Small Business - Finding and Retaining Clients - Colin Sprake from MYMSuccess.com

So let's talk purely about client retention. How many of you love cold calling? Always get a good response to that. Okay, this is called the million dollar circ. This is called the million dollar circle. So what this million dollar circle is, if you follow this, your business will thrive beyond belief. So here's the million dollar circle in the center. You have clients on the outside. Doesn't matter where they are. You can put them random. You have prospects. Now, what are the two easiest ways to get a prospect into your client circle? What are the two easiest ways to get a prospect into that client circle? Talk to them. Absolutely. What else? Make the circle bigger. Make the circle bigger. I don't know why I always get that same question. The only way you can make it bigger is by putting more clients into it. So go and make the circle bigger until we get them in or make them an ambassador of your business. Build relationships with them. Build relationships. So with these guys, Absolutely. But here's the two key ways. Number one, someone said build relationships part of it. But it's more so with these guys. Because when these guys are super happy, they will go out and bring these guys in for you. Called referrals. That's number one easiest way to get them into a circle. What's the second one, do you think? Easiest way to get them into your circle? Talk to them. Talk to them. I'll give you the second one. Oh, oh. Outrageous offer. I'm going to talk about outrageous offers a little bit later, just before we leave at the end of the evening. Because outrageous offers are critical. You have to structure them very specifically because you can make an outrageous offer to one person and you don't structure it correctly. You don't tell them it's only an outrageous offer for them. And what do they do? Bring all their friends and family who want the same offer. Now you hoop, because now you got no profit. Okay? So outrageous offers are really important. When I first started out in this business, it was really cool. Their logo is now inside my brochure. It's not on the back anymore. When I first started out, we started out getting one of Sun Life was one of our big contracts. And when we first started with Sun Life, we gave them an outrageous offer to get their business because I knew once we got them, we'd get all the other bigger clients. You need one big fish to get all the big fish because it gives you credibility. It's really, really important. We train that at Sales Warrior about getting credibility. So it's really important to get that one big client on board. But we gave them a very specific instruction. This was to one officer of Sun Life. We said, we'll give you an offer that will only be valid for your office. If you tell any of your other officers, you will pay what they gonna pay. They might have told them, but they never ever came back to us and said the other officers never came to us and said we wanted the same price as the office we dealt with first. It was really cool. And still to this day, we honor that agreement with them. We still honor that one office and give them the best deal and the other officers pay full price. That's outrageous offers. You just got to get one on board. But be careful of them though. You don't do too many of them. So I'm going to come back to that in a second about outrageous offers again. So the most important thing though is you want to get people into your circle. But as much as this is called the million dollar circle, it's called the leaky bucket as well. Why? Because you have clients falling out all the time and you don't even know it. I'll give you a statistic. It's amazing. Statistic. 48% of business, sorry, businesses lose 48% of their clients every five years and they don't even know they've lost them. That's wild. Why? Because five years later you got a whole bunch of new clients that you're really excited to be working with. And the other ones you haven't followed up with, you've done no homework on. You haven't gone back to your database, what have you. How many of you have a big database of clients? Let's say 100 people or more. Great. How many of you have followed up with every single one of those people in the last three months? Great. But not via mass email. That's not follow up, actual contact with them. People go, wow, that's so much work. Here's my question to you. Would you rather be doing all this work running around meeting people? Do I have to meet somebody? I don't even know them and I judge them. And I do. I'd rather phone the people that are sitting here waiting to be phoned. These are your warm, hot leads. And here's the thing. Why don't people go back and phone past clients? Lazy. What else? Fear of rejection. Fear. But here's the thing. The sad part about it is they telling those people that you don't phone are telling people about your business anyway and it might not be favorable. So wouldn't you rather hear it, learn something from it and rectify it. So if you want to leave here this evening, one of the key things you can do when you walk out of here this evening is decide I'm going to go back and phone my database. I want to go phone all my past clients. And some people say to me, so Colin, what do you say to somebody you haven't been in touch with for six months or a year? Hey, it's been six months or a year. How are you doing? You know what Bispy, I'm a big believer and just be honest. You know what, it's Colin, you've been in my database for a while. I was going through it and hells man I screwed up. I haven't been in contact with you for a while. I sincerely apologize. Yeah, do not say so there's anything I can do for you that's a sales