From the course: Small Business Secrets

Generating sales leads offline

From the course: Small Business Secrets

Start my 1-month free trial

Generating sales leads offline

“

- One of the biggest challenges that small business owners face is getting more sales. One of the best and easiest ways to get more sales is through off-line methods. That means just talking to people face to face. Now, first of all, I'm going to give you some suggestions on how to get that, but it depends upon you providing good service and a high quality product. If you provide good service and a high quality product, then using these methods is going to be more effective for you. Number one, and this is the most obvious, is asking for referrals. This is so simple, so easy, yet many business owners don't do it. Why don't they do it? A lot of times they don't know how to ask. The first thing I would say is don't get hung up on how to ask, just ask, just say, "Do you know someone who would like my services?" If you want to get more effective with it, ask more specific questions, such as "Who do you know that recently started a business?" or "What families do you know that just moved into the area?" The more specific the question that you use, the more effective you're going to be at getting referrals. Number two is find out your target group. In particular, where they gather. I talk a lot about your most valuable customer, or your MVC. These are the people that you want to do business with. Where do they get together? When these most valuable customers gather together, that's where your business wants to make an investment, because you're going to get the most bang for the buck, so to speak. You might want to sponsor something if you're targeting families. Maybe you'll sponsor the state fair, or have a booth at a business convention. Something like that, you'll get the most return on your investment when you focus on places where your customers gather. Number three is reviews. This is so simple, but reviews are powerful. We can put them on your website. We can put them in your printed marketing material, but we need to ask for it. You can ask people anytime you have a good experience with them. Anytime you know that, wow, they love what you did, ask them for a referral, perhaps you can help them out. For instance, recently I worked with an electric company on my house, and they gave me a card that explained how to submit a review on Google. That's a very helpful thing for many people who may not know how to do it. And number four is direct mail. This is an old, classic tactic for small businesses and it still works. What is direct mail? Direct mail is when you are targeting a specific group of people directly with a direct or specific offer. It means that you're sending a mailer to a specific neighborhood or perhaps you're putting something on people's doors. The idea is that you're giving a very direct offer. "Act now in the next week to receive half off!" Something like that. One mistake that business owners often make when it comes to direct mail is not understanding the principle of frequency. Frequency means that we need to have repetition in attempting an offer. Just trying something once isn't a good measure of whether or not it's working. We need to try it three, four, five times until we can see whether or not direct mail is being effective. If you're going to try direct mail, make a commitment to the long term. All of these techniques work best when they're put together. I'll give you a personal example from early on in my business coaching career. First of all, referrals. I worked with people who I knew were influential and I got referrals from them to work with other business owners. Number two, the target group. I sought a pattern, in that I was working with contractors, people who built houses. And so I participated in a local association for contractors. Number three, reviews. I asked my customers to give me reviews, and we used that in a direct mailer that we sent out to those contractors every single month for multiple months. And that yielded a lot of new business for me. You can put all of these things together and also other techniques, and you can grow your small business without spending very much money at all.

Contents