A simple lesson that will LOCK customers to you for life

Try to think of someone you know who, in this economy, has lost a job or had a big drop in income. Now let me ask you a question about them:

Have they stopped eating?

They haven't, right?

That's because we all have to eat. If we lost our source of income, we might adjust how we eat, how much we eat, or what we eat. We may even get creative with meals.

I remember in my early years I loved maccoroni and cheese and ramen noodles. Peanut butter and jelly was also a favorite. I didnn't have much money so I found food sources that were cheap.

I didn't stop eating.

We don't just stop feeding our bodies, right?

We can't.

Unfortunately, that simple logic doesn't transfer to our businesses.

As the economic markets across the country have declined, business owners and sales people have had to cut back on expenses. Those that haven't cut expenses have had to typically shut their doors. The sad part, I see them when they fail.

One of the first areas to get cut from a business budget is marketing and advertising.

Some businesses cut back because they simply don't understand the evolution of marketing and advertising. Others because they think it cost to much or will take up to much time.

You can't stop marketing and advertising your company. This is what feeds your business, and without it, your business starves.

Believe it or not, you can learn a valuable lesson about recession proofing your business from a story about two farmers.

You wouldn't let your family starve. Don't starve your business!

A Lesson of Two Farmers - A Simple Lesson That Will Lock Customers to YOU for Life

I want to share a story with you that will most likely change the way you look at your business. It’s a story that legendary business-building guru Dan Kennedy tells. It’s a story that illustrates a mistake most Kansas City business people make.

It goes something like this …

Two guys decide to start their own farms. The first guy runs out and buys a bunch of cows for his farm because he believes that he can turn the cows into profit.

The second guy wants to buy cows, too, but he realizes that he doesn’t have the proper setup to handle the cows and turn them into profit. So instead of racing out to buy cows, he calls a fence company and has a massive fence built around his pasture. Next he plows the fields with grass to provide food for his sows. Lastly, he orders cows for his new farm.

The first farmer’s cows arrive, and slowly but surely they wander away because he didn’t do anything at all to keep them in his pasture. He bought the cows, invested the money he thought would produce results, then he let them all just walk away.

The second farmer’s cows, on the other hand, nicely fenced-in, fed and nurtured by the farmer, stayed on his farm and produced income for many years to come.

Unfortunately, most people operate their business just like the first farmer. Instead of investing in cows, however, they’re investing in leads for their business.

Let me stop for a second and introduce myself. My name is Chris Dowell, and from my years, I can say with 100-percent certainty that most business people don’t have a real plan to handle the leads they generate. Typically those that fail end up calling me to sell their real estate assets. I've been doing this for 20 years.

Look at how many businesses go out of business in a year in Kansas City? One report I read this morning reported that 95% of the businesses that start up today will be out of business within 3 years.

Businesses are spending a fortune to generate a ton of leads, but they don’t have a way to keep those prospects engaged or involved. They repeatedly waste a TON of money by letting these prospects just wander off.

Where does this leave you?

It leaves you wasting time chasing prospects, begging for business, asking clients for referrals – all with no way to keep your prospects in your pasture.

If you don’t lock customers to you, you’ll be forced to sacrifice your free time, working entirely on someone else’s terms.

Can you even count how many family events you have missed? Do you even want to think about how many times you let people you cared about down because of your schedule? The truth is business people constantly bend over backwards for customers, sacrificing time, energy and money, always chasing the next sale. And you do it for one primary reason …

You’re replaceable

It sounds bad, but you know it’s true. Your customers can easily replace you. You sacrifice your happiness to make a sale. If you don't there is somebody down the road who would gladly fit themselves into your customer's schedules. If you don’t say “yes” every single time a customer asks for something, you feel as though you could lose that customer. The feelings are real and justified. Business' do lose customers all the time. Customers are not as loyal as they once were.

Heck, I just had a business person tell me about a loyal customer of 10 years left for a competitor. He was definetley upset as he told me the story over the phone this morning.

So you cater to the whim of every customer, holding their hand, kissing their behind, because you know if you don’t, someone else will.

How to finally turn the tables

If a customer wants you to be available 24/7, and you’re not, they simply move on to the next business. But what if you could turn the tables? How much easier would life be if you could simply move on to the next customer, the way these customer just move on? The only way this would be possible is if you had more customers than you needed.

So what does a Kansas City business have to do to have more customer than they need?

Customer come from leads. To have more customers than you need, you must have more leads than you need. This puzzle is solved by working backwards, which wasn’t taught in any of your business class in college, right? But some businesses have figured it out and have begun testing new lead-generation strategies and marketing campaigns to generate more leads. This is great, but it creates a new problem.

What do you do with all of these leads?

Let’s get back to the story of the two farmers. Smart, successful business are the ones who put a “fence” around the leads they generate. This is how they become irreplaceable in the customers’ eyes, and how they are able to simply move to the next customer and work on their own terms.

The old thought to keep your customers engaged is to create a newletter. It used to work for me. It may still work now for you.

To me the best fence a business owner can build around their customers is a powerful social media campaign.

Social Media is marketing and advertising with a social interaction. There are hundreds of forms of social media. You need to be where your customers are on the web. Striking up conversations, answering questions and offering helpful information. When ALL of your social media tools are working in harmony, then you have a social media campaign or plan of action.

A good social media campaign keeps your prospects engaged. It’s a way you can provide them with something of value, establish yourself as an “expert” in your customers’ eyes, and build a relationship that makes YOU irreplaceable to THEM, instead of the other way around. A good social media campaign is a tool the best marketers in the world use to put a fence around their leads and convert them to income.

The key word is “good” social media campaign. How do you come up with a “good” social campaign?

You could read books and there are many of them on how to create a social media campaign.

You could read blogs like Mashable and Seth Godin's.

You could hire a fantastic social media expert and I know many of them.

You may even decide to attend social media events like the Social Media Club of Kansas City (no matter what you do, I do recommend this)

You could stay up all night for a weeks straight and study trends, like I have.

Or you could do what I have done. Implement a little of all of the above.

If you need help with social media, checkout our social media seminars and workshops.

From time to time, check out the wall and the calendar on our facebook groups page. Helpful links and events will be posted. Some will be for social media training and others will be for networking. If you think it will help your business, hopefully you will take advantage.

Some planned events for March:

March 5th: Social Media Club of Kansas City breakfast Held monthly.

March 10th: Kansas City Networking Meetup (on KCN Calendar)

March 24th: Social Media Seminar (on KCN calendar)

Some Kansas City groups worth joining:

Kansas City Networking

Kansas City Networking and Business Directory

Social Media Club of Kansas City