How To Use The Phone And Your Smiling Face To Turn Leads Into Sales

Times have been a little lean for many businesses. You may need to generate cash fast. Here are simple effective ways to multiply sales quickly with nothing more than the telephone and your smiling face. I'm not talking about canvassing from one neighborhood to the next getting the door slammed in your face. These techniques work best to get sales from: * Customers who have bought from you recently. * Old customers who haven't purchased in a while. * Prospects who have shown an interest, but never bought. * People who have a good reason to buy from you, but haven't heard about you yet. You can already see you are in pretty friendly territory. Seventy-five percent of the people in this list are VERY likely to buy. So why not get in touch? Give them the opportunity to let you help them. Start by making a list of customers and prospects you will contact. Unless you have a team of helpers, keep your list small enough to service over the course of the next few weeks. When working alone, I usually make my list no longer than 10 customers per week with a maximum of 50 to reach in five to six weeks. This is fairly lesurely. If you have the desire or need the money, you might go for 30 to 50 per week. Start with a phone call. It can sound like this: "Hello John! This is Melinda Smith at Smith Technology. We talked last month when our guy was out to fix your computer. How are you?.......John, if you have just a moment---This month we're offering a PC tune-up that increases your computer's speed and eliminates all those crashes." If John is interested, you are off and running toward a sale. But what if John is a bit hesitant? Tell him you have several different things that can save him time, hassles, and money. Offer to stop by and show him in a face-to-face visit. "John, this will only take a few minutes and it could save you a great deal of grief for months. Would Monday at 2 or Wednesday at 10 work for you?" I like to give customers a choice of two appointment times. You are giving them a choice while using a firm hand to get a commitment. What happens if you can't reach the customer? You will have this problem with half or more of the people you call. Be sure to leave a message on their answering machine or voice mail. Then follow up with a letter. Mention the time or two you tried to call, then lay out your offer and give the customer several ways to contact you. It's a good idea these days to include an email address. Many customers will send you a note after hours when they have more time to consider your offer. These techniques work great for current and previous customers and prospects who have shown interest but haven't bought. It is a little trickier reaching people who should want to buy from you, but don't know about you yet. For that you need direct marketing. Direct marketing comes in many forms ranging from simple postcards, to sales letters, to radio spots, to magazine ads. Try to target your direct marketing to a group of people who are most likely to want what you sell. Here's an example Roy paints cars. He provides a high-end paint job with a specialty in restoring the paint on old cars. Roy knows he can get a lot of great customers fast and cheap if he could find a big bunch of people who collect classic cars from the 50's and 60's. First Roy contacts several classic car clubs in his area. He discovers one has 300 members while another claims 700 members. Roy calls and explains to the club presidents how his service could be a big help to their members. Then he drops by with photos of past jobs and a collection of recommendation letters from previous customers. In no time, Roy gets the list of mailing addresses for all the members in both clubs. He prints up a brochure with some of his photos, an explanation of how he restores paint jobs, and comments from past customers. He also has a freelance writer create a sales letter for him. The letter offers the member a special, limited-time discount for club members. Then he mails the brochure and letter to 50 members per week. Will this get results? You bet! Even though none of the 1,000 classic car owners has ever heard of Roy, he offers just the kind of service a great many of them need. If he provides a good value, Roy will be swimming in customers for months and years to come. Use these simple steps to quickly build leads and turn them into buying customers. There is no faster way to improve profits NOW!