bite on the first pass, and once they click away, it's unlikely they'll be back. Don't lose them by not having a way for them to sign up for your list.
2. The opt-in box is buried. If your visitor can't find the form to sign up, then how can they?
TIP: Testing shows that the upper right-hand corner of your webpage is one of the best spots for your opt-in box.
3. The sign-up form says something unenticing like "click here for mailing list" – ugh!
So, here are 5 proven ways that you can instantly increase your opt-in rates:
1. Give your visitor only one choice.
You may have heard of a 1-banana website, or single action website, or what I call an Invite Site, which is exactly that. You're giving your visitor only one option – the invitation to sign up for your list via your free ezine, special report, checklist, ebook, etc. They get their freebie in exchange for giving you their email address.
One of my clients recently implemented this idea for her coaching business, which was a big leap of faith for her. I just got a joyful email from her saying that she's noticed a substantial increase in her opt-ins since!
It works, so don't be afraid to try it. And by the way, a testimonial or two on your Invite Site doesn't hurt either.
2. Write enticing copy.
Remember that people tend to skim what they read online, so make sure you have an attention-getting headline and some additional brief copy describing the benefits your visitor will receive by signing up for your list. As always, make sure it answers the most prominent question in your visitor's mind, "what's in it for me?"
3. Have only two form fields: First Name and Primary Email
If you capture someone's name along with their email address, you can easily personalize any future correspondence with them, which is proven to increase open and response rates. In other words, if you address something to someone individually, they feel more connected and are more likely to respond well to your mailings.
If you ask for a Primary Email address, many people will give it to you, as opposed to a back-up email address that they hardly ever check. And you'll get higher quality email addresses simply by asking them to give you their primary one, which means you'll have less bounce-backs and your emails will actually get through to the people who asked to receive them.
Only having these two form fields makes it a snap for someone to sign up, so you've made it as simple as possible for your visitor to do so.
4. Have a clear submit button.
Like having a single action website, you want to make it very clear what it is that you want your visitor to do. Have your submit button say something like, "subscribe" or "sign me up now" or "send me the ecourse".
5. Share your privacy policy.
Share your privacy policy on the same page, and keep it simple. Something like, "We will never share your email address, period." will work wonders for alleviating your visitors' fears of getting lots of spam.
Follow these 5 easy-to-implement strategies and you will dramatically increase the number of websites visitors who sign up for your list!
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