New Customer Acquisition vs Customer Retention?

Every business owner wants new customers and often their sole focus is the acquisition of new customers. They spend the majority of their time looking for new customers and often neglect the fact that their existing customers could be buying from them more often.

Often business owners don't realize how big the cost is to attract a new client. This is because most people don't measure the process. This calculation is as simple as taking all the costs involved in attracting new customers and dividing it by the amount of new customers acquired in the same period.

The costs should include advertising, the business owner's or a sales person's time, a portion of the car lease, a portion of the office rent, computer costs, stationery costs, etc. - Yes, these must all be added in to get a true reflection. Do this calculation in your business and you will be shocked as to how expensive it actually is.

Now, the value of a business is largely determined by the customer base. If the customer base is dominated by A-grade customers with a great average lifetime value then this business will be much more valuable than say, a business with a customer base of one-off buyers.

So, if it's so much cheaper to sell to existing customers, shouldn't you be focusing the minority of your time on new customer acquisition and the majority of your time on keeping your existing customers coming back for more? After all, the focus on existing customers will make them raving fans who will talk about you anyway... Right there is a huge sales force.

I can hear it now... Some of you saying "but I sell a product or a service and there is no reason for the customer to come back." Well then find something! Look at software. You buy the software and it does the job, but then they come out with an upgrade. More bells and whistles that you probably don't need, but most people will buy just to have the latest version.

Look at other industries, how do they encourage repeat sales? Take the strategies and adapt them to your business...

Here's how to create a flood of new customers and cash into your business.

The Single Most Powerful Way To Easily Create Profits Is Joint Ventures

The single most powerful way to create great wealth as a small business is to joint venture with other businesses.

If Microsoft had to sell their software products to each individual end user, imagine the resources that would have been required to market the product. How hard would it have been to sell software with no credibility? Bill Gates had a little unknown company and approached IBM with an idea to put his DOS software on all of their PC's. IBM, thought the money was in building the computers, so they agreed. Now windows is the platform used for 90% of computers.

Take a look at your business right now. Think about whatever product or service you sell and then think of which businesses share the same group of clients. An example would be a landscape gardening business could joint venture with developers, with the builder, with the lawn mowing contractor and with the window cleaner. Every business needs an extra income stream and if it's as simple as providing a recommendation for a 10% commission, or sharing clients, why not.

I have seen auto workshops joint venture with tyre suppliers and offer a free service (valued at $197) with every set of new tyres sold. It attracts the clients looking for a new set of tyres to their business, rather than the competitor, because of the free service. In most cases the tyres may be more expensive but the free service draws them in. The perceived value is what the client looks at. The win for the auto workshop is that they gain a new client with a great lifetime value.

There are thousands of examples of Joint Ventures and several variations of how they can work. The one thing in common is to think in terms of businesses that share the same customers. Then think of logical steps in the sequence. If you buy a garage door, there is about a ninety percent chance you're going to need a garage door service in the future. If you buy a house there is a ninety percent chance you're going to need a mortgage. If you buy a car there is almost a hundred percent chance you're going to need auto insurance.

Keep thinking about different opportunities, joint ventures are the single most powerful way to catapult yourself into an almost overnight success.

How to improve 4 areas in your business and multiply your profits... FAST!

Insanity is Not Taking The Time To Think

Sometimes I wonder if business owners think... Yes you read right, do they actually think?

Do they take the time to stand back from their business and just think about what they are actually trying to achieve!

Do they think about how they could improve their results - do more with less?

Do they think about how they could add extra income streams and earn while they sleep?

Do they think about potential problems - a new competitor, different market requirements, interest rate hikes, staff leaving and competing against them...?

Do they think about sickness... What if the business owner is the sales person and they get sick. I remember getting pneumonia a few years ago and being unable to work for over 6 weeks.

It would be completely insane to ignore these things.

Take the time today to stand back and THINK!

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The Customer Is Always Right... Or Are They?

Don't you just hate it when businesses treat you like trash? You get the distinct impression that you are not welcome, you are just another annoying client, another customer that will make their day even worse. But what about when the business owner treats you like that.

I think these employees and business owners should remember who pays their wages. Now, I know that dealing with the public can be hard and there are some people out there who make it their sole purpose in life to make the business owners life hell. But they are in the minority so don't paint us all with the same brush.

Being a property investor we get targeted by mortgage brokers. Normally we tell them politely to go away because we have an ongoing relationship with a bank. But one persistent lady broker got our attention and after listening to a presentation about why we should use her as a broker and how much money we could save... We decided to give her a go.

She had put a lot of effort into capturing our business, which was impressive. We wrongly assumed that was the benchmark and that we could expect some great service. We spent over 4 hours in total looking at different bank proposals, wading through forms, applications and listening to why this bank had the best deal but we shouldn't deal with them because... She was so detailed it was driving us crazy. We just wanted a recommendation with a few options to choose from... SIMPLE!

Eventually we got to filling out an application form, only to be called the next day, to say that she had found a better deal. She had destroyed the initial application and could we come in and sign the other application.... aaaarghh. Why had we ever entertained this idea!!

But it got worse... The application was rejected by the bank and we got sent a $660 bill for the cost of valuing 2 houses. We had seemingly agreed in writing to paying for these valuations, but our file had been destroyed by the broker within 4 weeks of the application being submitted.

This broker now has a very disgruntled customer. She spent all that money, time and effort to get us in the door only to have us walking out, vowing never to use her services again, potentially $660 out of pocket and telling everyone that asks. Fortunately I walked back into our original bank and received the finance within 24 hours.

What a huge waste of effort. She had hooked us and just needed to close the deal to have clients for life... But she blew it, massively.

The broker could have been earned just over $50,000 in commission, on this loan, over the 30 year period, if we never refinanced. But even if we had refinanced in 6 years she still would have earned $10,000 and probably would have got the commission on the new deal anyway.

We tell our friends, because they ask, and they tell theirs and the loss of business to this broker is huge.

Unfortunately I have heard of 2 other cases where this broker has treated clients the same way and I don't believe she can see what damage she is doing. She is not analyzing why she is not closing and is making matters even worse by going in for the attack by demanding the $660.

Some people just don't get it...

What about your business, how are you and your staff treating clients. Remember it's the small things that count. Always consider, not only what the client will spend with you today, but in their lifetime and, even more importantly, how many other people will they refer to your services.

Add it all up and you will be astounded at the dollar value... It'll make it much easier to smile and do everything you possibly can, to ensure that client has a fantastic experience.

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Is Marketing An Expense

Ask your Accountant and they'll probably tell you that advertising is an expense. Advertising is recorded on your profit and loss schedule as an expense. And I guess if you pay to run a large ad in the local newspaper and make no sales directly from it, then it's definitely an expense.

But if you spend $200 to run an ad and it produces a profit of $1,000 then I would say that was money well spent... It was a great investment.

Every now and again there will be times when your cashflow is tight, the budget is stretched and the first idea that may pop into your head will be, were can I cut my costs. And usually it's the advertising budget. But if you cut back on the advertising, the new enquiries will dry up and it becomes a no win situation.

What about if you learned to market effectively, so that every $1 that you spent returned $5. Imagine having a consistent amount of new enquiries every day, week or month. Imagine having your schedule booked 6 months in advance and watch every week as your profits multiply... click here to learn more.

Click here for (at least) 21 compelling reasons why this 'Copywriting Seminar-In-A-Box' will wind up putting more money in your bank account than any other business tool you've ever acquired.