Everyone is a potential customer! Everyone!

Everyone is a potential customer. Naturally the people you deal with right now, but who they know, thier neighbours, family, friends, associates, suppliers, and everyone they come into contact with as well. Why couldn’t every person you currently deal with or know, refer you to another customer? Well the truth is they could, but they don’t, because you don’t ask, or even try to find out who they are and where the potential is.

The idea of being in business is to attract as many customers as possible! Not just a few. A few doesn’t build a succesfull business. A few might be enough for some and enough to give you maybe an average wage, but it certainly will never be enough to build a strong, successful and constantly growing business. The key here is continuous marketing, quality sales and service systems and the knowledge that everyone you come across, not just the people that walk in the door, are potential customers, and should be treated that way.

Most business owners for some reason only think of a potential customer as someone that walks in, calls in, or enquiers via a website and even then, there’s no real process for capturing and keeping that prospect or client, (but that’s a session for another day). Even people that are relatively sales focused, that are in direct sales or regular “networkers” seem to think that if this person doesn’t buy, they never will, or they don’t know anyone that would. And that’s just not the case.

Everyone’s a potential customer, but if they don’t know it, or don’t know about you, then there’s virtually zero chance of ever getting them to deal with you!

So here are a couple of ideas, that can hopefully get you a little more focused, to be ready at every opportunity, to attract customers, no matter where they come from.

• For starters, if someone actually walks in, calls in or makes an enquiry, do something with it. Have a sales process to handle these enquiries the right way, but also capture the data, so it can be followed up on and followup on again and again, until they become customers.
• Develop a referral system, everyone knows someone right? But if you never ask, you don’t get! 85% of all customers would refer someone, if asked, but they’re not, so they don’t. It’s that simple.
• Networking. Yes I know just about everyone hates it, but if your in business, get to at least be comfortable with it. It is an important part of being a business owner. Know how to talk to people, what to say, how to hand out a business card, and how to follow up after.
• Business cards. There are some that are saying they’re going out of style, it’s all digital. Not true, people want cards, but you need to make them interesting, have some digital aspect like a QR code on them, give some info and link back to your website. They still are the simplest and cheapest form of marketing around. Ensure all staff have them, and maybe have a few different ones too. 1000 cards will cost under $100. Just make sure people in the business give them out to everyone.
• Elevator pitch. Know what to say when anyone says, “so what do you do”? It doesn’t have to be a full on sales pitch, it can be, but it just needs to be a 30 second story about what you do. Everyone, including neighbours, friends, family, members of your golf club, all need to know what you do. What if they went somewhere else, just because they didn’t know you did what they needed.
• Suppliers, anyone that delivers something, even the courier or postie, and your friends and their friends are potential customers. Be friendly, treat them well. If you don’t, they won’t be back to buy from you anyway.
• Staff are they greatest source of potential customers around, they already know what you do, but are they telling everyone. The answer is probably not. Do they have thier own cards, do they know how to tell people about what they do? Everybody in the company they work for, should be partly responsible for lead generation, it’s their income too.

Potential customers are everywhere and they’re probably walking past you right now simply because they don’t know what you do, even though they know you!

Start thinking a little different about where your customers come from and who they could be connected too. Many times over the years, huge sales have been made to customers referred to by someone else that was only an average customer themselves, some weren’t even customers!

It starts with some basic customer service skills, treating customers and potential customers like they really are everything, so they actually want to do business with you, even if they don’t right now, getting them back by keeping in touch, developing a relationship and then finding out if theres anyone they know, that might actually be interested in what you have to offer too.

Very occasionally, it happens by itself, but generally not. Client attraction is a key business driver and if your wanting to really build your business, this is one aspect you should be thinking about 80% of the time. (You probably want to shut down at some point right?)

If you’d like to know more about the client attraction process that attracts and keeps as many customers as you can possibly handle, and other key business drivers, drop me an email to info@mybusinessnow.com.au