February 2, 2007
The Bottom Half of Your Sales Hourglass
Today I’d like to continue my discussion about your marketing hourglass.
Once your customers have passed through the center of your marketing hourglass, your task now is to move them further down, which means you’re getting additional revenue from them.
So how do you get your customes to move further down the hourglass?
Here are 4 suggestions:
1. Continually Present Them With Offers
The only way you’ll ever be able to extract additional revenue from you customers is to sell more services to them. This could be in the form of repeat services or services they haven’t purchased yet. And the only way you’ll be able to do this is to present them with opportunities to buy from you again.
Don’t be shy about sending them additional offers and opportunities to buy from you. You don’t have to do a ‘hard sell’ every time, but it is important to continually remind your customers about the products and services you sell.
Put offers in front of your customers on a regular basis and watch your sales grow.
2. Present Them With Offers for Services of Increasing Value
Just as you want to move your prospects step-by-step towards becoming a customer, you want to baby step your existing customers up the ladder of products and services you offer.
What I mean by this is that you start them off with a low-risk, trial offer that is at the very bottom of your price scale; something like a one-time service. Then a short time later, you sell them on a service package that’s more expensive. Finally, you sell them on a full-blown maintenance package that incorporates a number of your smaller service packages.
Follow this model and you’ll have more up-sells and cross-sells than ever before without even thinking about it.
3. Continually Communicate With Them
One of the most important things you can do to move your customers further into your hourglass is to communicate with them frequently. Most businesses make the mistake of only communicating when they’re providing their service of when they send a bill. Then they’re surprised when the customer leaves them for the competition.
If you’re not communicating with your customers at least monthly, you’re losing 10% of the value of the relationship. It really doesn’t take much to stay in touch with your customers to let them know you’re thinking about them and with all the tools available today (email, voice broadcast, postcards, etc.), it’s silly NOT to communicate with your customers at least once a month.
4. Don’t Take Them For Granted
This is the biggest mistake many businesses make and the reason why they struggle to survive. People like to do business where they’re appreciated and unless your customers know how much you appreciate them, they’ll be off to your competitor at the first sign of cheaper prices.
Letting your customers know you appreciate their business is not as complicated as many might think. If you’re following the previous suggestion and communicate with them frequently, they should know how much you appreciate them.
Sending them periodic greeting cards for birthdays or holiday is another excellent way to let them know how much they mean to your business. Also, a periodic phone call just to ‘check up on them’ is another fantastic way to make sure you customers know they matter.
If you’ll follow these 4 suggestions, you’ll soon find your marketing hourglass has become bottom-heavy, filled with lots of satisfied, loyal customers.
Put the entire hourglass system in motion, and your business will be humming along for many years to come.
Filed under Lawn Care Marketing by Chestin
