Deliver Profits

Dreaming About Getting Customers?

Are you dreaming about getting customers? Here’s a ridiculously easy and inexpensive way to make your dreams come true.

If you’re struggling to get new customers, I encourage you to take a good hard look at how you treat the people who visit your store. Whether it’s a brick and mortar building or an ecommerce store, customers are not born, they’re made.

Every “customer” begins as a visitor. It’s up to you to help them make the transition from visitor to customer.
A while back, one of my sales people called in to tell me of an especially unpleasant encounter he had with a local business owner. When he walked in, she eyed him like he was a criminal. When he approached her, she lit into him. It turns out she had only been open for 2 hours and my sales person was the fifth she had seen that day.

I get it. When my business was just starting out, I had many days when I had more sales people stop by than customers. It’s frustrating. However, the key point here is that my lack of customers was not the salesperson’s fault. In this case, my salesperson was offering a way for this business owner fulfill her dreams of getting more (or any) customers.

It’s always baffled me why some store owners treat sales people like they’re the enemy. When I was calling on businesses as a young sales rep, I was stunned when someone threw me out of their store. While I was there on a sales call, I was also a potential customer!

Long ago, I cold called a small boutique that sold children’s clothing. I was the mother of a toddler. The owners understood that while I was there to sell them something (advertising), they also had an opportunity to sell me something. The owners welcomed me warmly. We chatted, we both made our pitches and we both closed our sales. It was a win-win situation. They bought advertising from me while I bought adorable clothing for my then toddler daughter. To be honest, I probably ended up spending twice as much with them as they did with me.

That experience sticks in my mind to this day. In the businesses that I own, every inquiry is treated like a potential customer/client/patient. Being friendly and welcoming is a TOP priority. You’d be stunned at how many sales and service people (postal workers, delivery people, etc.) we’ve converted into customers using this approach.

No one starts a business dreaming of failing. Every business is launched with hope and enthusiasm. However, most new business owners underestimate the time, money and effort that MUST be invested in getting the word out about the business.

If the business owner my sales person called on had practiced this, she might still be in business today. She should have welcomed every one of these sales people into her shop. She should have introduced them to the products she sells. She should have not only taken their card, but given several of hers to them – in case their family and friends Instead she threw each them out, refusing to take their business card.

While sales people are there to sell you something, remember, you’re also selling something. While some online visitors are admittedly robots, anyone who walks through your door IS NOT! While you can’t sell anything to robots, you can sell to human visitors.

If you’re dreaming of getting new customers, start by treating every visitor like a VIP. Even if they aren’t part of your target audience, they probably know someone who is.

This is by far the EASIEST way get customers. It’s surprising how few business owners do this.

Increasing Profits by Boosting Sales

Boosting profitability through increased sales is a tried and true method of delivering profits.

“The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.” – Henry Ford" — Photo by Karsten Winegeart

There are two ways you can boost profitability through increased sales:

you can find more customers
you can sell more to the customers you have

Finding Your Best Customers:

One way to improve profitability is to find more customers. According to Ian Kingwill, depending upon your industry, it can cost between 4 and 10 times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain or sell to an existing one.

So before you begin finding more customers, start by identifying your best current customers.

Knowing who your best customers are, what they buy and when they buy it is can improve the profitability of your business.

Your customers will fall into one of four categories:

high sales volume – high profit
low sales volume- high profit
high sales volume – low profit
low sales volume-low profit

Obviously, those customers in the first category – the high sales volume – high profit ones – are your best customers.

They’re your VIPs and should be treated as such. While we adore customers in this category, our goal with them is to keep them happy and buying. Our goal is to move customers from the other categories into this one.

It might surprise you that I’m recommending you focus your efforts on moving customers from the low sales volume/ high profit category to the high sales volume/high profit category.

You should pay careful attention to the customers in the ow sales volume/high profit category

Finding ways of getting these low volume/high profit customers to buy more or buy more often should be your top priority. This can also GREATLY improve your overall profitability.

You should determine why these customers are low volume. Could up-selling and cross selling opportunities move them into the first category? Could offering a new product or service can improve the purchase frequency with low volume customers?

Sell More to Current Customers

Your first priority should be focusing on ways to sell more to your current customers. Adding complementary products and services will not only improve profits but my help to move more customers in VIP status category of high sales volume/high profit.

Finding New Customers:

Once you’ve identified your best customers, and implemented ways to move them into the VIP category, you can then focus on pursuing new customers.

Because of the work you’ve already done classifying your current customers, you now know the characteristics of your VIP customers. You can begin targeting people who have a similar profile to your VIP customers. You may find these customers within your current market or you may consider moving into new markets in pursuit of these customers.

For example, let’s say you sell widgets to goat breeders. During your classification, you notice that Angora goat breeders make up a majority of your VIP customers. You also notice that Pygmy goat breeders are in the low volume, low profit quadrant.

So as you begin finding new customers, one target audience you can pursue is Angora goat breeders. However, you might also want to consider breeders of other animals whose hair is harvested like sheep, yak and llamas.

Finding New Customers IRL:

I’ll admit to extensive cheating in the above example. First, I cheated on the product. Widgets was always the product being sold in my cost accounting courses in college. It’s assumed to be a tangible object, but that’s about all that’s defined about it. I know you don’t sell widgets.

However, the second cheat is by far more frustrating. I’ll admit to choosing goat breeders because it provides a really clear cut way to segment customers. In real life (IRL), it’s just not that simple.

I’ve actually worked with hundreds of business owners one on one. I know that when you look at your customer base, all you can see is people. At this point, you get frustrated with me and my “stupid” advice. I get it.

However, let me tell you that if all you see are people when you look at your customers, it’s because you haven’t put into place a way to segment your customers.

When a customer buys a product, you take the money and move on to the next sale. There usually isn’t time to fuss and analyze the demographic profile of every customer.

What is Deliver Profits?

Profit… it’s a simple case of calculating the financial gain from a transaction. Take the revenue you’ve earned, subtract expenses and VIOLA – you’ve got the profit you made on the transaction.
Profit is the holy grail of business. If your business isn’t profitable, then you won’t be in business for long.

At Deliver Profits, we offer products and services so you can sell more to your best customers through three key areas:

Up-sell – We offer proprietary technology that improves online visibility. As an affiliate, you can refer your customers to our site where they can purchase our services.
Cross sell – Our reseller program allows you to offering our proprietary technology as a complementary service product.
Diversify – If you work with retailers, our proprietary technology solves a universal problem. Instead of spending valuable time and money developing new products and services, you can offer our proprietary technology to your customers.