April 23, 2010

Unique approach: Customers 2 Friends

Yesterday, while speaking at NAPO's annual conference, I shared a simple strategy for standout success: Find customers through prospecting, then turn them into friends.  This group, Professional Organizers, run their own businesses and must build their client base from the ground up. 

This is how many of us start in sales/marketing: No customers.  Often, our managers tell us to get out our Roladex and start calling our friends, turning them into customers.  If they say "no", at the very least, get some leads out of them.  That was the advice I received in my first job in Dallas, selling mobile phones. My boss, said, "you can either crack the phone book open and get out your address book and start selling to friends and families.  And the second approach is easier." 

Being in a band at the time (1986), my address book was slim (if you didn't count our mailing list) and no one could afford a $1500.00 car phone!  One day, while catching up on the phone with my grandmother, I told her about my predicament.  She quipped: "Friends don't sell friends.  They serve them with confidence.  Your company expects you to milk your goodwill (friends and families), and they really don't care about them.  If you want to stand out in life, do the hard work (cold calls) and get some customers -- then turn them into friends!" 

This advice changed my point of view and future business life.  I focused more on serving, wowing and helping the few customers I found through cold calling the yellow pages.  They, in turn, gave me more referral business than I needed and my real friends got a break from a constant sales pitch.  Win/win/win. 

If you are building a business, you should try this novel approach too.  Here's a few ways to do this: 

1. Embrace the concept of selling to strangers: Whether you have to knock some doors or make some uncomfortable calls, deal with the hard work of building a business.  If your product or service is as good as you think it is, it should sell itself if you fill the funnel.  Social media and email make us SO lazy about this concept.  NOTE: Email marketing to sell a product/service is lame, noisy and gives you a false confidence that you are filling the funnel. 

2. In networking or marketing, serve people don't sell them.  Educate them about an issue related to your industry and then they'll ask you to talk about what you are selling.  (See Elmer Letterman story). At broadcast.com, I attended events where I talked about how to use the internet (not my service).  I generated a great deal of goodwill and stranger2customers by doing that. 

3. When you get customers, exceed expectations.  The best way to warm up a relationship is to go beyond the promise and deliver some delight and surprise.  

4. Develop a sincere interest in the customer's life situation.  You don't have to be nosy, just observant and emotionally available.  Pick up one piece of decent information with each encounter, and don't forget to call back to it.  You should friend every customer you have on Facebook too, assuming you aren't a jerk, politico or idiot on Facebook.  (See 5X5 Exercise.)

5. Express your gratefulness for their business instead of milking them for referrals.  They know how you make money and will rave about you to their friends, maybe even on Facebook. 

6. Change their life, don't just serve them.  Be a part of their solutions team, give advice and share your network with them strategically.  Don't keep your value at your vest.  Treat them as a neighbor, and they'll reciprocate with friendship. 

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