pitch. How's the family? The next question should be so how's the family? How's your business going? Blah blah blah, personal stuff. And if they don't ask, the worst thing you can say on an old follow up call, is there anything I can do for you? Because that's a solicitation. You don't say that. If they don't ask for anything just say great, thanks, it was great speaking with you. I'll catch up with you sometime in the future. I promise you one, it's not going to be as long as this last time. Put the phone down. Just get that person thinking. If you are honest with people, you get results. It's those BS's out there, the makeup stories and then you catch them out. And once one person catches you out, if they viral they will tell a ton of people because remember one thing, this circle, one of the key things in this circle is keeping your clients happy. These clients here are people that already used your product or service. You might say they've used it once and only need to buy from you once. Don't they know other people that could use your product or service? Absolutely. So sorry, what you're saying is when you are phoning those people to see how your service was or you don't even ask, just follow up, you're not taking any how your service was, they'll tell you there's a reason why they didn't come back. You don't phone and say, well you can phone and say hi, it's Colin, I'm phoning from make youe Mark. You've been, you know I was going through our database, I saw your name in Our database. I sincerely apologize. We haven't followed up with you for a while. How's it going? How's it going in your business? How's it going with the family? They'll tell you immediately. You know what? I don't want to talk to you. I'm not interested in talking to you. Great. May I ask why? Well, you didn't follow up. You didn't do this. I'm not interested in doing business with a company like yours. Thanks. Put the phone on you. Great. What did I learn from that call? What are most businesses doing? Oh my God, they don't like me. You get yourself into that state. No. Take the advice from them. They've given you something to think about. Maybe I should do more effective follow up. That make sense? Really, really important. Do not ask, how's our. I haven't followed up with you for six months. How did you enjoy our service? You sucked. You're phoning me six months later. Does it make sense? Do not ask how you. Because if you're phony now, you haven't done good. Follow up, they will let you know and then you will get off the phone and go, wow. So just follow up, be personable and do not ask. Is there anything I can do for you? Worst thing on an old lead. Worst thing they will say to you. Know what? I'm glad you called. There's something you can do for me. Great. What can I do for you? No, that's fine. But until they ask, do not solicit. Worst thing you do an old follow up call. Okay, so your goal is just to terminate this. Yes, you do have leak from your circle. People move out of your geographical area. People pass on. Things happen. Life does happen. But the key thing is until you look after these, why go looking for more of these? How many of you know that you could do a better job looking after the clients you have? Absolutely. So please don't spend the time saying Colin. Well, I'm gonna go and network all next week because you did 16 networking events. I'm gonna go do 16 networking events. Because it works. It works. If you do the follow up. If you do the follow up. My philosophy is when you do the follow up. So looking after these clients here is critical. When I went out to an event recently, I spoke at an event. I got a bunch of people gave me cards, what have you. I promised myself I'd do those cards before went out for dinner that night. I was sitting down at 7 o' clock between 7 and 7:30. I did all my Follow up on those leads that I got that evening because I am methodical about it. My dinner can wait for half an hour until I get that job done because I know the results I want in my business. Most people, oh, you know what, this guy half an hour earlier and I'll just do it tomorrow. Tomorrow is too late for some people because the early bird gets the worm. Gotta be careful. There's a good comedian out there that says the second mouse gets the cheese. Be careful. So it's really important to look after the clients you have because if you don't look after the clients you have, you're going to put these ones into your circle and do the same thing to them until you look after these like gold. So the reason why I said, how many of you like cold calling? Because all you need is five great clients and look after them like gold and let them bring in other clients for you. Look after them like gold and bring in other clients for you. That's how simple it is. People go, but Colin, it's not that simple. It is that simple. It's all about relationship. And in fact, to make youe Mark, we don't even call it cold calling because cold calling sounds like a dead. Before you phone them, do we? At make youe Mark, we call it action calling because that's what it is. You're taking action. Really, really good thing to do. How many of you know what a viral marketer is? What's a viral marketer, Jim? Somebody who pushes out an ad and it goes to different people and it's a good ad and everybody, one person likes it, another person likes it and just goes out like a virus. Like a computer virus. Like a computer virus. Let's say which is good viral marketer per se is, I'll give you an example, a really good viral marketer that works on a tech side, which is cool. Exactly. But when you do it as a person, how many of you have people that you know, if you told them something, they would tell everybody. Those people. How many of you say, I don't