referrals Archives - Page 3 of 8

Asking for Help Is Not Cheating

A desperate self-employed professional contacted me recently. “I need to get clients immediately,” she said. “I’ve been trying for months with no success, and I’m almost out of money.” When I asked her how she had been marketing herself all this time, she gave me the following list of what she had been doing:

Attending networking events where she met people, introduced herself, and exchanged business cards
Launched a brochure-style website describing her services
Started a Facebook page and began posting promos for her business and links to content she found interesting
Printed some flyers and posted them on bulletin boards around town

Stop Reacting and Start Pro-Acting to Market Your Business

by C.J. Hayden | Marketing Mindset

If you’re answering calls, replying to emails and notes, responding to invitations, and receiving referrals and leads, it probably feels like you’re taking a lot of action to market your business. But it may be that a good deal of what you’re engaged in is actually RE-action.

Waiting to hear from the right prospects is nowhere near as productive as proactively taking steps to seek them out. And a stream of incoming communications can take up time and energy, but doesn’t always lead to closed sales.

Consider these suggestions for getting out of reaction mode and becoming more proactive in your marketing.

Is Your Marketing Approach Incomplete?

by C.J. Hayden | Marketing Plans & Strategies

Trying to implement a marketing approach that has critical elements missing is like trying to make a pie without the ingredients to form the crust. Or in some cases, without an oven to bake it in!

There are four essential elements every successful marketing approach must have:

Strategy – What are you trying to do, and why?
Tactic(s) – How will you do it?
Tool(s) – What will you need to do it well?
Medium or Venue – Where will you do it?

If any one of these ingredients is missing, your approach will be less effective than it could be, and in many cases, will fail completely. Here are four examples to show you where an incomplete marketing plan can go wrong.

Marketing or Selling: Which Is More Important?

by C.J. Hayden | Marketing Plans & Strategies

A question I often get from clients and students goes something like this: “I’ve been collecting marketing ideas… and I have a drawer full! I also have a stack of promising leads I’ve accumulated. And I know it’s important to stay visible, so I keep marketing, but then I just end up with more names in the stack. How do I prioritize all this?”

If you’ve ever wondered something similar, you may have lost sight of a very important truth — the way to win the business game is not to collect the most leads; it’s to make the most sales.

Prospective Clients WANT to Hear from You

by C.J. Hayden | Following Up

Every time I give a marketing workshop or talk to a new coaching client, I hear the question: “Aren’t I bugging people if I keep following up with them?”

The answer is no. The only circumstances under which you would ever be “bugging” prospective clients would be if they’ve already told you they are not at all interested in what you offer, or asked you specifically to stop contacting them. In any other situation, your continued contact with a potential client is not only acceptable, it is often welcome.

Need More Referrals? Partner Up!

by C.J. Hayden | Filling the Pipeline

Have you ever considered that prospective clients who are referred to you are much more likely to hire you than those who come to you in any other way? The endorsement of a referral carries so much weight that referred prospects ask fewer questions about your qualifications, are less likely to shop for the lowest price, and typically make their buying decisions much more quickly. In fact, they are often pre-sold when they contact you.

With the value of referred prospects being so high, it makes sense for generating more referrals to be an essential component of your marketing. But many professionals limit their ability to gain referrals by concentrating all their efforts on current and past clients.

How to Build Trust with Potential Clients

by C.J. Hayden | Marketing Plans & Strategies

“But how do I get them to trust me if they don’t know me?” my client asked.

“Exactly,” I replied. “They have to get to know you in order to trust you. Either that, or they need to be referred to you by someone they know and trust already.”

Client: “So, you’re telling me that making cold calls and running ads are a waste of time and money?”

Me: “Yes. Unless you use those tactics to open the door to your prospective clients getting to know and trust you. If you expect to move from a call or an ad to a quick sale, you’ll be disappointed.”

Hard Work + Smart Choices Aren’t Always Enough to Land Clients

by C.J. Hayden | Marketing Mindset

You’ll often hear me say that the secret to finding clients is to make effective choices about what to do to market your business, then do those things over and over. While that advice is absolutely true, implementing it sometimes runs into some roadblocks.

What happens when you deliver what you think is a dynamite 10-second introduction, but your prospective clients don’t seem impressed? Or you have several lunches with potential referral partners that seem to go well, but no business results from them?

Are You Testing Your Marketing Strategies?

by Kristine Carey | Marketing Plans & Strategies

As a business owner, it’s natural to have lots of ideas about getting the word out about your offerings and to want to test out new ways. You’ve tried different marketing techniques, some of which you liked more, some that worked better, and some you’re convinced will work eventually. The question is, what’s really working, and how long should you test something to know?

Testing requires two things: curiosity and measuring. Curiosity to try something new, and measuring so you’ll know how well it’s working and whether it’s worth continuing to do. Here are several things to keep in mind when you’re testing different marketing strategies:

What Does Being an Introvert Have to Do with Your Marketing?

by Kristine Carey | Marketing Mindset

I was talking with a client recently about putting herself out there more, marketing-wise, and she mentioned how that made her uncomfortable and that she’s shy and introverted. That got me thinking about how often the traits of “shy” and “introverted” (vs. “outgoing” and “extroverted”) are perceived to be the same thing, when in fact, they’re not. You can be shy, yet outgoing, or vice versa. I know an extrovert who has a hard time initiating a conversation, and I’m an introvert who easily talks to strangers. How you approach marketing can be influenced by this perception, so it makes sense to take a closer look at how you operate.

Introvert vs. extrovert
The distinction between introverts and extroverts is how they recharge their energy.

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