Before you start belting out Led Zeppelin, consider the meaning of the statement and how far reaching it can be. If you're a big business trying to reach small businesses, how well you communicate with your prospects will determine whether or not they become an actual client. A survey performed recently by Public Agenda (a nonprofit research are of the Pew Charitable Trusts) indicates a staggering 94% of respondents consider reaching a company voicemail system, versus a human voice, "extremely frustrating." It seems the bigger the company, the further removed they are from their clients. Big business has spent enormous amounts of money building elaborate communication systems and this could be the kiss of death as you prospect for new small business clients. So what steps can you take to bridge the chat gap with your small business prospects? In the first of this two-part series, I'll outline some key communications ideas you can implement to keep in close touch with your clients, both prospective and active.
Can You Hear Me Now?
For the most part, voicemail sounded like a great idea. In use since about 1975, many in corporate America looked at it as a way to trim costs and presumably lead callers where they needed to go. It seemed like the perfect answer when layoffs and "down-sizing" became a common part of the business vernacular. Today, most will agree it's maybe done more harm than good when it comes to keeping in touch with clients. Be honest, how many times have you got stuck in "voicemail hell", just hoping someone, anyone would pick up your call and get you the help you needed? My guess is everyone has had this experience, but what's important to glean here is this: the further away from your customer you are, the more accessible you need to be. Let me say this again for the people in the cheap seats - the further away from your customer you are, the more accessible you need to be. This means if you're doing business remotely with your customer, you need to give them access to you by any means possible. Why? Because whether you want to admit it or not, it's fairly likely your customer is being pursued by a local vendor or ten; someone who drops by, makes calls, returns calls, and pays attention to them. Almost sounds like a romance, right? It sort of is.
Get Closer, Really, It's Okay
One way to stay in better contact with your customers is simply to give them every method possible for getting in touch with you. It's important to have this personal contact with your client, it builds rapport, trust and a relationship they come to rely on. Once you do this, though, you must be committed to this one critical credo: be accessible no matter what. If your customers contact you by phone, try to answer it and if you can't, make certain you have a great voicemail message that is current and lets them know when they can expect your return call…and make sure you call back, even if it's just to confirm the call and let them know you'll get the answer they seek. The goal really is to prevent them from going to voicemail or worse, from missing you altogether and never leaving a message.
Virtually Yours
Being a major advocate of answering calls whenever you can, I know there are times when it's nearly impossible; you might actually be in a meeting with another client or you're in flight. Whatever the reason, there is another way to give your client the attention they need and the human contact they crave - enter the Virtual Office Assistant (VOA). This is not an entirely new concept; it's more of an updated version of an "answering service." Your VOA can answer your calls in live-time, transfer to you or someone else in your organization, and even offer answers to typical questions some callers might have, such as pricing or providing a fax number. This solution is fully customizable and offers your client a human point of contact first, with the second option of voicemail, only if necessary. Google "virtual office" or "virtual assistant" to learn more.
There are many great and innovative ways to communicate with your clients, but the one thing it all boils down to is the connection they have with you, the human being. By offering your clients multiple ways to stay in touch with you, you're telling them they're important to you and you want to serve them. As they continue to grow their small business, you will become the resource they keep as their secret weapon.
Check back for the second part of this series where I'll be covering written communication ideas for connecting with your clients.
In a former life, I was in the music industry. I met the right star at the right time, and my entrepreneurial spirit did the rest. I was a part of an innovative group that developed new versions retro grass roots marketing and distribution. We dabbled in internet distribution before most people knew what the internet was. We had some star power behind us and we had a lot of fun!
To the public, the star is everything. In the industry, the star is simply the leading edge marketing tool. They are the story and the talent that leads consumers to products. Talent is important; the star has to have a great media presence, a great voice, inherent performance compulsions, and a moderate ability to think on their feet. Talent in one area is not hard to find. Talent in all areas is in abundance in every major city. But talent with a great story is rare. These are the stars. They sell products.
I was fortunate to work with one of the best star stories of the last decade. I first met this star before her 20th birthday. She lived in her van, and sang nights at a coffeehouses and bars. She was fortunate enough to get a spot in a San Diego club and was surrounded by some leading talent of the early nineties. She studied them and learned from them. There were more talented people around her, but she was the one to receive a big contract. She had one of the biggest debut albums of all time, with a number of subsequent albums.
