networking | smallbizdream blog

Improving Customer Acquisition with CRM

The biggest challenge facing small businesses is how they can get more customers and maximize their return on investments.

Fortunately, we can easily find ways to improve customer acquisition without having to spend a lot of money on traditional outbound marketing strategies. It only takes a little bit of creativity and trying out new ideas.

There are two main ways – offline and online. We will talk about both ways here.

Promote Your Business Offline

Everybody is online so why not try the personal touch. A lot of customers still like and require the personal touch.

Some offline customer engagements are as effective as a marketing strategy today as it was 100 years ago when the majority of businesses didn’t have a website. These include:

going to networking events
taking your business outdoors
sponsorship & giveaways

Meeting up with people in a friendly, non-selling environment like networking events increases your exposure without spending too much on paid ads. However, to be successful, you have to present your business in light of the customer’s needs, pain points and how your products and services can provide a solution to these problems.

The idea is to go and help people, and to show how your company can create value for them. It may not always lead to an immediate sale, but it can help grow your network and develop good relationships with potential buyers and customers.

Whenever possible, bring along something that reminds them about your business. It could be your business card, key holder, bunker ring, or any small gizmos you can carry along. I always carry bunker rings with me to networking events. Why? Because my potential customers will stick my bunker rings on their phones and every time they glance at their device, it will remind them of me.

Another way to help you with customer acquisition is to take your business outdoors by having your own space during special occasions or community events where people can find your company, products, or services. Talk with the organizers and make some arrangements to have your own booth set up.

Event organizers might also look for sponsors to reduce the overall cost of running the event. You can take this opportunity to have your company name or logo displayed in conspicuous areas for a few hundred dollars’ worth of donation.

Once you have talked to them and exchanged business cards, then it’s a good idea to put them into an online follow-up series so they don’t forget about you.

If you want them to get to your sales funnel, you can use Small Business Dream’s Customer Acquisition tools and have your landing page address or QR code printed on your Sales Funnel Card.

Most importantly, always make an effort to follow up with them as soon as you can.

Take Your Business Online

Promoting your business online is a sure way to improve customer acquisition using cost-effective marketing tools over the Internet. However, it’s tough to get noticed. Some of the best ways to increase customer awareness about your business include having a blog or website, a social media account, and a sales funnel.

Your blog or website can serve many uses for your business. It helps educate people about the benefits of using your product or service, provide useful information about the subject they’re looking on, and can be used for earning residual income through affiliate links, Google AdSense, etc. But most importantly, it helps maintain people’s interest and lead them closer to your goal – to get more customers.

Social media can also be used in customer acquisition, but because marketers have been using social media the wrong way, business owners have started to lose interest in it. They don’t have a system to follow up with fans and followers in a realistic way. Most of them aren’t even real, so business owners end up using auto-responders (‘robot secretaries’) the whole time. Most businesses don’t think strategically when it comes to social media but use a shotgun blast approach, hoping to catch somebody or something.

Small Business Dream is an inexpensive tool that helps business owners manage their social media contacts more efficiently with their Social Connect, and the Social Series in the Action List. Social Connect gives them the option to curate and import fans and followers to their contact list.

Since we don’t want our customer database to be stuffed with unwanted (fake, pseudonymous, or artificial) contacts, we need to screen them out of the social contact list, and leave the ones who show genuine interest to learn more about the company. This would allow sales people to work on the Action List’s Social Series more efficiently and get real results from using social media to get more customers online.

Sales funnel is a very useful tool in customer acquisition when used with offline and other online methods. With Small Business Dream, business owners can easily create their own sales funnel like a pro without having to learn HTML, CSS, or JavaScript, and use the link for their Social Series and opt-in subscriptions online. They can also use the link offline through Sales Funnel Cards, tent cards, signboards, or directly through an iPad or tablet set up to the sales funnel in-store.

Build a Customer Base to Promote Your Business

Your first customers constitute the core of your business from which you can grow more customers. Coming up with a loyalty program, customer specials, customer referrals, offering discounts, and commissions, can help accelerate your business.

Although it might cost you a little bit of profit, you’ll have greater gains in the long run as your business gains momentum. Looking at it from an angle, think of it as being a part of your marketing expenses. But instead of them going to paid advertisements, they go directly to your customers who will benefit from them. The result is a happy customer base who will talk about their experience with your company to other people, and your business becoming an instant success.

Take your business to the next level through sales and marketing automation. Visit SmallBizDream.com and start using our suite of tools to increase your sales and profitability like never before.

How to Network Like a Boss

Do you go to networking events? If you’re a business owner, then you definitely should be. There was this really great article about how the higher up somebody is in an organization, the less likely he feels that going to a networking event is kind of a “dirty” thing.

I know some people aren’t comfortable with networking events. It makes them feel “dirty” and they’re doing something wrong because most people are doing them wrong. The idea of a networking event is to make friends. You think to yourself “Oh my god! Build relationships. Sounds hard.” And you don’t just go over and vomit all over people. You go to form relationships.

