My Sales System For Premium Profits

How to find better customers

The worst thing you can do is try to be everything to everybody.

Most companies offer their services to everybody, but companies with premium positioning have the opportunity to be more selective. The fact is, certain customers are more profitable than others and if you want to drastically increase profits, you need to know the best customers for your business.

One of Troy's recent clients sells a premium online marketing service and was promoting their services to anyone who would listen. Troy advised them to pick the niche markets they could help the most. Troy looked over their past clientele as well as their preferred new clients and identified the handful of top markets they accomplished the most for.

Why? Because your best customers are the ones you're getting the best results for, the people you understand the most, and are profiting the highest from doing business with you.

Focus your time on specializing at serving those industries and you will streamline your marketing and sales efforts, increasing profits at the same time.

Get new leads from outside the box

Lead generation is a major weak spot for most companies, as they tend to do too little, or may even do too much. Troy looks at his clients' past and current lead generation strategies, researches potential new activities, and strategically audits their websites to discover creative new ways to get leads.

One of his clients, a higher end maintenance service company, was trying to get new clients by using an online coupon incentive program. As you can imagine, that was not bringing in the level of customer they were seeking.

Troy created a targeted direct mail campaign, something the company had never tried before. They sent the sales letter to a very specific type of client and

positioned the company’s services in such a way that would greatly assist that client in providing a higher level of service than their competitors.

The results speak for themselves as this category of client, from the direct mail campaign, is achieving more business on a continual basis than the online incentive program could ever hope to each…and at much higher profits levels.

By creating and implementing campaigns that target your market from multiple positions, you can gain a huge and profitable advantage over your competition.

Keep serving the clients you have

Are you so busy looking for new clients that you're forgetting to serve the ones you have? It is shocking how many companies sell a customer and then forget about that person as if they will never buy anything else.

Troy helps his clients to properly understand the ‘lifetime value’ of their clients.

From there, strategizing to sell more to their existing customers by reviewing what has been purchased and coming up with new products and services that could be offered to those customers. An integral part of increasing your business is through increasing the number of times your clients return to you and buy again.

There are many ways to create campaigns that extend the lifetime value of your customer and provide them with ongoing value.

Troy says, "Your goal is to deepen the customer’s bond, relationship, and loyalty to who you are and to your premium products and services.” To get that valued repeat business, you have to show more time and attention to the customers you already have.

Reach out to past prospects you failed to convert

One of Troy's clients, a local realtor group, had a database of people who had contacted them in the past. As a result of not gaining immediate business, this group of realtors never kept in touch with them and assumed they had bought or sold from someone else.

Troy created a strategic phone follow-up campaign, along with a short, to-the-point phone script for the team. With that in hand, members of the team called the list of past prospects and followed up with a thank-you email (also crafted by Troy), and got one buyer and one seller as a result.

Can you create your own "restart" sales campaign, reaching out to past prospects who never became clients? Most companies never get to this, they "don't have the time," but you can see that going the extra mile, and strategically creating and implementing these extra steps, can result in more business and profits for you.

Do a better job with follow-up

It is estimated that close to 80% of sales are won or lost during the follow-up, yet Troy says, "People just don't follow-up. I don't care what business, industry, or service, people aren't following up the way they should."

If you don't have a system in place to get back in touch with people who contact you, you are leaving business on the table, because follow-up systems are the missing link to increased sales and profits for your business.

One of Troy's clients in Vancouver, a prominent residential new home developer, primarily built multi-family developments and was focused on a new townhome project that was averaging two sales per month.

They were behind schedule in terms of selling out the development and came to Troy in hopes of getting more traffic (site visitors) and of course more sales. They were pouring money into marketing the development and although they were getting some traffic in the door, they weren't converting those prospects into actual sales.

From conducting a strategic review with this client and their sales team, it became obvious they didn't have a marketing problem, they had a follow-up and conversion problem. The constraint was not getting more people in the door, it was getting them back in the door and closing the sale.

The client's follow-up efforts were sporadic, not properly managed, and were negatively affecting their ability to sell homes. Their emails were generic and their follow-up sales messages were inconsistent, not effectively written, nor segmented to target markets—a major hole that was losing sales.

