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Marketing Wisdom: Free is Good.
By justBurbank.com | March,2008
The best marketing tools are the free ones: good relationships with your customers, knowledge of your product or service and a staff that is cheerful and helpful.
Here are 5 ways to develop your reservoir of marketing expertise:
Follow-up on existing sales with a call, note or email and be direct and honest. Ask them for their help with a few questions so that you can improve your product or service. Most people are willing to help. Keep it short, ask good questions and thank them profusely. Then pay attention to the answers. This is the best marketing advice you can get and it’s free.
Survey your customers. Make it worth their while answering your questions with a discount or other offer. Ask them to be brutally honest and they will. The answers may reveal something you had not considered or that will surprise you.
Observe your staff during a sales or service process and if possible without them knowing. Some staff may need more coaching on serving your customers. Use your sales meetings to discuss the best ways to communicate important information and more importantly, how to listen. Stress the importance of knowing both your product and your customers’ real needs.
Happy service makes happy customers. Sale or no sale, your customer should leave happy. Call your business and see if you are pleased with the way your phone is answered. Did it brighten your day at least just a little? Being cheerful and polite is a frequently underestimated component of your business. And it costs nothing.
Know your competition. Also take the time to call your competitors, buy their products or services, walk in their customers’ shoes and have your sales force do the same. Then compare and make yours better.
You may discover that your low sales are attributable to simple problems that can be fixed easily like poor phone relations, sales staff with little or no knowledge about your product and/or pushing unpopular items or services.
Also remember, your once well-oiled machine can break or wear out with staff turnover, product changes and general malaise. It needs regular tune-ups and recharging. Making the sale is one thing, maintaining lasting and loyal client relationships with friendly service and good products, is what will make your business a truly successful enterprise.
The team at www.justBurbank.com collaborates on our articles. Each employee, contributes, then Kate edits for business-appropriateness, and Libby edits to make sure the article is funny and juicy. Our aim is to write helpful & entertaining articles.