You are obviously looking to steer the conversation in a way to see if they might be a potential client, but you need people to know, like, and trust you before they will become a client.

When I go to a networking event I break down people into a couple of categories, depending on who that person is. The categories are usually potential friend, potential client, potential employee, and potential partner. But just because someone starts out as a friend doesn’t mean that they can’t become a client or a partner later on. Your relationship may change. Or Maybe you’ll just remain really good golf buddies.

Whoever they are, you should put them into an automation follow up series for personal contact, so that I’m still interacting with them, even if I haven’t actually gone to the point of figuring out where they might fit into my business or where I might fit into theirs.

Then I go after sort of a couple of categories in with my business. They might be interested in a free trial of my software. They might be interested in becoming a re-seller. They might be interested in becoming a consultant. And all of this is done in a carefully crafted conversation.

You go into a networking function armed with your conversation that you practiced and rehearsed. You’ve seen how people react to things in their face when you talk to them. You see it in their eyes, and you hone that. You get to the point where you’re a broken record because broken records work. And then you can get better.

This is practicing the kick 10,000 times instead of a new kick every time. I’ve worked through a million iterations. If you want to network like a boss you do it by going to four or five events a week. Not four or five a year. Not four or five a month. Go to four or five a week, and within three weeks you will have honed your skills. You will have sucked in front of a whole bunch of people.

And then the neat part is everyone gets nervous, especially the first few times. “Oh yeah, but what if I see the guy again and he knows I sucked?” Guess what I found happened? They overhear you at another event and they’ll come up to you and say, “Damn you’ve gotten so much better than the first day I met you!”

Everyone’s there in the same game. We’re all trying to improve our skills. We’re all trying to squeak out a living. We’re all trying to enjoy the surf, the sun, and whatever. Somehow we just got to get people to stop sweating the details.

If you’re out there generating prospects and leads stop sweating the details. Go with the idea that you’ve maybe helped some people. Go with the idea that maybe at the networking event you can point some people to some helpful resources. Or you can introduce them to someone else you know that might make a good relationship or maybe you can introduce them to a free trail of a couple of tools that you found.

Go there with the idea that you’re going to go to this networking event, and you’re going to help a few people with problems in their business. If that turns into a sale, then great. Don’t be selfish and only try to help people with problems your product sells. Just help people. For example someone’s struggling with taking a picture with their cell phone. “Hey, something I can help you with?”

I love networking events for that reason. It’s incredibly fast to rapidly iterate. The business prospects are all there. You’re not going to close a business prospect the first time you meet them at a networking event, so stop trying and you’ll have way more fun.

You need to build a relationship and have that conversation. They need to see you a couple of times to build trust. You show up to a networking event once and you go, “Well that didn’t work.” That’s not how networking works. You need to practice.

There’s always going to be ways you can improve. And if you do fail, then of course you know there’s lots of ways you can reframe that. You should practice thinking your identity and your role as separate. So you can think: “they’re not rejecting me. They’re rejecting my role.”

You know so many times people attach their role and identity together, and they find themselves feeling hurt, rejected and devalued. I knew a man who worked his entire life and he eventually retired. He was a fit healthy guy when he retired and he died five years later because he actually attached his role as business owner and mayor of a town to his identity. And it happens a lot. You know people lose their job and throw themselves out of a window.

Often when you go into these networking events you ask yourself, “Who am I today? How do I represent myself and be okay?” And if you just take an attitude of service, I’ve had some clients with you know earth-shaking reputations and huge client lists, and I’ve sort of worked myself up a little bit. “Well, how am I going to sell this person?”

Take a moment to go, “Hang on. If I go in with an attitude of service I can ask better questions.” I can understand their business, pain, and issues better than if I gone in to try to sell something. Then you ask them what’s the result they’d like out of the meeting to be. They tell me. And guess what I deliver in my proposal? I’ve delivered what they told me they want delivered. Amazingly enough, I got the business.

I went to a networking event the other night and it’s put on by one of the larger cell phone providers. I went to one of their events and was a free event and it was fantastic. It blew my mind. It was a catered, wonderful event, and it was free so I naturally wanted to get more involved.

I saw another one of their events come up so I’m like, “Well, I’ll go. I could eat. Right?” I went there with my bucket full of bunker rings, which are my phone rings as my little giveaway. I actually went there because this mobile company called Rogers has just started this whole campaign to try to help small businesses. And, of course, that’s what we do. So I went there because there was a speaker being flown in from Toronto to Vancouver.

This guy was flown in from Toronto to talk about what I talk about, so I’m like, “Hang on. I got to go meet some of these people and maybe if I get lucky I’ll be able to steer the conversation to where I can be a bit of a public speaker and get flown around Canada; helping them out and getting my message out.”

And then it was a really hot day and I normally go to these things in a suit because I believe to always be dressed at the same or one higher than anyone you’re meeting with, and I dialed it back to a polo shirt and dress slacks. When I got there everyone was at my level or a step below, so I was like, “Well, thank god I didn’t show up in a suit.” I mean I would have looked better than the speaker. That’s not cool.

