If you’re like every other sales professional on the planet, 80 percent of your sales come from the same 20 percent of your customers. Your biggest challenge is to keep the customers you have in your “base” loyal to you so you can retain present business, while closing new prospects.
How are you doing that now? Let me answer that question in three words: Not well enough!
Want a great way, a fast way, an effective way, an inexpensive way to do it? Sure you do. One hitch: it requires work, thought, quality, and action. Rats.
Answer: Your personal newsletter/blog.
A newsletter/bog helps you keep the attention of (hold on to your) current customers. Elaine Floyd, author, speaker and newsletter expert extraordinare, calls it Bathtub Selling. “Here’s how it works.” explains Floyd. “You’re trying to fill the bathtub, that is, expand your customer base. While pouring water into the tub, you want to make sure none of the nice hot water (present customers) escapes down the drain. Think of the newsletter/blog as the best soap, fine aromas, silky bath oils and the plug in the bottom of the tub.”
“A good newsletter/blog keeps you in front of customers, adds value to your services, establishes your expertise and credibility and saves your valuable selling time.” Floyd adds. “It bathes the customer in the essence of “you” without you being there.”
You’ve no doubt heard about the great things that newsletters/blogs can do, but just can’t find the time to get one written. If so, you’re also getting used to losing some business here and there because you didn’t make a key call at the right time but your competitors did. You’re rolling with it when you find out that someone else just gets some business from your best buyer because, “I didn’t know you offered that product or service.” After all, you can’t be everywhere at once, right?
Wrong. A good newsletter/blog is like your own clone delivered through email. You can put together a simple article, post it on your website, send it out to your subscriber list and BE everywhere at once. And, you can do your newsletter/blog post in a few hours.
Come on jump in, the (bath) water’s fine.
If you’re still not sure that a newsletter will help your selling, take Elaine Floyd’s quick quiz:
Yes No (Circle Yes or No for each question.)
Y N Do you have good customers you’d like to stay in touch with without interrupting them with phone calls or visits?
Y N Is your product or service line changing quickly?
Y N Do some of your best customers NOT know about latest product offerings and how each one benefits them?
Y N Do your customers like hearing stories of businesses similar to theirs and how they’ve been successful?
Y N Can you share information that saves your customers time and money, helps them get more business or prepares them for the future?
Y N Have you heard any of your customers say, “I didn’t know you did that?”
If you answered “yes” to three or more of these six questions, then you need a newsletter/blog, yesterday. Your best customers are headed for the drain. And your competition is at the end of the pipe with a bucket.
Newsletters/blogs are powerful. Information powerful. Sales powerful. Customer loyalty building powerful. Reorder powerful. Referral powerful. Powerful enough? So, if it’s so powerful, why don’t all salespeople have one? Why don’t they all produce one?
Simple answer: Most salespeople won’t do the hard work it takes to make selling easy.
