There’s Really Only Two Ways To Get A Customer – Which Are You Doing?

You’ve seen the shops, shelves rammed to bursting with marketing books. You’ve trawled through Amazon’s selection and are faced with hundreds and hundreds of marketing books… all telling you how to get, or acquire a customer.

Quite frankly, all you need to know about getting a customer, rests in only two ways.

1. You can go out and get a customer yourself.
2. You can find other business people who have the customers you want.

That’s it.

You really need not look any further than what’s written above when it comes to the number of ways in getting a stack of customers onto your database.

Let’s get into it.

Getting a customer by yourself takes a disciplined effort, endeavour, a careful strategy and enough money to support your campaign.

It’s fair to say that your results will depend on the ‘amounts‘ you have at your disposal in each of the above ingredients.

What are some of the ways you can acquire a customer through your own efforts?

Well, you can…

• Run lead generation adverts in the local paper, online, in niche magazines and other places where you know your target market exists.
• Run direct mail or postcard campaign, sending a targeted message to the people you want to influence.
• Create online articles posted to relevant ezines.
• Start a blog, driving qualified prospects to it by ensuring that you have a good amount of quality content, and that too on a continual basis.
• Create a newsletter and send it to your most profitable prospects, online or off it.

These are just a number of ways how you can get started with your own efforts in acquiring a customer.

And, the other way to acquire a customer is…

2: FIND OTHER BUSINESS OWNERS WHO HAVE THE CUSTOMERS YOU WANT.

Now, I may have banged this particular drum a number of times but it bears repeating time and time again. Because… it’s the shortest, the fastest, the quickest way to build up a stable of clients and customers, whilst at the same time, putting a pile of dough in your pocket.

And, the best thing is that it won’t cost you an arm and a leg. In fact, in most cases, all it’ll cost you is… a simple letter of enquiry and an introduction letter!

How cool is that?

The question is, how quickly do you want to be in the profits and enjoying the life you imagined your online or small home business, would bring you?

If you’re hell-bent on trudging through the various minefields that lie await for you; if you’re a glutton for punishment in consciously delaying the life you want; if you’re not motivated by the fact that your time clock is ticking at rate where, without warning, it will come knocking on your door for the last time, then… that’s fine.

However, if you’d like to once and for all, stamp out all that inner talk that’s driving you out of taking the super speed boat to success, rather than labouring in a single, broken oared row boat, then you owe it to yourself and all those who depend on you, to use this strategy to the maximum.

You see, when you go to the bank to deposit your money, the people there won’t ask you if you took 12 months to collect it or whether you took 30 days. They’ll simply deposit it.

So, wouldn’t you rather have regular cash deposited frequently so you can enjoy what you want, when you want – rather than, waiting anxiously, nervous about whether your drawn out promotions will be a success, And at the same time, knowing that there’s a lot at stake, a lot hinging on it if the outcome of the promotion turns out to be a deadly fatal flop!

I think you’d rather start living and enjoying… now… wouldn’t you?

How then, would you go about using other people’s number 1 asset, their database of customers? What can you offer that’ll get the other business person, intrigued, excited, and compelled enough, to say… YES!

Well, if you haven’t already, I’d strongly urge you to get your hands on a copy of a product called Joint Venture Secrets. You can get the full details when you go to
http://www.nick-james.com/public/jvsecrets/index.cfm

How then, can you use this customer acquisition strategy for yourself, today, right now, and see results in your mail box or bank account within a couple of weeks?

Well, first thing’s first. You need to identify WHO exactly is your ideal customer. What is their typical profile?

Then, once you’ve isolated that, you need to find those business owners who are not competitors with you, who would most likely have your customers whom you could approach with your offer.

Okay then, let’s make this real and practical.

I have a friend who is a website designer. (It’s strange, friends who know what it is we do, never seem to ask for help in the area which we are experts in, in areas where we have the skills and they… don’t!)

So, how can she use the strategy of sharing another business owner’s database, in order to increase her number of customers? And, at the same time, get paid?

The first thing is to identify her ideal prospect – WHO EXACTLY IS HER TARGET MARKET? Well, quite honestly, seeing the various number of people she’s helped, there’s probably not one particular group of people she can focus on.

I hope you reread that last sentence, for it contains a marketing gem that has the fire power to transform your marketing efforts!

Let’s then, choose a particular group of people for her whom she can direct all her marketing efforts towards.

From what I gather, the business owners she’s worked with are over 45 years of age. Okay, that narrows the goal posts a little. I also know that quite a high number of her clients are just starting out in the online business world. That narrows the goal posts even further.