I pulled out my bunker rings and I start talking to this nice Russian lady who was also looking at helping businesses, and she worked for some business consultant. I gave her a bunker ring. And then I’m giving out bunker rings and people are getting them and they’re actually sticking them on their phones, and then this other lady comes over and she says, “You’re going to be embarrassed for me when I show you what I have.” And she holds up her phone in her hand through this strap thing that’s attached to her case. She says, “I want one of those for forever.”

I said, “Well, I’ll tell you what: You let me take a picture of you with that one, and then we’re going to put mine on yours and we’re going to take another picture. As long as you’ll let me put that on Twitter and use it in my social media stuff, I’ll give you one. Heck, I’ll give you two.”

But it turns out that she was flown in from Toronto. Her sole purpose was to find energetic people who know what they’re talking about to join them in speaking across Canada.

All because I went there to give out some bunker rings, make some friends, and eat some food. And I helped this Russian lady with some of her problems in front of this other lady who’s overhearing it, and suddenly she got my bunker ring. I give them to all the other executives that were in from Toronto. One guy walked away with three; apparently he had a wife and a girlfriend.

I didn’t go there and ask who’s in the charge. Source them out. I would’ve if it wouldn’t have developed naturally. Make no mistake about it, I would have worked the room until I found who I need to talk to. But by just being me, going there, helping people, giving away my little gizmos in a polite and respectful way that didn’t interrupt their event. That’s how you network like a boss. Go there to help. Go there to serve.

I not only made some great contacts but I managed to get some speaking gigs out of it too. I’ve got the local guy wanting me to do a bunch of events that weren’t as formal as that one. Then the other lady she’s like, “Look, you’ve got to take my number. You’ve got to take my email. You have to follow up. We need people like you.” So I’ve started that process and I have no doubt that once I set my mind to it it’ll happen.

How to Overcome Stumbling Blocks to Successful Networking

The ability to connect with people is essential to the success of your business. Professional networking events can present you with opportunities to interact with others in business on a personal level, and this can develop profitable relationships. These occasions are critical for anyone who wants to grow a business or promote a career.

Many people are simply not comfortable walking into a room full of strangers and starting up a conversation, but there are some simple ways to get around that fear.

Stumbling Blocks to Successful Networking

Related: How to Network Like a Boss

Here are five common stumbling blocks to successful networking, and some ways to help you overcome them.

1. Reluctance to talk to strangers

We’re all taught at an early age not to talk to strangers because “It’s just not safe.” In certain situations, this is still good advice. In business, however, talking to strangers is the best way to generate interest and support for your products and services. If you only talk to the people that you already know, you’ll definitely miss out on opportunities to make new connections and establish valuable contacts.

To get past your fear of talking to strangers, set a goal for yourself before you attend any networking event. Decide how many new contacts you want to make, or how many “strangers” you want to meet. In some cases, you could even make a list of people that you’d like to meet.

Next, think of some icebreakers or conversation starters. Prepare questions that you can ask anyone you meet at the event. You might want to ask about other people’s business, their connection to the sponsoring organization or their opinion of the venue.

2. Lack of a formal introduction

It’s a whole lot easier to make a new contact when there’s someone else to handle the introduction and pave the way for you. If you wait for another person to make that move, you might not meet anyone. At networking events, the goal is to meet as many new people as possible.

This is the time to take the bull by the horns, walk up to people you don’t know, introduce yourself and start a conversation! You can easily do this if you’ve prepared your ‘self-introduction’ in advance.

You shouldn’t introduce yourself the same way to every person. Maybe it’s your first time attending an association meeting. In that case, you might want to say that as part of your introduction. Let people know who you are, why you are there and give them a reason to ask more about you.

3. Fear of being seen as ‘pushy’

Maybe you think you’ll turn people off if you’re assertive, and that if they want to talk to you, they’ll make the first move. If this is your line of thinking you’ll very likely find yourself spending a lot of time alone at the reception or meeting function and leave without a single new connection. Being open, friendly and interested does not turn people off.

You won’t come across as overly aggressive if you seek out the “approachable” people. These are the ones who are standing alone or who are speaking in groups of three or more. Two people talking to each other are not approachable because they may be having a private conversation and you could very well be interrupting.

4. Thinking that other people may not like you

There is always the risk that the other person is not interested in you and doesn’t want to meet or talk to you. It happens. If that is the case, don’t take it personally. Nothing ventured is nothing gained. When you get a cold shoulder, smile, move on and say to yourself, “Next?”

5. Having your intentions misunderstood

Approaching someone of the opposite sex to begin a conversation can seem more like flirting than networking. This is more of an issue for women than it is for men. Women have an equal place in the work environment and need to make professional connections just like men do. Women in business can no longer afford to hold back when there is an opportunity to meet new people.

Neither men nor women will have their motives misinterpreted if they present themselves professionally and if they keep the conversation focused on business issues or topics that are not personal or private.

Whatever your stumbling blocks, face them before the next networking event and devise a personal plan for getting past them. Once you do, you connect with confidence and courtesy on every occasion and the results will definitely be reflected in your bottom line.