Friday, August 23, 2013

Heidi Sloss - Blog some solid tested ideas

Aug 072013
Since I introduced the this series on Marketing Strategies that Work for a designer client of mine a few weeks ago, I have heard from many of you with comments, notes, questions and ideas. Thank you!
The 5 easy and effective marketing strategies that appeared in this series are:
  1. Having an Up-To-Date Website,
  2. Networking with Great Referral Sources,
  3. Improving Proposal Presentations,
  4. Implementing a Follow-Up System and
  5. Having an e-Newsletter or Blog.
Of course there are many other marketing strategies that are great for growing a business, but in order to remove the feeling of being overwhelmed and overworked, we purposefully focused only on these 5 for a year for this client. Other strategies that this client now uses include public speaking, guest blogging, teaming up with power partners and she is contemplating writing a book.

This was a great gig for the two of us. For her, we ramped up her business so that it is now booming—always a gratifying result to see. And for me, it worked well as we did it in pieces—working on one strategy at a time. For each strategy we booked out between 2 and 6 consulting sessions to work together. For some of the strategies we did the work together and for others she contracted with me to do the work for her outside of our meetings. We also took breaks between strategies, to allow for her work flow, my travel schedule and her budget.
Running a business is hard work. It can also be lonely and isolating, even with people around you. Having a sounding board from an outside expert can make you more organized, motivated and profitable. I know that it does for me and it certainly did for this client.
I take on a small number of private consulting clients from time to time. If you are interested in learning more about how to create and implement and analyze marketing strategies for your business, contact me directly to see if you and I are a good fit.
Going forward I plan to update this series with other marketing strategies. If you have one that you have been thinking about employing and have questions, leave your comments below and I would be happy to consider using it for a future post. All comments received will receive a response, but I especially appreciate comments and questions posted directly on my blog page. See below. Thank you!
Yours,
http://gallery.mailchimp.com/45c9875b7fa74ba7d185b5f1a/images/Heidi_Signature.png
Heidi BK Sloss
Marketing Strategist & Follow-Up Expert
Best-Selling Author of Fortune is in the Follow-Up®
www.heidisloss.com
650-248-1545
Jul 312013
A few weeks ago I introduced a designer client of mine, looking to improve her business with marketing strategies that were doable, effective and profitable in Marketing Strategies that Work: Global Analysis of Your Business.
First we identified 5 easy and effective marketing strategies to reach her intended target market. Then we outlined what specifically she would be doing for each. In this week’s post, we will focus on: Having an e-newsletter or blog.
She saw the benefits of being able to stay in touch and follow-up with both prospects and past clients electronically by regularly educating and entertaining them, while periodically sharing information about her services. For setting up this strategy we started with focusing on who she was trying to reach, then what she wanted them to know and finally how she wanted to communicate it to them. I don’t have the space to detail out all that this entailed, but here are a few snippets.
Since her prospects and past clients were all homeowners and all living in a specific geographic location (The Bay Area), we focused her posts on areas of interest to this population. She was very concerned about how often to send it out so I assigned her to poll some of her past clients and we decided on every two weeks to start with. Please note, that I recommended more often, but this was what her comfort level was, and the big picture was to get it going.
Then came content creation. She started and then I finished a 9 month supply of posts for her. All short, most under 500 words, all original content, lots of photos and most with some sort of call-to-action: usually a link to click to, but sometimes something else as well. In less than a month’s time we created about 18 posts that were relevant and meaningful to her list.
She had set up a blog and an e-newsletter, but was confused about when and how to use both. I found the following info online that I share with clients when contemplating the different between the two:
At the core, a blog and a newsletter is simply a webpage. Each communication format can contain text, images, and formatting styles. The important distinction between blogs and newsletters from general websites is that they are time based and are for an intended audience. Blogger and WordPress are a few examples of free tools that will allow you to quickly create your online newsletter. Most content management systems can also be structured like a blog and provide many of the same Web 2.0 features.”
While there are a lot of people talking up the distinctions between the two, for most businesses, that does not matter. Since her website was using WordPress, we decided to use the blog feature as a newsletter—this gave her the benefits of both. The point of her communication was to keep in the minds of the people on her list while providing useful and meaningful information without making it difficult for them to follow her.
By the time we worked on this strategy, she had already had several months working three of her other ‘new’ strategies: Updating her Website, Networking with Great Referral Sources, and Implementing a Follow-Up System. These new ones, along with an already sizeable database, helped to grow her list even larger. With a 3 to 5 year timeline for prospects in her pipeline, she needs a large list to keep people moving through her sales/marketing funnel.
Do you have a blog or e-newsletter? What are you trying to accomplish with it? How is it working for you? Do you get comments on it? Do people share it with others? Would love to hear your thoughts on using this strategy, please post below. Thanks!
Yours,
http://gallery.mailchimp.com/45c9875b7fa74ba7d185b5f1a/images/Heidi_Signature.png
Heidi BK Sloss
Marketing Strategist & Follow-Up Expert
Best-Selling Author of Fortune is in the Follow-Up®
www.heidisloss.com
650-248-1545


