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Killing Your Competition with (Client) Kindness

Guest post by: Maribeth Kuzmeski

Article Overview: Five Core Principles for Turning Clients and Prospects into Raving Fans

Killing Your Competition with (Client) Kindness

Five Core Principles for Turning Clients and Prospects into Raving Fans

Once upon a time customer service meant more than pressing 2 to wait (and wait and wait) for “the next available representative.” Companies valued those who bought their goods and services and went the proverbial extra mile to make them happy. Today we’re more likely to hear about a company that’s ripped off its customers.

Failing to make your customers happy is more than a shame. It’s slow-motion corporate suicide. If you want to make it in today’s crowded, recession-wracked market, you absolutely must create clients and customers who rave about your company the way they would their favorite sports team.

Obviously, making raving fans out of your clients is easier said than done. If it were easy, then corporate giants that have plenty of money to throw at such a concept would be overrun with happy customers.

In my new book, …And the Clients Went Wild! How Savvy Professionals Win All the Business They Want (Wiley, 2010) I lay out a blueprint for cultivating loyal clients and generating growing sales through a collection of principles and tactics that have proven successful for others in business. These businesses have effectively created a loyal following of passionate vocal clients, and with the execution of these principles, you can too.

1st Principle: What Are YOU Doing That No One Else Is Doing? In order to gain exposure, it helps to be or to offer something unique—or do something that no one else dares. It’s true that standing out from the crowd is probably the riskiest of the five principles. However, it may be equally risky to run a conservative, “underâ€�theâ€�radar” firm these days—you risk becoming an anachronism. While successful firms stick to their values, they also find ways to be so exciting that people don’t have a choice but to pay attention…and buy.

2nd Principle: Focus Your Marketing on Benefits, Results, and a Call to Action. Another way to gain success is to ensure you are answering the question, What’s really in it for me? for your clients. Too many businesses accentuate the features of their products or services rather than the benefits—what your clients really care about. “Open 24 Hours” is a feature. Benefits are value statements about the features of a product or service, with an emphasis on what the customer gets. For example, a benefit might be that a product makes you look slimmer or saves lots of money on gas. Too many companies leave it up to their prospects to figure out the benefits of their products or services.

3rd Principle: Go Viral! A viral message is an idea, notion, or practice that’s transmitted from person to person through speech, gestures, the internet, email, or other media. It ignites and motivates people to move the message. Most viral marketing programs give away valuable products or services to attract attention—free benefits, information, software programs, or downloads. It’s essential that you do everything possible to make it easier for people to access information or material that may go viral.

4th Principle: Leverage Your Business Network for Incremental Growth. It takes a plan, but using your network—business and otherwise—can be the miracle alternative to the typical grind of cold calls and prospecting. A productive business network is filled with respected, well-connected, influential people—called “Centers of Influence”—that share your target market and have a complementary rather than a competing service or product. You can capitalize on these connections by creating strategic alliances or by simply sharing your networks and making referrals.

5th Principle: The Ability to Execute Is Critically Important to Your Game Plan. In today’s fastâ€�moving, completely networked world, superior execution is clearly driving success for business. Small business owners are great at adopting many new marketing ideas. What they are not so great at is finishing. The best marketing strategy is the one you can pull off completely.

Perhaps more than ever before people want to do business with those they feel they can trust. They are attracted to businesses they feel will go out of their way to provide them the absolute best products or services available. And the absolute best way to elicit that trust in prospects is by having clients who cheer you on at every turn. So, don’t waste another second waiting to develop a marketing plan that will influence your clients to go wild for you.

Related Articles
  Acts of kindness
  CULTIVATING KINDNESS
  Ten Kindnesses You Can Do Today
  Sales Training – Salespeople Use Kindness Day to Sidestep Sales Anxieties
  Is it finally time to forgive
  LEADERS: DISCERN THEIR CLIENTS NEEDS
  Are You Memorable? 3 Simple Steps Help You Make Sure
  Grow Your Network With Everyone You Meet
  The Power of Your Heart
  Kick the Competition to the Curb & Sell Like Crazy
  Are You Making These 4 Mistakes?
  Pa-ZIG-ative Thinking
  Who’s Your Competition?
  100 Ways to Succeed #79
  Revealing Ourselves
  Burned by Coffee or Burned by Heartbreak - They Feel the Same
  Are you Kind to yourself?
  Professional Success Tips - 10 Ways to Be Top of Mind With Past Clients and Referrers
  Wrapping it Up!
  Doing The Niceties

Article Tags: And the Clients Went Wild, business strategy, client relationships, Maribeth Kuzmeski, prospects, Red Zone Marketing, viral marketing



Related Forum Posts
Re: Congratultations to GT! - Hi GT, Competition is great and i know I wouldn't be here without it, but it is not the main reason for posting and participating. But I admit, it is the trigger I need to get some work done. If there is none, i create one for myself and try to make it. First prize is ice cream.
Re: How Do You Fight Spam? - There are several ways in which you can stop spam: Client side: you can configure your email client to move spam to the junk mail, and you can do this by blocking their domain, some clients will even allow you to block ip blocks. Server side: you can set your server to have a white list, that can control spam before it gets to your inbox.
Re: Is Google Search getting better or worse? - Competition and that too stiff is something I have always loved and being a true web user I hate spammers the same way and so I am very happy with the recent changes that Google has made and so I must say that it is getting better. I am happy because now we could be able to get and read fresh and unique content instead of the repetitive ones. Now the value of actual SEO will be seen as results now will be completely depend on the hard work SEO and strategies an internet marketing company will apply to get on top of search giant's ranking. surfing the web daily as addiction I have seen most of the webmasters asking several questions related to real time search and how they should commence now to get better and faster results, found lots of useful information and learned new strategies too.
Re: What Keyword research methods do you use? - Hi GT, Good post, I also typically use the Google Adwords keyword tool for no other reason than I have always used it. If other members have a better one they can recommend then please join the post. I have also found the Stealth Keyword Competition Analyzer extremely useful for selecting the most effective keywords to use. Back to Google, if they are main website keywords then I am looking for fairly large monthly global ‘exact’ searches but if it is just for extra weekly content then I am quite happy to run an article optimised with a long tail keyword phrase that may only have a monthly search of 200-300 because I know I have a better chance of ranking highly for that keyword phrase. regards, Mal.
Why pay a Consultant? - Consultants can bring you into contact with a Funding Source but how do you tell whether a consultant will be successful beforehand? Professional Consultants ALWAYS ask for some kind of retainer so that they can feel they're not being used by a 'chancer'. However, when raising funding, a real consultant will offer to REFUND THAT RETAINER out of the % BROKERAGE he charges, payable once he finds your Funding Source, and payable from initial disbursements. Retainers only cover part of the costs that a consultant has to pay while working on behalf of the Client. Their real wages come from the agreed upon Brokerage, received when they are successful on the Client's behalf.


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