There are many aspects to her story that can illustrate the points that I am getting to, but I'll just share one. I attribute a single reason this songwriter became a star. While all the very talented musicians around her spent their time between and after sets, hanging out back stage and drinking (among other things), the teenage girl did something different. She met her fans and really talked to them. She told her story at every show. She positioned herself at the exit and shook every patron's hand. She asked people if they liked her music. She asked people to come back and see her. One of those hands she shook was an executive from Atlantic Records. They came back to see her, and brought a contract.
This is my first contribution to this blog. They are a few analogies I will draw from this story over the next months. The basics are these: Every small business owner is a rock star. Every small owner has a story and some degree of talent. Every small business owner wants you to know their story, not just their "music". Later we'll talk about how every small business owner only wants to sing and tell their story, just like a rock star. If you are going to sell to a rock star, you must understand these things. Finally, we'll talk about how to take this and shape into a sales strategy. We'll talk about how to convince a rock star that you are the best agent. And if you are still reading, we'll talk about how to get a rock star to sell product.
Entrepreneurs and small businesses are learning that using social media tools is an inexpensive way to build their brands and market their wares. Since reaching people where they live and work is critical to marketing success, if you aren't executing on a social media strategy, you are missing an opportunity to sell to small businesses.
When I first began the blog in 2005, he had a formidable goal of attracting customers for his fledgling business, but no plan to back it up. Not surprisingly, I generated little traffic and few business leads.
Instead of giving up, however, I took the time to study social media, then implemented a detailed strategy for attracting and maintaining a solid readership base. As a result, I turned my inexpensive blog into a major source of lead generation, triggering a 40% increase in my client base, which is made up mostly of small to mid-sized businesses.
The Campaign: BizSolutionsPlus, my company's re-engineered blog, launched in July 2006. Its new strategy focused on building relationships of trust, credibility, and respect instead of promoting products and services or building a direct mail database.
I pinpointed the readers with whom I wanted to exchange ideas: current and potential clients, entrepreneurs, other marketers, and bloggers. I set out to cement relationships with those groups by...
1. Writing about shared interests, such as best practices, and ideas for creating good business through a strong display of values
2. Soliciting reader feedback in as many ways as possible, often ending posts with questions phrased to provoke thought and conversation
3. Responding to every reader comment directly by email or telephone, and adding remarks to the blog's comment record
4. Following web traffic patterns in order to identify the most popular topics, then tailoring future posts to readers' interests, as determined through tracking, blog comments, and other feedback
To generate readership and drive traffic to the BizSolutionsPlus blog, I used the following: • Blog directories: Green engages the power of social networking by listing or otherwise promoting the blog on Facebook, PlaxoPulse, MySpace, LinkedIn, Digg, and BlogCatalog, among others.
• Amazon.com: As an author with a book for sale on Amazon.com, Green is allowed to include his blog on the page promoting his book.
• Linking to other blogs: By sharing links and comments, Green aligns himself with other blogs he deems interesting. Dubbed "link love," such a strategy can improve a blog's Google rankings, which are in part based on how many links a blog has. Nonetheless, Green is careful to select only frequently published, well-written blogs.
• Commenting on other blogs: Green also posts comments on other blogs, which allows him to gain visibility with those blogs' authors as well as their readers.
• Guest blogging: Green has been invited to write guest posts for a variety of blogs, including Dell's ReGeneration blog and MarketingProfs' Daily Fix. With the same respect given his own readers, Green tries to respond to every comment received. He also shares the links to these posts on his own blog.
• Offline marketing: The blog's Web address is listed on all L&G Business Solutions marketing materials, and Green often provides that address to potential clients instead of his company Web site's. Furthermore, he mentions the blog every time he is interviewed about his book. Lessons Learned:
• Think of your fellow bloggers as partners, not competition. Share ideas, swap links, contribute to each other's blogs, post comments-whatever you can do to build a positive presence and make yourself heard. By doing so, you might establish some great contacts—and possible referrals-in addition to increasing your readership.
• Encourage feedback and listen to the resulting comments. To ensure that you are consistently meeting your customers' needs, it is important to listen, learn and evolve. In listening to my readers, my subject matter becomes more focused, and the services we offer improved. I constantly solicit customer opinion by asking specific questions in my posts, prompting conversations among my readers.
