-
How to get clients – Revealed
-
Personally, there’s only ONE criteria I use to decide whether to recommend any book on sales.
Does it represent FRESH new thinking. Or not.
Your public library has a THOUSAND books on how to sell stuff.
Why should I believe this book has special wisdom for me that all the thousands of others who’ve already written books on sales do not?
Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People is often cited as the greatest “sales” book ever written – and it’s time-tested wisdom is 72 years old!
Got something to say that all the other authors missed?
Great. I sincerely hope yours finds space on that crowded shelf.
But, IMO the world does NOT need more sales books. It just needs more people who understand that selling is fundamentally about building human relationships. Always has been – always will be.
-
here’s what i remember….and a good point about the book.
guy wants client. calls hims explains services. after another email or so, agrees to a presentation. does presentation, “real boss” couldn’t make it. lower level boss is sold. so book another presentation. gets canceled day of. so gets another presentation. big boss likes it says he’ll get back to him. blah blah blah blah. finally 2 months later, big boss says its a go. booked him.
so the point is, not to be annoying to clients but to learn that sometimes it does take “time” to get a big client. people are busy, things happen. imagine if the guy blew off the client because the big boss was never around.
its all about follow up. not annoying follow up, but soft follow up.
another example. not all contact with clients should be “give me more money!” the book talks about becoming “valuable to your clients.” as a resource.
for example, randomly send your clients links of interest. Got a client who sells cars? send him a link to a local car show – maybe he didn’t know about it. read an article in a magazine about a new hot rod?? cut it out and mail it to them.
those are types of tactics i got from the book that are valuable to any business. it shows your clients you are looking out for their interests, not just for more money.
do you get what I mean?
Owner
Plus More Media Group
Website Design – VA, Corporate Web Site Design – PlusMoreMedia.com
Marketing designs and videos that do more for your business! -
One of the more popular books in this area these days is “Made to Stick”.
Can’t miss it: the front of the book is swathed in silver duct tape.
-
I get what you are saying, but I learned that tactic elsewhere (something I used to do all the time as a corporate sales recruiter to be exact) because it’s one of many basic courtesy ideas that has been around for a while. Which is what a lot of people are trying to explain here. The book would be more exciting if it had a new spin on it or a different and entirely new way of doing things that would revolutionize the sales world as we know it..
I certainly wouldn’t want to spend 28 days or whatever the course length is, to just do over what I already know. Give me something new that pops!
Now, if you say that this is new stuff that would change the way we get clients, I am certainly interested in buying this book so I can stay ahead of my competition. If it’s another book that has old tactics but might be great for those just starting out and don’t know what to do to make a sale, then just say so. People who already close sales and book clients know this is not for them, but can recommend it to their new co-worker who still can’t sell water to a thirsty man during a drought.
Jeff Bonano
http://www.bonanoproductions.com“I want to have a cool quote at the bottom of my signature, just like everyone else on the cow forum!” -Jeff Bonano
-
It’s pretty easy to get clients.
1 – Do really good work.
2 – Charge a fair price
3 – Build a relationship with your clients instead of milking them for every last dime on each job.
4 – Keep reinvesting money into your facility to keep up with technology and your client needs.
Word of mouth has built my entire business using this exact model. That’s my secret to get clients for the absolutely free price of free!
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author.
Credits include multiple Emmy, Telly, Aurora and Peabody Awards.
Owner, Biscardi Creative Media featuring HD Post
Biscardi Creative MediaCreative Cow Forum Host:
Apple Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion, Apple Color, AJA Kona, Business & Marketing, Maxx Digital. -
I just read an article on msn.com. “7 tips on keeping customers” It didn’t have any advice that I haven’t already seen on the Cow, including ‘nuturing lifelong employees’ and ‘be picky about your lifelong customers’. (AKA treat your employees well and watch out for grinders.)
-
I don’t guess so. Who has time for presentations? They call, I let em know if I’m available, we agree on a rate or price then it’s booked or it aint. If I scheduled a pitch meeting with a network and the power that is doesn’t show up, I know I don’t want to do business with em and they are properly weeded.
