Tweet

Get To Know (No) Fast

Written by: John Jantsch

Article Overview: I spent two days in training with a very seasoned group of sales professionals recently and the same point kept coming up over and over again as we applied the principles of marketing to selling situations.

Get To Know (No) Fast

I spent two days in training with a very seasoned group of sales professionals recently and the same point kept coming up over and over again as we applied the principles of marketing to selling situations.

Many small business marketers want to be all things to all people in an effort to cast the widest possible prospect net. The fallacy with this approach of course is that you either end up being no things to no one or you actually land clients that aren’t a good fit.

I say narrow your focus and tell prospective clients exactly who it is you can help and how much it’s gonna cost early on. If someone is a prospective ideal client you can get to know them much quicker with this personalized laser approach. If someone is not a fit, you can get to no them just as fast - and then the world is a much better place for all.

Related Articles
  Fast and Feast - Sales and Marketing Tactics
  Fasting and Feasting
  How To Make Fast Easy Money Online
  The Story Behind How To Make Easy Money Fast! ~WORK SMARTER, EARN MORE
  Exactly How To Make Money Fast At Home! ~STEPS TO A FORTUNE

Article Tags: business marketers, fallacy, fasti, principles of marketing, prospective clients, sales professionals, small business



Related Forum Posts
Business magazines - Fast Company is pretty good if you're into technology although it can be very on the edge. Entrepreneur has become one giant advertisement and I cancelled my subscription. Selling Power also has some useful content if you're looking at improving your sales skills / presentations.
Re: What If Steve Jobs Hadn't Returned To Apple In 1997? - Thanks for sharing with us Yinko. Steve Jobs is definitely a visionary. Not only his products are innovative in a technological sense, but he's managed to turn a tech-company's products into a lifestyle.... a lifestyle!! [quote:zfqoq43n]Fast Forward to today. Apple has the sexiest products in the business: iMacs, Macbooks, iPhones, iPods and more.[/quote:zfqoq43n] I think not only tech would be different (music players and phones), but ways we can think of marketing and branding. What Steve Jobs did was of course no easy task for the smaller businesses, but he did start somewhere. What I did not know was that Apple is worth about as much as Google. How do you think Apple accomplish what they did? In terms of strategy wise? If you could advice Steve on one thing, what would it be?
Re: Hi from Greenville, SC - [quote="Evan":39hn23oh]Welcome Philip - from my experience in working with different merchant service providers I've found the following criteria to be important: 1) Price - at the end of the day it's very competitive industry and you don't need to be the cheapest option but you can't be too far ahead of the other guys. Automatic volume discounts are also much appreciated. Ones I've been involved with in the past give you volume discounts only if you apply. 2) Service - are you available when I need you? If I call will you be available and help me right away? If I email will you get back to me quickly? People often don't need service from their merchant service provider. It's one of those things where as long as it's working we tend to forget about you running in the background. But when there's a problem it's usually a big problem because we can't get money so we need fast and good quality service. 3) Integration support. Help people get set up. Even offer to do it for them - now that's a great way you can stand out. The integration support from most merchant service providers is terrible. You're pretty much on your own to figure out how their APIs work. I hope that helps - good luck![/quote:39hn23oh] I find all of these to be true on a daily basis. I have a strong hold in my particular area. Fast service is imperative. If I can get a restaurant a new terminal in a couple of hours as compared to the fastest national company(at least overnight) then I win. Being local is huge in my industry. I have successfully managed accounts is other areas. Usually I give them a back-up terminal so if the other one breaks down they can switch out the two ship the broken one to me and have a new back-up the next day. I have done a few online accounts. It is not my specialty though. I have found it to not be too hard if you are using a CMS and your host is at least fair. We can integrate with almost every website. It is usually as easy as dropping a pem file in the correct folder in cpanel. For more difficult ones I have a webmaster that I consult with. Price is the last one. Price is always the biggest. You cant give it away or you have no way to give good service. How apt am I to give back-up terminals or make sure I have 24 hour customer service if the margins don't support it? At the same time I have to be very competitive especially when landing large accounts. I made things too easy on one of my large accounts one time I guess. They thought all providers were like me so when they got a quote for less they switched. 11 days later they called me to help them get their machines downloaded back to my companies settings and their website was completely messed-up. I had to delete everything in the file and reload a back-up I had.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Emotional Energy is Our Engine

What is Discretionary Cash Flow

10 Reasons Your SBA Loan May Be Declined

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.