Getting Started: Typepad and WordPress offer inexpensive services to get you started. Although you might have the capability to host and build your own Blog, I recommend these services because of their cost-savings, ease of use, and their content and promotional value-added functions. However you build your blog, they key to success lies in your strategy and its execution.
Last month, I wrote about the effectiveness of referral marketing in selling to small business relative to cold calling . I wanted to build on this post by providing some tips on building your small business referral network.
My first tip- read Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point" if you haven't already. If you have, you may want to read it again. The "tipping point" may be one of the most over-used business terms today but Gladwell asserted an interesting hypothesis on why any phenomenon spreads. I propose that in the business world "phenomenon spreading" (if I may short-hand Gladwell's thesis) and referral marketing are one and the same- you are the phenomenon and it spreads most effectively through referral marketing.
I am not going to do Gladwell justice in the space that I have (and errors in paraphrasing his thesis are my own) but the book focused on three different types of personalities which are fundamental in the spread of any idea (and remember again that for this blog the "idea" is you and the product and service you sell):
1. Connectors- in a nutshell, these are people who know a lot of people and, more importantly, will connect you with their network.
2. Mavens- Yiddish for one who collects knowledge- the trend spotters. The people who tells you about a new trend. Gladwell describes them as "the information brokers"
3. Salespeople- this is pretty self-explanatory, these are the people who persuade everyone else that the idea is worth embracing, exploring and, in the business context, buying. If you are reading this blog, YOU are the salesmen
It is not a huge leap of logic to state that a Salespeople needs to have good relationships with Mavens and Connectors in order to build a good referral network. Mavens tell Salespeople what the small business world is thinking and Connectors put you in touch with your ideal clients. Connectors, Mavens and Salespeople are not mutually exclusive; one can be all three although it is rare.
But did you notice something? Gladwell's trinity of important phenomenon spreaders concentrates on personality types and not functional job descriptions/skill sets. Gladwell doesn't state that lawyers and accountants are more likely to be Connectors. He simply writes that Connectors have certain DNA which inherently makes them Connectors. A few designations or degrees does NOT make one a Connector or Maven or a Salesperson.
Why, then, do some salespeople build or expand a referral networking focusing on job descriptions/skill sets rather than personality types? I am often amazed that salespeople attempt to build a small business referral network by first approaching lawyers, accountants and bankers. From what I am told by some salespeople, in conventional sales thinking, these "Big Three" professions are connectors to small business clients because they have a lot of clients.
However, this belief overlooks two fundamental issues. Firstly, what binds the Big Three together is confidentiality to their clients and their clients' affairs. As a lawyer, I cannot divulge my client's names much less whether their business is "ideal" for a particular good or service; in doing so, I am indirectly telling a salesperson that my client is doing well or poorly. Our post 9/11 and Sarbines Oxley world has made most professionals particularly conscious of the concepts of privacy and regulatory sanctions in breaking such duties. Thus, there are structural barriers to approaching the Big Three to build a small business referral network.
Second, and as I have mentioned above, a strategy to build a small business referral networking using job titles as a defining criteria is misguided. Connectors are connectors because of who they are and not want they do or where they went to school. Certainly, particular professionals come into contact more than others but just because someone knows a lot of people does not necessarily mean they will connect you to them. It is a logical fallacy to think lots of clients = Connector.
In a similar vein, I know of some salespeople who try to get their best clients to refer them to their friends without success. However, it does not stand to reason that being a good client or having a profitable business is going to mean they are Connectors. This is not a function of their purchase orders or profitability but of their personality. Perhaps your client is profitable but a dour personality. Meanwhile, your less profitable client may be a poor business person but a great Connector for you.
The point being that starting or expanding your small business network is not a function of what they teach us at school- job titles, education and pedigree do not matter as much as conventional thinking believes. Instead, focus on the personalities.
The question to be asked should move away from "does this type of person do something that brings them in contact with a lot of my ideal clients?" to "who do I know who knows a lot of people who may be ideal clients regardless of what they do?" As someone once said to me- the next person you meet may not be in business or even need a lawyer but they may have a cousin who does.
Next month, I will provide some tips on finding Connectors.
EvanCarmichael.com is the world's #1 website for small business motivation and strategies. Evan also runs a series of successful Mastermind Groups in Toronto for entrepreneurs.
Guest Contributor: Deb Kolaras
