Heidi Sloss blog

Marketing Strategies that Work: Networking with Great Referral Sources

Marketing, Marketing Strategies that Work 2 Responses »

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,

Heidi BK Sloss
Marketing Strategist & Follow-Up Expert
Best-Selling Author of Fortune is in the Follow-Up®
hsloss@heidisloss.com
www.heidisloss.com
650-248-1545

Marketing Strategies that Work: Having an Up-to-Date Website

Marketing, Marketing Strategies that Work No Responses »

Jun 242013

Last week I introduced a working relationship I had with a designer client, 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 up-to-date website. Most business professionals know that they need a website, but I am amazed by how many excuses people have for their website—or even worse for the lack of a website!

First of all, let me be clear. Your website does not have to be perfect. Really, if you are suffering from the compulsive need to have all of your marketing materials perfect, including your website, before you can move forward, I want to refer you to a previous blog post of mine titled: Stop It!

Without being trite, please know that for your website, good enough is good enough, it is never going to be perfect, and let’s be frank, a perfect website is not necessary. Your website is a tool to help your prospects learn about you and for past clients to use to refer their friends and family to.
Bottom line is that your website must be up-to-date. Don’t have photos of you from years ago—even if you think the older photos are more flattering. Don’t have out-of-date information about you, your business, your services and/or products featured on your website. An aside: the other day a website developer amazed me when he told me not to look at his website. He said something about the shoemaker’s kids not have shoes as an excuse for having an out-of-date website, even though he was in the business of selling website development!

Everyone who has a website needs to keep it current. Period. Even if they are in the website development business. Period. A few months ago I wrote a post on looking at real estate property with my son in the Lake Tahoe region and how shocked I was at the condition of so many real estate agents’ website. Is Your Website Working For or Against You has some good starting information to think about—especially if you are a service provider.

Going back to my designer client, like many talented professionals, she was uncomfortable with telling people about her skills and how she could help. She felt the self-promotion was too difficult. And this was preventing her from updating her site. So I worked with her and created copy that communicated what she wanted to say to prospects about her services. Yes it took some time and yes it took some money, but together we did the heavy lifting and it made a big difference.
Last step was to help her to pick a website designer, who created a great site that she is now proud to show people. And of course we had her site optimized to take advantage of all the latest and greatest SEO tools out there as well as make it mobile and video friendly.
Would love to see what your websites look like. Please post your site address and some comments below about the last time you updated your website.

Yours,

Heidi BK Sloss
Marketing Strategist & Follow-Up Expert
Best-Selling Author of Fortune is in the Follow-Up®
hsloss@heidisloss.com
www.heidisloss.com
650-248-1545

Marketing Strategies that Work: Global Analysis of Your Business

Business, Marketing, Marketing Strategies that Work, Networking No Responses »

Jun 182013

Last year I was approached by a business owner who had been following my post for years for help with her marketing. She is a very talented designer and was frustrated that she wasn’t getting more business. When she did have clients, they loved her, but she just didn’t know how to duplicate those experiences. So we talked about some possibilities and how to help her jump start her marketing with just a few focus strategies.

First we talked globally about her business. I analyzed her current business, looking at systems, operations, planning and of course her cost of doing business.
Then we moved onto where she wants her business to be in 5 years–longer than that is unrealistic in today’s changing economic times and some of my colleagues even argue that 5 years may be too long for planning purposes. I like 5 years because it feels long enough that people share their dreams and short enough that we can get to specific strategies that will make your dreams reality.
Next we talked about how she is going to get there—what specific actions and activities would help her create momentum. 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. The strategies I recommended and she chose were:

1. Having an up-to-date website,
2. Networking with great referral sources of business,
3. Improving her proposal presentations,
4. Implementing a follow-up system for all past clients and
5. Having an e-newsletter or blog that would help raise her online presence and keep in touch with both prospects and past clients.

All 5 strategies were great choices for her business as they were not hard to make happen and they would get her maximum bang for her buck. Of course, she was already invested in some of these strategies, so that made the choice even easier. The big element of work here was that she would commit to these strategies for 12 months and let go of other strategies for the moment until we evaluated the results.
Over the next few weeks I will be sharing information about each strategy, how we worked it and what her results were. Because of the nature of her business I have respected her desire for confidentiality, so I am unable to share identifying information on the work we did together, but I know that you will get a lot out of learning how we put together a manageable work plan for her business. Next time, “Having an up-to-date-website: tips, tricks and tools that you can use right away.”

Yours,

Heidi BK Sloss
Marketing Strategist & Follow-Up Expert
Best-Selling Author of Fortune is in the Follow-Up®
hsloss@heidisloss.com
www.heidisloss.com
650-248-1545