Mary Kay Ash, the founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, said that she believed that everybody she met had an invisible sign around their neck that said, “Make me feel important.” And making them feel important was one of the key factors to her success.
If you think about it, her entire business model was based on making other people feel important. Her best salespeople drove around in pink Cadillacs. And by the way, it wasn’t just a limited number of her top salespeople who drove those Cadillacs. No, anybody on the team could be seen driving around town in a Cadillac if you achieved a certain goal. And how did you, as a salesperson, achieve that goal by making your customers feel more attractive and important?
Rather than you, as a small business person spending your hard-earned money on a salesperson, marketing, or advertising, wouldn’t it be great if you could get your customers to sell for you? Well, you can … simply by making them feel important.
Salespeople can be expensive.
Let’s say you decided to hire a salesperson and pay her a salary of $50,000. Let’s also say that there is another $50,000 tied up in expenses like:
· Healthcare insurance and other fringe benefits (401k, paid vacation, holidays, sick days, etc.)
· Office space
· Administrative assistance
· Technology – smartphone and laptop or tablet
· Car allowance
Finally, let’s assume that what she sells has a markup or margin of 10%. How much does your new salesperson need to sell – to pay for herself?
If you do the math ($50,000 in salary + $50,00 in overhead = $100,000), you will determine that the breakeven amount is $1 million!
Now, you might be tempted to become ecstatic if she were to bring in $500,000, but in reality, you might want to consider firing her!
That is why it can be much more cost-efficient to have your customers sell for you.
Here are three ways to accomplish that:
Form an Advisory Council
One of the ideas I like to share with my audiences is for each of them to form an Advisory Council. Here is how it works: Take your best customers out to dinner at a fancy restaurant or country club once a quarter. It especially helps if these customers are what best-selling author Seth Godin calls “sneezers,” people who are most influential in your community.
After dinner, ask your Advisory Council questions like, “I’d like to give you a sneak peek at some new products and services we are thinking about rolling out. What do you think?” or “This is our new business plan for next year. What advice would you give us?”
And you know, it doesn’t matter what they say. The important thing is that you made these people, who seem to know everybody in the community, feel important.
Not only will they be happy to meet other like-minded, influential community members at the quarterly meeting, but they are also likely to become lifetime customers. (After all, who among your competitors are treating them so royally?) Best of all, they likely will be unable to contain their enthusiasm around others about how you make them feel special.
After their quarterly meeting with you, if they overhear someone shopping for products or services that you offer, they are likely to chime into the conversation, beginning with words like, “You know, if that is what you are considering, you need to see my friends. They’ll take really good care of you!”
And we all understand the power of personal recommendation and that word of mouth is the most influential and effective form of marketing you can get.
And you too can get it, for the price of dinner and some drinks, simply by making your best customers feel important.
Farm a Fraternity
We tend to like, trust and buy from people like us; we tend not to like, trust, or buy from people we perceive are unlike us. However, there are plenty of potential customers in the community who are just like you! How do you know? They share the same interests that you do, which is a great starting point for building a business relationship.
So, to what groups do you belong?
· Chamber of Commerce
· Other business and civic groups
· Alumni associations and PTAs
· Fitness centers
· Toastmasters
· Church groups
· Softball teams
· Kids’ baseball, basketball, or soccer leagues
But be sure to do this right. We’ve all been to events and encountered people trying to build business relationships the wrong way. They walk around the room, moving from person to person, repeating the same proclamation, like, “Hi! I’m Joe! If you ever need your computer fixed, call me!” while shoving a business card in your hand.
“Networking is not selling,” warns Patti DeNucci, author of The Intentional Networker: Attracting Powerful Relationships, Referrals & Results in Business. “Networking is about relationships. It’s about conversations. It’s about getting to know people as people.”
When I was presenting to a group of CPAs, one attendee told me that every partner in the firm was required to join one of these affinity groups, any group of their choice. The CPAs found that Instead of advertising to a community, once they got to know the group members, it was a far easier and more effective way to market. And, of course, once you satisfy a few members of the group, the word will easily be spread by these evangelists throughout the rest of the group like wildfire.
An interesting side notes: my insurance agent sponsors an “athlete of the month” at the local high school. He regularly runs an advertisement featuring a prominent male and female athlete in the community paper. Not only will those athletes clip out the ad (Who cuts out and saves the advertisements of insurance agents – with the agent’s name, agency logo, and contact information?), but they will also send copies of the ad to their family and friends. This marketing activity also allows my agent to get to know the school administrators, coaches, and parents – who also need to buy insurance. He gets all these benefits monthly, making two future insurance clients feel important.
Team Up for Fusion Marketing
A customer database is often the most valuable asset any small business possesses.
Another business may not want to give up or sell you a list of their valued customers, but you don’t need to buy their list. Instead, you can simply team up with a non-competing but complementary business to promote your products and services to those customers and share the marketing expenses.
Further, the other business person can become an evangelist for your business, and you can do the same for them.
Jim Kelly, the former CEO of UPS, said, “The old adage ‘If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ is being replaced with ‘Join ‘em and you can’t be beat.’”