Troy and the developer client agreed to create a sequential email follow-up campaign to get those people back in the door. One of the keys to doing this is to segment the prospects and write the sales messages accordingly. Certain buyers have specific hot buttons and criteria that need to be met before they are excited enough to take action and comfortable enough to buy.

With the implementation of this message to market match campaign, the client was thrilled as qualified visitors to the sales center doubled within six weeks and sales doubled in that same period of time.

Create a Sales Coaching and Conversion System

With a background of 25+ years in award-winning, hands-on sales experience, Troy likes to say, “Selling is too important a process to be left simply to improvisation. If you don’t have a proven system for selling, you’re at the mercy of the prospect’s system for buying.”

Troy has identified key areas of sales preparation and performance that can usually be improved, such as positioning, credibility, mindset for achievement, providing premium value to clients, communication and asking skills, listening abilities, relationships and respect in the sales process, time management, and scheduling of priority activities.

Troy recommends an in-depth strategic review of the skills and performance of you and/or your sales staff, with the goal being the discovery of opportunities to improve their persuasion abilities. He has years of experience working with salespeople, providing custom training for expanding their sales skills, and can help identify the areas of selling that need attention and improvement.

What are your staff’s daily activities and routines? How do they prepare for the day? What do they do when working with new projects or prospects? What are their follow-up efforts like, are they covering all the bases? Do they constantly brush up on their communication skills? What questions are they asking prospects? How are their listening skills? These are the things you must know.

Asking for referrals

Your best source for new leads is a referral program that turns your existing customers into an army of raving fans that send you new ongoing business. Referral systems reduce the cost of new buyer acquisition by capitalizing on the relationships you already have.

One of Troy's recent clients had a database of 60 different companies they had worked with, but in six years had never asked for even one referral!

Troy created an overall referral program and a one-page sales letter for them, asking for and rewarding referrals. The client got 3 referrals right away and will now send out that sales message four times per year.

Are you actively soliciting ongoing referral business to your company?

You must create a system to promote and generate ongoing referrals to get your existing clients to personally recommend you to other people who have a high probability of becoming clients…and are less resistant to price.

Troy says you want to, "Create an experience so powerful, so memorable, that you and your premium products and services remain at top of mind with your customers, who in turn actively seek out the opportunities to refer others to your business.”

Identify new profit centers

Look at your current menu of products and services, then brainstorm what can be added to compliment what you're doing now. Talk with your salespeople and customer service staff for new ideas on what your customers need.

Are there other ‘problems’ you can provide solutions to?

Troy says these "extra" product or service packages are often a missing piece of the marketing puzzle for many companies who need to discover other avenues for potential profits.

The key is to utilize a creative brainstorming process that has the power to uncover hidden diamonds in your business.

Adding value to every step of your customer's experience

As you read this, some of your competitors are constantly trying to come up with new ways to take your clients away from you.

It’s vitally important to uncover the most powerful benefits and advantages you can offer your existing and future clients, so it eliminates any thoughts or doubts they may have to do business with you and your company.

Another recent client of Troy’s that sells SEO services to certain industries was having a problem with customer retention. The SEO agency would get their clients to the first page of search engines, then the client would stop paying because they didn't think they needed the service anymore.

Troy worked with his client to effectively demonstrate, on a monthly basis, what value they were bringing to their customers. He had the SEO agency start doing monthly website audits, sending special reports, putting on webinars for growing business, adding value the customers didn't have to pay extra for and couldn’t get elsewhere.

Up until then, the SEO agency had virtually no ongoing communication with customers. Now they are following up once a month in a concierge-like manner, talking to customers, and the customers are sticking around much longer.

And many of those same clients are also sending in new referrals to the SEO provider.

Troy says, “To provide such premium added-value to each client, in addition to the already in place premium products and services, it significantly increases the likelihood that the client will remain an ongoing client. Every step in the process, in the eyes of your customer, either adds value or takes value away.”

What customer service efforts are being done for your valued clients to ensure a long-lasting and rewarding relationship?

What is the Lifetime Value of your typical client?