Select a niche and focus ONLY on that one niche

My Niche

My background is nearly 20 years as a promotional product distributor. I totally "get" that business. It's very natural for me to go back to promotional product distributors as a business coach. Many promotional products distributors are individual operators rather than part of a large organization. I teach distributors to delegate to a virtual support team everything that is not sales related.

Why Niche

When you specialize on a smaller focus in the market place you can learn to understand the needs of that niche and tailor the delivery of the product or service to attract prospects and referrals with those needs and interests.

Birds of a Feather

I have found that working with a niche is very profitable when building a business by referral. We all hang out with people that have like interests. Young parents have a tendency to hang out with other young parents and would be a great source of referrals to other young parents.

If you've been in business for a while look at your current customer base and find the similarities of your best clients. Direct your referral marketing efforts - relationship building efforts towards them based on the similarities. When asking for referrals from your best clients, tell them what you're looking for in a referral - e.g. "I'm looking for other young parents to help them with..."

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Would Your Life Be Better
If Someone Was Promoting You
EVERY Day?

VirtualBuzzAssistant.com

HIre a Referral / Contact Management Manager

Even if it's just for a couple of hours a week, it is well worth it to hire someone dedicated to helping you manage your contacts.

The all too common story of most business owners, sales people or other professionals, is they stack up all the business cards they pick up when they're out prospecting or networking. With the best of intentions they collect a stack of cards with the hopes of entering them into their contact management software and some time soon they'll follow up.

I wonder how many sales are never made because a the card of a great lead was left in a little stack in a drawer or on a desk - never followed up on.

A good investment would be to hire a virtual assistant that can enter in all the contacts in to your database, and implement some type of follow up strategy for you immediately. How many sales would it take to pay for an hour or two of a virtual assistant's services? You might be losing money with those little stacks and no follow up.

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Stay in touch with your clients. Manage contacts, schedule mailing campaigns, custom four color designs, send one card at a time - mailed with first class postage. Send Cards Get Business

Expand your network of people you know every day

For 12 straight years Joe Girard sold more cars and trucks than any other salesperson. More as an individual than most dealers sell in total. No other salesperson has ever attained this title for more than one year, and not for both cars and trucks.Joe is the only salesperson ever inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 2001, renowned for selling more cars than anyone else in the World.



Joe's claim to this amazing fame is his dedication to send everyone he came in contact with personalized greeting cards. He met people in the grocery story. He called names out of the phone book and invited them to come test drive a car from him, and if they said no, he asked if he could stay in touch for a future opportunity to provide them with a test drive, or would they keep him in mind would they refer him to any friends or family that might be in the market for a car. He made it a goal to add to his contact file everyday.



If you want to do big business the way Joe Girard did, you must increase your contacts - everyday.

Manage Your Contacts - Contact Management Software

I know it's pretty elementary, but an important part of a Referral Plan is to manage your contacts with a contact management system.

Keep track of

• current customers
• new networking contacts
• referrals
• vendors or other independent professionals

In addition to keeping track of important contact information such as name, address and phone number, you can also use your contact management system to create and track marketing campagins and the results.

When you set up your database you need to ask yourself these important questions:

• What do you want to use your database for?
• What data do you want to keep track of?
• Who will be collecting the data?
• How many contacts are there to collect--50 records or 500 records?
• Who will be doing the updates?
• What reports do you want your database to generate?

Many small business owners say, "I'm so busy going after business, I don't have time to enter all my conatacts". If you don't have the time to collect and manage your contacts, then you need to pay someone to manage the contacts for you. Your contacts are your most valuable asset.

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Develop the perfect referral generation system - includes contact management - Send Cards Get Business.

Create a Written Referral Plan

The very best business you can get - the best source of customers - is by referral. A referral business relationship starts with a seed of trust, especially if the person sending the referral to you is trusted by the referral.

People make buying decisions three ways:

1. 50% come from Existing Relationships
2. 35% ask for a referral, "Who do you know that...?"
3. only 15% come from advertising

That means 85% of all buying decisions are made without ever looking at advertising! (According to a 2005 study on Consumer Behavior by Intelliseek, a leader in word-of-mouth measurement).

It makes sense to create a written referral plan - that is a plan to cultivate customer relationships that result in a steady flow of referrals. The compents that make up a good referral plan are:

1. Implement a "Stay in Touch" strategy using multiple tools. Your customers should hear from you on a regular basis. The goal should be to build a trusting relationship for your product or service.
2. Implement a "Request for Referrals" strategy - How, when, where, do you plan on requesting referrals from your clients. Brian Buffini uses this phrase, "Oh, by the way, I always have time for your referrals." Buffini recommends that phrase be put on everything...business cards, letters, other marketing pieces, voice mail, everything!
3. Implement a "Referral Recognition Program" - How do you plan to recognize and reward the customers that refer you?
4. Implement a strategy for taking your "A" clients to lunch and build that trusting relationship in person.
5. Implement a strategy for business thank you cards. Masters of the technique have been used by Joe Girard, Tom Hopkins, Bob Burg and many others. Those that use it swear by it's effectiveness.
6. Implement a "Birthday Card" sending strategy. Making your customers smile on their speacial day has an immeasurable impact. Too many people have no one that tells them "Happy Birthday, I'm glad you were born".
7. Implement a plan for keeping track of business that comes by referral so you can measure your referral plan agains your advertising. You may decide to stop traditional advertising all together because your referral business may be much more effective.

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