Getting Clients
Getting clients for your business, no matter what your business, can be a full time job in itself. Whether you are a long time business owner, a freelancer or a start up, you have to figure out how to get people interested in your product or your service on a consistent basis so that you can make ends meet. You know you have a product, artwork, a service or a special talent that everyone loves when they see it, but getting people to see it and then converting that into people wanting it can be the basic challenge. We know that your true talent lies in that product or art piece or the service, so you need to be forgiven for not having the greatest talent in getting clients. But with a few tweaks and a bit of know how, you can get clients running into your door. The following is a basic list of what you can do to get those people, make them happy and put regular money into your pocket.
First, simplify everything! No one has time today for complications. Both you and your prospective client are too busy to fill out a hundred forms and answer questionnaires by the boatload. The client wants to know what you can do for them in the easiest and fastest way. They do not want to be involved in a long, drawn out process. Get to the point and do it fast.
On your side of things, you want clients who are going to make a decision just as easily and as quickly. You don’t have time for the proverbial tire kickers. They either buy your product, your piece of art or your service or they don’t! NEXT! as they say at the DMV. The YES people are the ones that energize and fuel your business.
What you need for that energy and fuel is an excellent offer that you make to a solid email list and then dedicate time to following up. Any other complication, pause or hesitation is just distraction. Move on quickly.
Next, make yourself, your art, your product or your service stand out. Unless you are selling something that no one has ever seen before in the history of man, then there are probably a half dozen others products/services/artworks just like you in your competitive market. But, what makes you different? Do you sell for less than others? Do you get your service done in half the time? Is your artwork more colorful, unique and interesting than any of those others? Then tell everyone far and wide! You don’t want to come to the job as someone who is OK. You want to be GREAT and you want to offer GREATNESS. Same old same old can indicate that you are cheap and not of great quality. Some may settle for that but most won’t. They like to spend their money on things that excite them and makes them feel good. If a client is trying to get a problem solved and everyone is describing their product/service/artwork the same, their next choice is to choose someone by way of their price. And you want to be known for much more than your price. You have value and so does your offerings. Therefore, your job is to make sure you don’t look the same as everyone else. Figure out what your “uniqueness” is and expound on that. Create an image of who you are and what your product is and shout it from the rooftops!
And then there is the rule of NO! Business people fall into the trap of saying yes to absolutely everything and customers know that. Go into any large chain restaurant and make a complaint. Management will fall over backwards not only to please you but to make sure that you never ever call corporate and complain. Large corporations can take the hit of a comped meal or a free dessert, but a small business can not succeed if they give away everything to make a client happy. When you are starting out, you may have to do some tasks that are burdensome, but as you gain a reputation for excellent service or for a much wanted product, learn to say no to all those extra little things that could bog down the essential theme of your business. The other secret to this little saying no trick is that when people can’t have something, they want it even more. People want what they can’t have. The more you can say “no” the more people will want you to say “yes”. The way to make this work for you and not lose a client is to make their desire a bit of a money maker. Perhaps you have the ability to do the task that the client wants, but it is not your best feature and it is exceedly time consuming. So, charge them for having to go out of your way. As an artist, I do not like to sell my pictures with frames. I let the client do the framing so that the frame matches their taste and decor. But, if the client insists that I frame the picture, I will find a plain black frame and charge them the cost of the frame plus another 50% of the frame price for the work of framing. The painting cost $100...the frame cost $20...framing work cost $10...the total price is $130. But, you also have the opportunity of saying that you will not frame the picture at all and just refer them to someone who will do the job. Understand the definition of your specialty and if the need of a client is outside of that specialty, just say no!
In today’s digital age, email is one of the easiest, cheapest, and most convenient ways to market to a broad audience. If you’re wanting to reach individuals but perhaps are unsure of whether you’d like to do direct mail to people’s mailboxes, we at Everest Direct Mail and Marketing, can help you create a virtual mail campaign directly to people’s inboxes instead. With our highly skilled copywriters, we can create interesting and attention-grabbing emails to send out to prospects. We can create a full email marketing campaign, with follow up emails and automatic response emails that lead the clients directly to you. These emails can be highly personalized with merge fields specific to the person being emailed, just like a direct mail campaign. You can hyper-target the recipients through a detailed list and set up an exact schedule these emails are to go out.