-
Milton,
People really aren’t bashing you or the book. They’re just pointing out that a huge part of sales and getting clients is treating those potential clients just like you’d want to be treated.
Which means, don’t be too pushy; keep you name and face in front of them often enough that they remember you, but not so often it truly annoys them. And most certainly follow-up when it’s called for.
Walter’s points about how he built his business is very similar to how we’ve built ours. We do some marketing, like a quarterly E-Newsletter, a few ads in business journals etc. But the majority of our clients have come by word of mouth from the work we’ve done for other clients. Naturally, we make phone calls and send brief emails to a long list of potential clients a couple times a year. Occasionally we’ll get a job from this work, but nothing sells better than a satisfied client. A client that feels like we have THEIR interests in mind and not our own. And like Walter says, a client that doesn’t feel like our only goal is to milk them out of every nickel we can.
Marketing yourself or you company is certainly an ongoing process and I don’t think anyone was trying to say “don’t read this book.” I myself pointed out I’ve read dozens of these types of books over the years (and still occasionally do). We’re just trying to provide perspective and balance to what sounded like a sales pitch for the book. For me that’s what forums like this are all about. Getting many perspectives about an issue or problem.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
[Tim Kolb] “Honestly I wouldn’t still be doing this after 20+ years if i didn’t understand that the objective is to solve the client’s problem.”
That, and a whole lot of other things that you have likely learned in the last 20 years, Tim. ;o)
I’d agree that successful businesses are built on relationships and solving a client’s problems. Unfortunately, finding people you can work with that appreciate the value of relationships, is not always a given. It isn’t automatic and so, when people send the kinds of signs that shows us that they place little value on relationships, we cut them loose. We toss ’em into the Grinder File — that receptacle wherein you place things that need to be composted or taken out to the dumpster.
Some businesspeople feel that they have to tolerate everyone and anything in business. We don’t. We have a standard in our business and when people fall outside that standard, they need to find someone else to work with. It is why there are many service providers in every industry.
Over the years, Kathlyn and I strove to work with the kind of people that understand what we bring to the projects on which we work — fortunately, we have won many more times that we have lost, and in doing so have formed many wonderful business relationships. Most have lasted for years.
But you don’t always win and we once had a company negotiate a contract with us and then within four months, we watched as they broke each and every one of the four major points of the contract. Their word proved absolutely useless.
Did we keep them? No, there is no point to that in my opinion. Some would argue that you have to kiss some backsides to get along in business, me I have found that real clients neither kiss posteriors nor do they want you to kiss theirs. The ones that do, they are customers that belong to someone else.
But fortunately, we have been successful more times than not and it continues to afford us opportunities to explore expansions to our way of doing business — such as the new record company we are launching. So far, the artists that we have signed are shocked at the pay-scales and contracts that we are giving them. Once again, we are breaking with industry norms.
We work with a music attorney that used to be the head lawyer with Sony Digital Music and she was delighted when we told her how we wanted our contracts worded, how the percentages were to be set up, and how the publishing rights should be handled. She told us that we were breaking all the rules and that she loved it. “Too many people only think of themselves,” she said.
We heard the same kinds of things from publishers when we made our DVD series the highest paying commission in the market — easily three to four-times the industry standard and tradition — but as you say, we want to solve a problem and build a solution. The problem is that few publishers want their people to make much money from them. The solution? Money.
We have seen a recurring problem over and over in the COW. That is music licensing. And so one of the mid-term goals of our new music company will be to assist producers and directors, etc., to conveniently and quickly license scores and music that is original and fresh.
Bessie never quits growing and changing, and we are always adding new things and removing things that proved to be failed experiments, or that became too costly or onerous to continue.
Business is an experiment and you have to know where to build and where to do a little demolition and renovation to allow something far more fruitful to come along.
[Tim Kolb] “I’ve turned down plenty of projects where the client wanted my service to solve his/her problem and it wasn’t going to…they needed something else.”
Hear, hear! You really do have to know when and where things do not really line-up, and where the match up just really is not a match up. Busy is not always profits, as I have said here many times. You have to find the things wherein things allow for mutual benefit. That is something that not many businesspeople learn easily. We all have hard heads but hopefully we learn it eventually.
Ron Lindeboom
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up