Give Your Customers Options.

Give your customers options... What do I mean? Well you are spending either time or money to advertise your business constantly. It might be paid advertising, the advertising on your car or the front of your building, the advertising on your uniform, business card or word of mouth.

Now if a potential customer rings you up or walks through your door, some part of your advertising has worked... But now it is up to you to convert and sell them something. I'll give you an example:

It's now winter in Western Australia and although our winters are pretty mild our houses are generally built to cater for the heat so when the mercury gets low, we need heating. Our house is open plan and we have a wood fire heater which works great. But I work at home, and every now and again during the day I would like to heat the house. Now comes the inconvenience of having to get the wood, start the fire put up with a bit of wood smoke in the house while it starts and all in all it would probably waste about half an hour of my time.

So, I see a glossy advert in the junk mail for a portable gas heater that will heat the entire house, is self igniting and it has a remote! So I could press a button and be warm, seems like a good convenient solution. First like always I do a Google search to make sure there is not a better solution and notice the advertisers on the right are all supplier ads and nobody local is advertising there? Well off I go to the glossy ad shop to have a look. The shop is small, they sell cooling and heating solutions, it is well laid out, with 3 staff when I walk in. I wasn't in there 30 seconds when I get asked "Can I help?" I feel great, the shop is inviting, the staff friendly and I'm ready to spend, credit card in hand.

I explain my situation and get directed to a portable gas solution with remote... Yes! But then the sales person tells me all the features! I want the benefits... In my boredom I flick over the price tag and notice it's $1250 and while he is rambling on about the convection and igniter mechanism I'm thinking, I can't really justify that cost, maybe I'm just being lazy I'll start the fire at 6am so it doesn't disrupt my day... Ohhh, he stopped talking and I didn't hear the part where he said "I'll get you a brochure" and walked off. He returned with a 4 page glossy brochure in hand, price written next to the model he suggested, I said thank-you and walked out? After all I'm being lazy, I'll chop the wood on the weekend... what was I thinking.

That small business relies on local sales and they have made a big effort to get people through the door, but they are leaving a huge bundle of cash on the table by not converting and making sales. When a customer rings you or walks through your door it is imperative that you sell them something or at the very minimum get their name and contact details so you can directly market to them until they buy. The sales person in the heating shop knew my problem but didn't identify my objections? My objection was the price, I couldn't justify the price, he didn't identify that. But if he had explained that these heaters generally last 10 years and therefore it will cost less than $1 per day to run and then asked me if my time was worth more than $1 for half an hour... I would've been sold.

Or offer me a payment plan or a rental plan or even better identified my real problem which was the time it takes to get the wood fire going and offering a solution with compressed paper that ignites immediately and is smokeless or something... Give me options, sell me something. I had walked in expecting to spend money, they had paid with there advertising to get me there, I walked out with nothing... We both lost. They lost money for not converting and I lost because I didn't have a solution.

It is always better to have part of a profit that you otherwise wouldn't have had. It would have been better for them to have sold me a $10 product rather than nothing and offered to email me a free report on "10 ways to efficiently heat your home" if I ticked the box accepting their weekly newsletter. I am then a qualified customer and they have my details for future marketing. It is expensive to get a customer to call or walk through the door don't let them slip through your fingers and go next door.

You and your staff should have a goal to convert 100% of people that call or walk in to your business... And the conversion can be anything from a sale to getting their contact details. Remember those customers pay your salary...