We recently talked about the importance of follow up when you provide a prospective customer a quote. I am sure that since then you have been quite fanatical about following up after the quote, right? Well, this tip takes it one step further.

When a prospective client tells you that he has chosen a different solution or has decided to go ahead with your competitor, schedule them for a follow up. Even if they decided to get the retaining wall done by someone else or they have decided to have their car repaired by another mechanic, there still might be opportunity to get business. And you don’t want to miss out.

In the follow up call, reintroduce yourself. Ask if they did in fact get the work done that you quoted and ask how things are working for them. You will be surprised at how many of these jobs got delayed, never happened or the results that the prospect hoped to realize never came about. This means you might still have an opportunity to do some business. The worst case scenario for you in taking this step is that they got the work done and your competitor did a great job. There is still a win for you in making this phone call. You show the client that you are still interested in them.

Wouldn’t It Be Easier?

“Wouldn’t it be easier to…” …just do a one page quote for the client instead of a more detailed three page quote?

“Wouldn’t it be easier to…” …email the client instead of setting up another meeting to go over your proposal in person?

“Wouldn’t it be easier to…” …run an ad in the local paper than to make cold calls looking for prospects?

People are always looking to overlook or even skip a few steps in their hurry to get to the end. The problem with this approach is that by taking the shortcut you are missing critical steps that have proven to enhance your chances of selling. I know that to create a professional strategic sales quote it will take three hours of my time. I also know that I can do a one page quote for a client with minimal information (as my competition does) in about twenty minutes. So why do I choose to spend more than two and half more hours on a quote? Because it matters. My longer quote is four times more effective in closing business than the one page proposal.

It is easier to send off an email to a prospect than to pick up the phone and call, but is it more effective? No. Is it easier to run an ad than to pick up the phone and call a stranger? Yes. However, these are the reasons why you must do it. While your competition is providing one-page quotes, you will be demonstrating your knowledge, creativity and effort to go above and beyond the bare minimum. If you put this much effort into creating a quote, just imagine what you would bring as a business partner. Let your competitors take the shortcuts and wait around for the prospect to contact them. You will be out doing the hard work needed to make selling look easy.

Facebook has a reputation as being a huge time-waster, but as a business owner can you afford to ignore a platform that 47.9 percent of Canadians and over 41 percent of Americans use? Among large countries with over 10 million citizens, Canada ranks as the number one nation of Facebook users.
Say what you will about Facebook, but there is no better tool for connecting people. As a small business owner you have the opportunity to use Facebook to expand your online presence, to engage with customers and prospects, and to sell more products and services.

Our free 60 minute webinar is designed to help you master Facebook to connect with and engage your prospects and customers.  We are running the first webinar on Thursday, September 16, 2010 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM PDT.  You can register here.

Saturday mornings are full of coffee, cartoons for the kids and occasionally a little HGTV for us parents. Early Saturday morning my wife and I watched one of those real estate programs where they take a house in rough shape, fit it and then flip it. This house had all kinds of issues – including rats, cockroach infestation and water damage. On the show they brought in an exterminator to solve the bug and rat issues and then striped the house down to the frame. They stripped the rotten wood, put in new plumbing and electrical under new drywall. The house looked brand new when they finished. In fact I would guess that almost 80% of the house was brand new.

Near the end of the show, a real estate sales person walks prospective buyers through the house and leads her pitch with the following statement: “You should have seen this place before. It had big rats and cockroaches and gang graffiti all over the walls.” The potential buyers went from cheerful, happy faces to looks of horror. In those two sentences she lost any opportunity she might have had to sell the house to the prospects. Instead of telling the prospects that the house had new plumbing, electrical and a whole host of other upgrades she began with the negative. In the blink of an eye, she managed to put more questions and concerns in the minds of the prospects then she should have.

I cringe when I see speakers start their speeches with an apology about their public speaking abilities. As an audience member I now think, “Great, now I am going to have to listen to someone read slides and stumbles his way through a speech.” I wasn’t thinking these thoughts until the speaker planted them there.

Both examples could be dealt with by preparing talking points before your sales call or speech. Know the points you need to offer and practice them. (Practice is key.) When you feel unprepared and not ready is when you will blurt out irrelevant and unnecessary information and often cost yourself a sale.

Maybe you’ve seen the commercial of the woman rocking a crying baby until he falls asleep. The camera pans back and you realize it is a West Jet Flight Attendant, helping out a distressed mother on a flight. West Jet claims that they “care more” about their guests. Normally commercials and ads about “great service” don’t mean much to me – I expect great service, as I’m sure you do too. But West Jet does indeed go above and beyond.

