Customers Are Everywhere, If You Know Where To Look

Take a good look at the picture. This is solid proof that customers are everywhere around you.

You just have to keep your eyes open.

This is what I’ve coined the “Sales Cycle” – and it’s where you can find customers at any point in your business. Some people you are just meeting, others, you have been doing business with for a long time, while others still have known you, but never done business with you.

It works kind of like a wheel. You are at the hub, and each “spoke” represents a public-facing point in your business where you could potentially meet new customers. The right half of the image is where most people think of meeting new clients (Meet, Lead, Client), but customers are also found on the left half of the Cycle.

But like Thomas Edison once said, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work“. The left side of the Cycle takes a little more work, but produces far better customers as a result.

Becoming Friends With Your Customers

By Jennifer Fitzgerald

I just had to tell you all about my encounter with a good friend of mine and how it is so relate-able to building relationships with your customers.

My friend has a condo that she rents out. She is thinking of selling it and buying another home in Florida, as “snowbirds” often do.

She was telling me about her Realtor, who sells residential as well as commercial real estate. Each year, he sends out calendars with his family’s picture  on it. He also sends her a card or e-mail every few months to ask how she is doing.

When she was talking to him, he told her it was not a good time to sell her condo because she would not get as much out of it as she would want. She mentioned that the commission on her condo was probably peanuts compared to what he would earn for selling a commercial building.

His comment to her was that “it was not about the money…it was about the friendships”.

He gets it! This Realto does what you need to do: become your customer’s friend. Stop selling just to sell and focus instead on building those relationships. That’s when the sales will consistently roll in!

When I asked her who she would use if she ever sold any of her property, of course she emphatically said “HIM! And I recommend him to everyone I know!”

That is what we want in a customer. That is what your customer wants from you.

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About The Author

Jen Fitzgerald is the owner of The Client Angel, the proven tool for the Direct Selling community.

The Client Angel is an online customer relationship management tool designed to work with your company’s website to catapult your business to greater heights. Give yourself the organization you deserve. Stop worrying, and start succeeding with the “gentle reminders” you need to effectively follow-up and build relationships with your customers – for a lifetime. Visit Jen’s website for a free demo of The Client Angel today.

Online Marketing When Your Direct Sales Company Says “No”

Talking with one of my VIP coaching clients this week, she shared her frustration that her company has put the kibosh on consultants using Facebook Pages to promote their business. Along with a slew of other fuzzy guidelines, her company is essentially pulling in the reins on all forms of online marketing using the company name, logo, or likeness. She expressed that not only were the consultants upset with the change, but also many of teh leaders, who had been using Facebook as their personal online sales magnet for months now.

I told her that this was an opportunity to get excited instead of getting bummed. Because now, the playing field truly was level, and everyone could market themselves rather than the company they represented.

Stop Boring Your Customers! 5 Tips To Keep Your Demonstrations Fresh And Effective

As a direct sales coach, one of the questions I see regularly is on the topic of keeping things interesting during a home show or demonstration.

Before I offer my tips, I want to take a moment to offer a warning:

Just because YOU think your demo is boring doesn’t mean your customers do. When a consultant gets used to a routine, it can seem monotonous or tedious to “perform” the same show or demonstration over and over at every event or home party. For you, this is “same stuff, different day”, but for your host or clients, this may be entirely new for them.

In the advertising world, it’s said that when the company is tired of seeing their commercials on TV, that’s when they’ve finally started being effective, because people now recognize them. In that instance, change would be a bad thing, but very often, that’s exactly what the companies do.

The result is often counter to their desired outcome.

Think of it this way: if a musician or an actor has been practicing the same part for months on end, it can get very monotonous for the player. However, the audience will only hear them perform it once. Twice if it’s exceptional. Three or more times if it was recorded AND exceptional.

The audience will rarely get bored. And it would be in poor taste for a performer to show up and decide they were going to do something completely different just to “spice things up” for the show. Imagine the shock and horror if a saxophonist decided that, just for tonight, he was going to play some jazz instead of the Mozart piece everyone else was scheduled to play. Or an actor shows up ready to do Neil Simon, only to find out the director decided to do Shakespeare tonight instead.

Before you get itchy to change things up in your demonstration, make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons. Your boredom is not necessarily the right reason.

That said, if you find yourself doing the same presentation over and over to the exact same audience, you may find it’s time to change some of the elements of your presentation to keep listeners engaged. Here are some suggestions:

Using Twitter to Build Your Online Business

As a direct sales professional, my first taste of success came when I discovered the power of the internet. In less than 90 days, I built a national team in a party plan company and promoted to leadership for the first time after more than a decade in the industry.

Then came social media. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and YouTube created an entirely new landscape to reach prospects, build business, and grow my organization.

And I was scared out of my mind.

See, I didn’t “get” the concept of social media. I was socially awkward myself. Plus, with all the confusing rules that most companies have about “internet advertising” I couldn’t figure out a way to navigate the social media landscape without pulling out my hair.

First, I went to MySpace, but with so much spam, and “fake accounts” I couldn’t tell who was real and who was scamming me. So I left.

I set up my twitter account and started following people. I didn’t understand why people were talking about what they ate for breakfast. How’s that beneficial to business?

So then I went to facebook, where it seemed like everybody I knew was “hanging out”. But there were so many applications. People were “poking” me, asking me to be in their “mafia war” or help them work on their garden in “farmville”, and it was maddening. Then, I got sucked into one of those games myself, and found i was spending more time playing than I was building relationships.

And I was too scared to do video. In fact, if it weren’t for a contest that Mark Joyner put together, I probably would never had made a video in the first place. In fact, I didn’t even use a video camera in my first video, just a picture, my voice, and some music I wrote. I ended up with an honorable mention in the contest, and a little less fear about doing video.

But I still wasn’t keen on the idea, so back to twitter I went.

This time, I just watched for a bit. Trying to figure out who I really wanted to connect with. I figured that if I was just talking to myself, I wouldn’t be too productive. So I started following people I wanted to learn more from. I watched what they were doing, who they were talking to and what they were saying to generate followers.

It didn’t take long to figure out I was doing some things wrong – and a few things right. That first year, I earned more than $30,000 because of twitter. Plus, I made some great contacts and new friends. REAL friends, which surprised me. And while I still don’t have fifty gazillion followers on twitter, the relationships I have are high-quality, conversational and engaging. I actually know most of the folks I “follow back” on twitter, and that’s a good feeling. Here are some lessons learned that may help you use twitter to grow your own direct sales business.