I also know that about 70% of her clients are male.

You see, through a little careful digging, one can pretty much isolate a certain number of characteristics in identifying the most likely people who we can or should do business with.

If we add what we’ve got, we can make a little profile of our ideal customer. It’s not comprehensive, though it’s a simple start.

Male.
Over 45.
New online business start up.

(If we had no customers to base any of this information on, then, all we have to do is say “what are the ideal characteristics I would want in a client?” And then, go about compiling a list pretty much in the same vein as we did for my website friend)

The next stage is to identify particular businesses who would have these groups of people as their own customers.

Who would be an ideal fit?

• How about small business seminar promoters?
• And what about banks giving small business loans?
• And how would those age group of people who were recently made redundant?
• What about Independent computer suppliers who sell computers?
• What about colleges and institutions who are teaching how to use the Internet?
• What about information marketers selling products and services to do with Internet marketing?
• Let’s not forget those business owners who have offline businesses that have folded?
• And, those sending their children to private school who can’t manage on the households’ current salary, but would like to create an additional Internet side business?

The options are quite honestly, huge.

Though, what it does take is a little research, a little endeavour, a little persistence in working through the steps laid out for you above.

Now then, we’ve identified the group of people we want to concentrate on providing our services to. We’ve also isolated where these people already exist in the list above.

What happens now is that a simple letter of approach needs to be sent to those business owners we’ve identified.

Let’s take Information marketers as our source of having a number of qualified clients for our website services.

Here’s what can be said to the owner: (there’s a number of ways of approaching the business owner in the letter; I’ve just chosen the simplest and shortest)

Can you see how this simple letter is your selling tool in this part of the process? And look, if the first business owner doesn’t want to get involved, the next one might.

The way I look at it is you can either wait for people to stumble over your services and products… or… you can make things happen by being productive, proactive and working to a plan.

What if you get a business owner who wants to strike a partnership deal with you, what then? Well, what you can do first is you can jump up and down with glee! Once they’ve pulled you down from the ceiling, you can then think about how you want the percentage split to work.

Let me explain:

Say Joe Bloggs, Information marketer, agrees to your proposition of letting a simple letter be written to his customer base telling them about you, Jessica Hanley, expert web designer — how should the money that comes from the resulting business, be divided up?

Before we get into that, remember all customers who come on board and use your services because of that simple letter of introduction, will now be on YOUR customer database where you can mail and promote at your heart’s content.

I tell you that because even if you let the owner of the customer database HAVE ALL THE UPFRONT MONEY, you will be able to gain enormously in all the future sales you make to those customers.

But of course, we’re not thinking of giving 100% of the transaction fees if we can help it.

I’d suggest you look at a 50/50 split with the owner. You want to make his eyes bulge when you say to him something like… “look Mr businessman, I want to give you 50% of my £2000 fees because you’ve worked hard to acquire your customers. You’ve advertised, you’ve invested in online and offline infrastructure so I think it’s only fair that you get a really big share. How does that sound to you Mr Businessman?”

You see, your aim should be to acquire clients at little or no marketing cost of your own. And, if you do have to pay even 70% to the owner, you’ve got to look at it like you’ve just pocketed 30% fees, got a client you can market to for life. And, you can set up other deals for the owner to do with different products and services whilst you taking a piece of the pie for arranging it!

Can you see the simple beauty of it all? Whilst at the same time, can you understand the sheer marketing power of hitching a ride on someone else’s constructed database?

This is exactly how I plan to launch my *new online business… Purely through joint venture agreements like these.

You just need to have the courage and the technical ability to make it all work. Again, if what you’ve just read excites and appeals to you (and I really can’t see why it shouldn’t) you should study a little more on it by going to http://www.nick-james.com/public/jvsecrets/index.cfm

Now, I haven’t forgotten the letter you need to ensure that the business owner sends to his database about your services.

Here’s something you can think about using. (coming from, in this case, the Information marketer to his database of customers)

And there you have it. A simple process that’ll get you clients and prospects to give you money for what it is you provide.

Getting clients for your business need not be the arduous, teeth gritted, cold calling type grunt work that a number of ‘marketing experts’ recommend. Only go down that route if you’re not really bothered about how your business turns out.

However, do go full steam ahead if you’re looking for bankable profits – not next year, not in the next six-months-I’m talking about in as little as 30 days from now!

It’s absolutely possible with the skills picked up in this valuable article.

Comments or questions? If so, please post them to the discussion forum