| Success Equals Positioning |
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| Written by Mark Tewart |
| Monday, 07 May 2007 01:37 |
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How do you acquire customers: walk-ins, repeats, referrals, prospecting, Internet, in-bound phone calls, alliances, marketing and more? At least 80 percent of salespeople get the majority of their customers from walk-ins. What is your status or positioning with a walk-in?
Surveys for many years have described the car buying process as painful, unprofessional, and at times, even unethical. When a customer comes in the door cold, they have tons of subconscious and conscious thoughts that influence their behavior toward you and their shopping actions.
When the customer walks in there is a natural tendency toward distrust rather than trust. The customer is making immediate judgments of you and your business. The cold walk-in customer tends to be in a defensive posture. All of these things lead to a missing element that can skyrocket your ease of doing business, closing ratios, sales, profits, and long-term repeat business, as well as continual service patterns. The magical missing element is leverage.
When people are attempting to do business with one another, perceived or real leverage facilitates the process in an incredible way. People treat you differently- they change their shopping and buying process if you have leverage. Positioning oneself as an expert, a trusted advisor, or a person they know, have been referred to, had a previous contact with, or if they are responding to lead-generation forms of marketing provide great leverage.
If history tells you that all of the above is undeniable and true, then why are your business efforts geared in large part to acquiring and dealing with cold prospects, where there is little chance for leverage to be applied? Is it because you dont know how to work the other types of customers? Is it laziness? Is it short-term thinking? The answer is often a combination of all of the above.
You may be using the excuse that you dont know how to begin or implement a process based upon leverage and position. If this is the case, ask yourself how many books you have read on marketing, prospecting, advertising, customer retention, referral processes etc. How many seminars or classes have you been to this year? How many experts in this area have you reached out to for advice? How many mastermind groups have you sought to join to educate yourself? Nobody, I repeat, nobody, will do it for you.
Plan a course of action and the key word is action.Think long-term but act now. Ask yourself the following questions:
1) What is one solid action you will take today to increase your referrals?
2) What is one action you will take today to stay in touch with your current customers?
3) Who does business with those whom I want to do business with, and how can I form an alliance with them to utilize their leverage?
4) When will I complete a three-stage letter campaign to all my customers who dont currently use our service, to try to convert them to active customers? (Active customers repeat at a much higherpercentage.
The more you try, the more you learn and the more you try, the more mistakes youll make which will ultimately lead to more success. Selling without leverage is a hard and futile process. Selling with leverage is a lot easier, and in the end, much more fun and rewarding.
Mark Tewart is the president of Tewart Enterprises. He can be reached at 888-283-9278 or visit www.tewart.com for more information.
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