Turn customers into your sales force
By Joanna L. Krotz
The most effective sales team you'll ever find is enthusiastic
customers. The reason is simple enough: Customers aren't paid to praise.
When a customer becomes a passionate believer in your brand, it means
you truly earned it. Whenever they buy your product or service,
customers feel like special club members or rebels for your cause.
But a repeat customer alone doesn't create a sales team. The trick is
to transform that dedicated buyer into a missionary who spreads the word
and converts friends, family and associates into customers, too. By
building great word-of-mouth, you nurture an all-volunteer sales force
that generates leads, boosts sales and leverages marketing dollars. Here
are three basic ways to persuade people to talk up your business story. As
you develop the customer sales force, you'll find other options suited to
your business.
1. Set Up a Referral Program
The easiest starting point is to ask customers who are already fans to
recommend you. First, let them know you're creating a referral program by
sending out a letter or a postcard that explains how much you value their
business and that your continued quality depends on their referrals.
You'll get a better response if you include an incentive—say, a discount
on the next order or a gift for every referral sent your way.
To keep building advocates, send your referral program letter to every
new customer within a few days of his first purchase. You might also ask
for written testimonials about your products, which can be included on
direct mail postcards, mailers or brochures or posted on your Web and
tucked into e-mail marketing. Send these testimonials to targeted customer
lists, along with your appropriate sales materials. Customer referrals can
also be mailed to prospects to help open doors or to introduce you to
important contacts. For instance: Tom Smith thought you'd want to see
this. Then follow up with phone calls.
Once you have set up the referral program, Business Contact Manager for
Outlook 2003 lets you to track the referrals. Each Business Contact or
Account listing has a Referred By field that you can use to quickly
identify the source of the referral, whether by advertisement, direct
mail, seminar, trade show, internal referral, external referral, partner,
or public relations.
In addition, the Source of Leads Report in Business Contact Manager
quickly gives you insight into customers you'll want to contact. This
pre-formatted report lists all of your Accounts and Business Contacts,
grouped by how they were referred, whether by advertisement, direct mail,
seminar, trade show, internal referral, external referral, partner, or
public relations.
2. Elevate Your Profile
Whether you sell upmarket services or mass-market widgets, you can
generate positive publicity to make your company stand out—although it
takes some sustained effort to build recognition.
As a professional service, you can position yourself as the go-to
authority for media or industry news reporters. That requires some
investment in crafting an innovative speech or survey or advocacy position
that gets you noticed on the conference or trade show circuit. You might
also hire a publicist to help get exposure. Such pros are often paid on a
per-project or per-performance basis so you aren't on the hook for hefty
retainer fees.
Or, you can publicize on your own—for instance by highlighting your
family's background, like Perdue does, or its homegrown recipes, like
Colombo yogurt does. Your goal is to weave an emotional story or hook that
will draw press.
You can also become identified with a cause or a charity. Ben & Jerry's
Ice Cream, for instance, was founded on only $12,000 back in 1978. But the
two owners created a national powerhouse out of high-priced unconventional
flavors and the good will of philanthropy. Before that, few companies
talked about social responsibility. Nowadays, hundreds do.
Either way, the important thing here is to be sincere. Promote only
what you really believe in.To begin building publicity, create a personal
and company media kit, which can be quickly done with Microsoft Publisher.
3. Choose Smart Partners
By forging alliances with businesses that target the same customers as
you do, you'll create a word-of-mouth customer network that refers
business. For instance, if you're a pediatrician, you might leave your
business cards at the reception area of a local day care center. Likewise,
the center might put up some posters on your office bulletin board. A
parent who uses daycare services might recommend you to another.
Or, let's say you own an auto body shop. You can partner with a car
wash/detailing service. The car wash might mail out your flyers along with
monthly invoices and also place a stack of flyers on the counter for
customers. You obviously do likewise. Takeout delis and caterer provides
another matching combo. You get the idea.
You can also develop special arrangements with partners to offer
discounts or perks—printed on the back of the flyers—that are only
available to customers who patronize both businesses.
Don't forget your suppliers and vendors. Ask them to recommend you to
their customers. Remind them that by referring sales leads or business to
you, you're helping to build their business, too. To make it work, you
must return the favor.
Experts say that customer referrals and word-of-mouth are about ten
times for effective than other marketing. When it comes to bang for the
buck, you can't go wrong with buzz.It's everywhere you want to be.
Joanna L. Krotz
writes about small-business marketing and management issues, and runs
Muse2Muse Productions, a New York-based content strategy and editorial
services firm.