Jul 242013
A few weeks ago I introduced a designer client of mine, looking to improve her business with marketing strategies that were doable, effective and profitable in Marketing Strategies that Work: Global Analysis of Your Business.
First we identified 5 easy and effective marketing strategies to reach her intended target market. Then we outlined what specifically she would be doing for each. In this week’s post, we will focus on: Implementing a follow-up system for past clients.
This one is such a critical strategy – not just for my design client – we all need to make sure that we are following up with both new people we meet AND our past clients. Too many business owners and sale agents spend their time, energy, and resources trying to grow their contact list when they rarely if ever work their past client contacts. This is shame because it takes much less time and work to re-convert a past client than it does to go through the whole sales cycle with a new one.
Follow-up with past clients when done right, should yield you more business as well as referral sources. How well are you doing either of these with your past clients? How are you keeping in touch? How often do you keep in touch? And when you do, what system are you using?
For my design client, it varies for each client. Before we started working together, she had a mish-mash of activities, but nothing systematized, so this one did not require a lot of heavy lifting, just a bit of tinkering. Now, when she starts working with clients, she always finds out if they have other projects in mind for their property, even if they are not ready to proceed at the time of her first engagement. She dutifully marks her calendar about 6 to 9 months before they identified when they might be interested in their next project. And then starts that follow-up for that project well in advance of when they might proceed.
Additionally, after every project is completed she sets up several actions to happen.
1) Every client receives a survey within 2 weeks of the job being done. We tinkered with the timing, but for her projects, 2 weeks worked best. It will be different depending on your industry and the nature of the work completed. Each survey asks questions that we developed. We find out what went well, what didn’t, what they liked about the experience, who else they considered hiring, and why they chose her. The information is then used to improve her services if necessary, and to market her services to others just like these past clients. Their words are much more compelling to others just like them especially when compared to anything she has come up with.
2) All past clients are also signed up to receive quarterly gifts for the 1st year, semi-annual gifts for the 2ndyear and then yearly gifts after that. These gifts vary depending on the taste and preferences of each client. So far they have been met with great enthusiasm and excitement and have yielded many more referrals than she has had in the past—something we had hoped for! Some of the various gifts have been through wine clubs, fruit clubs, cheese clubs, and flower clubs. She always uses an outside vender for client gift buying–no ‘do-it-herself’ mentality here.
3) Of course her follow-up system also involves regular phone calls and meetings with past clients that she has now integrated into her calendar system. For this strategy, it was never a problem on what to say, but rather when and how to schedule. After every phone call and/or meeting with a past client, she now enters in the next phone call or meeting with them so that it does not fall through the cracks. She has blocked off time in her calendar on a weekly basis to make the calls and/or meetings. This has allowed her to be much more organized which gives her confidence when contacting her past clients. It has also helped her feel more comfortable asking for referrals and to propose new projects.
There is so much more to follow-up than I have space for here. For more information about systematizing your follow-up and creating customer surveys, see chapters 3 and 4 of my book of my best-selling book, Fortune is in the Follow-Up® for everything you wanted to know about follow-up, but were afraid to ask ;-)
The other follow-up strategy that she implemented was a regular and consistent e-newsletter, which I will tell you about next week.
Yours,
http://gallery.mailchimp.com/45c9875b7fa74ba7d185b5f1a/images/Heidi_Signature.png
Heidi BK Sloss
Marketing Strategist & Follow-Up Expert
Best-Selling Author of Fortune is in the Follow-Up®
www.heidisloss.com
650-248-1545
Jul 172013
A few weeks ago I introduced a designer client of mine, looking to improve her business with marketing strategies that were doable, effective and profitable in Marketing Strategies that Work: Global Analysis of Your Business.
First we identified 5 easy and effective marketing strategies to reach her intended target market. Then we outlined what specifically she would be doing for each. In this week’s post, we will focus on: Improving her proposal presentation and how she almost doubled her prospect to client conversation rate in 2012.
This designer gets the majority of her business from prospects after she has presented a proposal, usually done in person. This is similar to what an architect, travel agent, real estate agent, or insurance agent might do. Her proposals are designed to educate her prospects about the whole design process as much as give them information about their specific project, the costs involved and of course why they should hire her.
The delicate balance in her proposals are between educating her prospects in how to be great clients while giving them information that they need to make an informed decision. In essence, she wants to make sure that have realistic expectations when it comes to time spent, the creative process, the importance of hiring the right designer, etc. all the while knowing that the main piece of information they want to hear is the cost of the project.
Most of us react in similar ways when hearing a proposal. Once we hear the bottom line, we stop taking in information and starting figuring out how to pay for it or not. In my many years as a successful real estate professional and subsequent years advising service providers, I have seen it happen countless times. So it becomes critical to know where your prospect is coming. In fact, your whole presentation needs to be thought of from your prospect’s perspective. Getting in your prospect’s head will be key to a successful (and profitable) proposal presentation. Here is something to think about: what do they need to know in order to be able to make great decisions about their project, whether it selling their home, taking a trip of a lifetime, deciding on how best to provide for their loved ones, refinancing their home loan or redoing their kitchen?
There were two aspects of her presentations that she dreaded. The first was redoing it. Personally, I find this the fun part and did most of the heavy lifting for her on this. We worked the information together, but after a certain point, I took over and created each section, choosing the order so that it both flowed well and that all roads led back to the same conclusion: she was their designer of choice. We emphasized her assets, playing up her specialties and we addressed her liabilities. With her new presentation, she was prepared for anything that came up.
The second part of the proposal process that made her nervous was the actual presentation. Since she was most uncomfortable with dealing with the cost aspects of her presentation, I challenged her to practice all the time. My original challenge was for her to give at least 5 presentations a week—even to people who aren’t in her target market, just to get her in the habit of doing them.
Habits take about 30 days to make and after the first month, she admitted to starting to feel less discomfort. After 2 months she started to feel comfortable and I am thrilled to report that after 3 months—that is 60 presentations—she is ‘almost’ darn right confident. And this was one of the secondary goals of all the practicing.
Think about it — who do you want to hire? Someone timid and unsure of themselves or someone who presents an air of confidence and knowledge? Most everyone will pick the latter and this was important for her to get to. Not all of her 60 presentations were in front of her target market, in the first few weeks most were for people not considering hiring a designer. But as time went by, and her she found success with her other chosen strategies she found she was presenting her proposals to more actual prospects in her target market.
After 6 months we saw that her prospect to client conversation rate almost doubled in 2012 from 2011, which is significant. Part of what contributed to her new success was her new presentation and presentation skills, part of it was her improved website, see Marketing Strategies that Work: Having an up-to-date website, part of it was her improved relationships with great referral sources, see Marketing Strategies that Work: Networking with Great Referral Sources, part of it was the improving economy and part of it was improving her follow-up system we developed for her business that I will tell you about in my post next week.
Yours,
http://gallery.mailchimp.com/45c9875b7fa74ba7d185b5f1a/images/Heidi_Signature.png
Heidi BK Sloss
Marketing Strategist & Follow-Up Expert
Best-Selling Author of Fortune is in the Follow-Up®
www.heidisloss.com
650-248-1545