My wife was asked to speak at a Christian conference. She took our then infant daughter along for the trip. On the West Jet flight from Toronto to Calgary she was seated at the window with a man next to her. Kacey bounced along happily on her lap, giggling and satisfied for the first hour of the trip. Then, without warning, she began to throw up all over the man next to my wife. Kim’s initial reaction was to turn Kacey away from the man and towards herself – this resulted in Kim catching the second wave of heaves from Kacey. Apparently it was disgusting; and in mere moments they were both covered in mushy baby goo.

Neither of them moved – they just exchanged looks of horror. Kacey started to cry and the man seated on the aisle reached one finger up and “ding” – called for the flight attendants. A female flight attendant came to the scene – took one look and the whole crew sprung into action. One woman took our baby and our diaper bag. She cleaned Kacey up completely and changed her. She swaddled her in a blanket and held her while everyone else worked to clean up my wife and the poor unlucky soul next to her. One flight attendant went into her own personal bag and used her toiletries to help Kim smell better than strained peas. In every sense of the word, the West Jet staff went ABOVE what one might have expected as great service. They were phenomenal.

Don’t just give your customers great service. Go above any expectations. This isn’t just marketing, rah-rah hype. It does make a difference that people will remember.

While speaking to a client in a coaching session, we got talking about what makes up his product offerings. I asked him how his product offering compared to his competition?

He explained to me with great pride that his service was as good as his much larger competitors. He seemed a little surprised when I suggested that he needed to ignore what his competition was doing.

Don’t let your competitors define what your product looks like. You define it. When I was in charge of a training division for a global organization, the industry standard was to offer one week of basic training classes. When I asked why we taught the basic class in one week, the answer came back to me that everyone taught one week basic training classes. There was no reason other than it was what our competitor did, and so we fit the material we had into a one week time span.

The reality was that students found the course to contain too much info for one week. The week felt crammed and too full. Results were compromised because selling and scheduling a blocked off week was easier to do then change the scheduling and break from the status quo. We decided to change what we offered to give the student the best outcome. We changed focus to offer what we thought gave our prospects a better product and not worry about our competitors. Still today we offer extras to round out or product offering because it makes it better. You can either be a leader or a follower; but I can tell you, the view is much different from the front.

You may remember my prior blog post regarding Domino’s email offers.  Their newsletters arrived to my mailbox between 8:34 am and 8:36 am in the morning.  What we learned from their bad example is that the last thing a customer is considering over morning coffee is pizza and chicken wings.  A simple thing, like not segmenting your database, can have a huge impact on the redemption of your offer.

This week while on LinkedIn, the thought came to me to check if anyone in my network worked at Domino’s.  Turns out I share a LinkedIn group with the Vice President of e-Commerce for Domino’s.  So I emailed him.  I explained the problem of the 8 am emails.  He called me and said he would talk with the Canadian franchisee responsible.  Today, much to my glee, at 1:07 pm I received an email from Domino’s… it was their email offers newsletter!  Not perfect, but if I consider that the database likely is handled on the east coast, 1:00 pm is a whole lot better than 8:00 am.  Thank you Domino’s for showing a willingness to listen.  I salute you with my double cheese and pepperoni pizza.

Do you have a networking toolkit? No entrepreneur should leave home without one. Take a few minutes now and pull one together. Your kit should contain the following items:

* plenty of business cards
* couple of pens
* invites to an upcoming event your hosting
* business cards of professionals you prefer

You also need to have a networking mindset; which means act like a host not a guest.
Think of how you might act if you were hosting the event instead of just coming as a guest. Would you be more out-going? Would you operate in a ‘giving’ mode? Would you look for lulls in conversation and introduce people to each other? If you act like a host you will find you are the one who will get more quality contacts.

Social media can feel a little like the arms race – everybody rushing to stock pile followers, contacts, and connections. Do you collect friends on Facebook or followers on Twitter like baseball cards? You might want to reconsider this strategy. T he old way of marketing and networking was “How Many?” The better approach is “Who?” And a new study has just come out that backs that up. It seems the more online contacts you have, the less networking power you have. This is according to new research done by Professor Zsolt Katona from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, Professor Miklos Sarvary from INSEAD in France, and Peter Pal Zubcsek, a Ph.D. Candidate at INSEAD.

The study found to get the most out of social networking efforts, it’s very important for people to communicate with their network. The more friends you have, the harder it is to respond and stay on top of your network and respond to the messages and posts. Therefore, your networking power is weaker than someone who has less friends but stays in better touch with them.

So what does this mean to you?

There are three points that I take away from this:

1. Keep your friend list manageable (number might be different for everyone)
2. You have to use the tools to be effective. This means you must dedicate time everyday to use it and working your network
3. Use the tools to set up face to face meeting when possible. If you’re going to be in another city on business, let your network know and try to set up some meetings.