want to tell people stuff because if I tell them, they're going to tell everybody. Those people you abuse in the marketing world, why not? So you have to find yourselves. I'm going to give you a tip for tonight. Walk out of here. When you go home this evening or back to your office, whatever it might be for you, look for five viral marketers. In marketing, we also call them sneezers. They sneeze and everyone else gets sick because that's what they Do. They're so infectious with like, I'm a viral marketer. If I love your product or service, I tell tons of people. That's just who I am. I'm a viral marketer. I love spreading the word about great products and services of the ones I've used, love spreading the word about products and services. And number one, because our students, when you came in, you would have seen and this is something that's unique to our business. On your chair were business cards. These are our business cards. You can see I'm a wine fan because they're designed to be the size of a coaster and they're waterproof. That's not the true reason why they were designed. They're stain proof. But the key thing is on the back of each of our cards, we're just about to do. We're just about to hit our 40th testimonial on the back of a card when someone says to me, colin, do you know somebody who can do this? I go, let me go through and see us. Because these are all our students. We don't charge them anything to be on the back of our cards. These are people who have been through our courses that rave about what we do. They give us a great testimonial and it has to be honest and truthful. We get the testimonial from them, we put it on, we get their photograph on the back. Someone says to me, like, from Matt, do you know someone who does amazing massage or chiropractic or whatever? I say, here's Matt's card, go see him. Someone says to me, I wanted a bookkeeper. Go see Melody. Here's her card. That's what we do for our clients. That's really cool when you can give back to your own customers. Because if they win, I win. That's what business is all about. Hence our company tagline business with soul. Not just a business making money. Okay? So the number one thing to do to find tonight is five viral marketers. Five viral marketers. Those viral marketers. What do you want to do with them? Gift them your product or service. So some people say, well, I do mortgages. How can I give them a mortgage? No, you can do like, Rob's at the back. I know Rob does mortgages. So you can do mortgages. You can do their mortgage for them, but maybe give them half your commission back and say, you know what? That's what I would do for you. I'm going to do something outrageous for you because you're one of those people who Will tell everyone how great my service was. And all I expect you to do is not mention what I did for you. Okay? But I'm going to give you an outrageous deal. You do that for somebody, they will never stop marketing your product or service. But it has to be outrageous. That makes sense. Rob something a little bit different. There's always a way around the rules of the industry. Remember, entrepreneurs, we beg for forgiveness. We don't ask for permission. I didn't tell you that. Shouldn't say it on camera. Edit that out on the camera. But it really is truthful. How many? I mean, I see so many entrepreneurs like, well, I need to get permission to do that. I need to get permission to do this. The city says I cannot do that. Well, find a way around what the city's rules are and do something different. You cannot use a board that stands, sandwich board on the sidewalk, hang it from the roof, I don't know. Do something different. Don't let things be hurdles in your life. Look for solutions. Really, really important. So this is really important, looking after your clients. I cannot say enough. Most important thing when you walk out of here this evening is looking after the clients you have. Not running out to get a bunch of brand new ones and do the same job. Throw them in a database, let them bleed out. Really, really important. So please make sure you look after clients the two key ways. Referrals, outrageous offers. I'm going to talk a little bit about outrageous offers even further in a few minutes as well. This makes sense for everyone. How many of you can do more for your current clients? How many of you send out thank you cards to your customers? Gratitude cards. How many of you send gratitude cards to your suppliers? Wow. Very few. If your suppliers weren't there for you when you were in time of crisis, you wouldn't maybe get some of those big orders you get. Why don't people say thank you for the people that help them in their businesses? It's amazing. I mean, we live by this. We live. We have gratitude cards. These are own printed cards. I live by these. We do over 40 a week of these cards that go out of our office. That's one of my things I do. It's mandatory for myself. It's not. I fit it in where I can. That's part of my daily schedule. Why? Because when you say thank you to people, depends how you what your beliefs are. I'm a big believer in whatever you put out there, you get back. How many of you believe in that as well? I'm a big believer in that. So I don't know if it was Oprah or Louise Hay between one or the two of them. Said, when you show gratitude for what you have, the world will give you more to be grateful for. So if you're not grateful for your clients, remember, you don't wear the clothes that you're sitting in this room. If your clients hadn't maybe paid you for a job you did for them, you didn't get you in the car, you got you. Unless they made a payment. So you can make your payment or buy your car, whatever it was. Your clients are gold to you. Look after them like gold.