Jul 102013
A few weeks I introduced a designer client of mine, looking to improve her business with marketing strategies that were doable, effective and profitable in Marketing Strategies that Work: Global Analysis of Your Business.
First we identified 5 easy and effective marketing strategies to reach her intended target market. Then we outlined what specifically she would be doing for each. In this week’s post we will focus on: Networking with great referral source of business.
For her business, she had identified that over the years, networking with real estate professionals provided her with excellent referrals. But she felt that she had grown stale when it came to networking with her referral partners and she wanted a power boost, something to get her out of her rut.
When I looked at her list of real estate agent referral partners, I recognized the names of some very successful Bay Area agents. So she didn’t need to focus on adding more names to her list as much as reconnecting with the people themselves.
Her networking dilemma is a fairly typical one: many business professionals forget the big picture of why they are networking, and just focus on the how. In other words, they spend too much time just adding to their list of contacts, but with little or no context. They forget that the point of networking is to develop profitable business relationships. Just growing your list for the sake of growing your list is not an effective use of time, money and resources.
So instead of focusing on name acquisition, I worked with her to improve the quality of her relationships with the people on her list. First we weeded out agents that she didn’t want to work with, then we focused on geographic areas, categorizing her list of agents to better be able to focus on specific locations. Then came the heavy lifting, we created a survey for her to use when getting together with the agents on her list. This survey had several purposes:
  • Going through it with the agents gave her great information about how they perceived her services. This allowed her to use that information to let other people know what she offers and why it is of value.
  • It ‘reminded’ the agents that she exists and can provide a valuable service to their clients, making the agents look great.
  • Best of all, it helped her feel like getting together served a purpose, rather than just getting together for the sake of getting together. And having an ‘excuse’ to get together to fill out the survey, gave her referral partners an opportunity to feel helpful. It provided a great conversation starter.
She committed to having at least 5 survey one-on-one meetings a week for 3 months, some weeks she doubled that amount.
And the results speak for themselves: her referrals went up by 60% and that led to presenting more prospect proposals—the subject of my post for next week.
What networking strategies do you use? How well do they work for you?
Yours,
http://gallery.mailchimp.com/45c9875b7fa74ba7d185b5f1a/images/Heidi_Signature.png

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