When you have used effective promotion strategies to get people to come to your website and give you their contact details, you have the chance to turn prospects into ideal clients.
Just as in personal relationships, you need to give someone time to get to know you and decide whether you are compatible. In business, you need to take time to demonstrate that you can help them.
Building effective relationships with prospects and customers generally happens in stages:
Know: Tell them about yourself and what you can do for them.
Trust: Build confidence by demonstrating the value you can offer.
Try: Make it easy for them to sample your expertise – either free or at low cost.
Commit: Encourage them to stay longer and buy more.
The exact process of relationship building will depend on your market and people will take varying lengths of time at each stage.
The 6 Keys to Building Profitable Relationships to Turn Prospects Into Ideal Clients
The process of turning prospects into ideal clients usually involves the following key elements.
Start immediately
Sell quickly
Stay in touch
Satisfy your clients
Segment your audience
Step up your offers
Start Immediately
Many people make the mistake of collecting email addresses and thinking the free report they offer is enough to create a relationship.
Send out communication as soon as someone joins your list
In your personal life, if someone asks for your contact details, and then never calls, you may be initially disappointed but you will probably forget them quickly.
Similarly, to establish a business relationship, you need to follow up the contact right away and with enthusiasm.
You only have a short time to show this person you can make a difference in their life.
That means you need to have a communication program set up as soon as someone joins your list. The key aims of this are to show them what you can do, how it can help them, and why they should trust you.
“You only have a short time to show this person you can make a difference in their life.”
It can be done with a series of emails set up to go out at specified intervals in the first few weeks – backed up by additional material sent as physical mail where possible.
Sell Quickly
When it comes to building trust, there is a fine balance between trying to sell too quickly and waiting too long.
Nobody likes to be subjected to pushy sales messages right from the start. However:
The last thing you want is a mailing list made up of freebie-seekers who will never spend any money.
Bear in mind that people who join your list are likely to have done so because they have a problem they want to solve. They want a solution to that problem.
Not all of them are ready to pay for a solution yet but many are ready to hear about what you can do for them.
Part of the task of developing relationships is building trust. Often this is done by sharing valuable information.
Generally, you want to start as soon as possible introducing ways that people can try out what you offer and you want to get them used to the idea of paying for it.
That means you should be able to quickly make offers at relatively lower price points where they can try you out. That price point may be $7 or it could be $197, for example, depending on what you offer.
Typically, the actual price point doesn’t matter too much in determining whether someone will turn into a long-term customer.
The key is that:
People who have bought something from you are more likely to buy more; so you want to turn people into buyers as quickly as possible.
One of the keys to that is making sure that you make offers to people and that you are specific about what you want them to do.
But you can do that in a framework of sharing valuable information.
In other words, give good information but be specific about how people can get further help by investing with you – even if it’s a relatively small amount.
Stay in Touch
There are many different elements in building the relationship – depending on the type of product or service you offer – but email is a particularly effective communication tool.
Here are some key points:
There are many different elements in building a relationship
Planned: You need to put in place a series of pre-planned messages to go out to new email subscribers to let them get to know you. The first 30 days are especially vital.
Practical: You should be giving people information they can use and that they find valuable. Your aim is first to build trust before you try to take the relationship further.
Persistent: You need an ongoing program of messages and the contact needs to be regular. You shouldn’t mail three times in one week and then nothing for a month. A regular ezine or newsletter can be very effective for doing this.
Personal: For email to help build a relationship, it should have a personal touch. Use friendly language – as if you were writing to someone you know well – and be ready to share a bit of yourself.
Purposeful: Each email should have a specific aim – it might be to build trust, to share information, or – later in the process – to ask for the sale. In the long run, your aim is usually to make money, so don’t be afraid to sell – when the time is right and with an effective message.
Satisfy Your Clients
The long-term success of the relationship will depend on how successful you are at giving people what they want.
Immediate delivery: Make sure you communicate with people quickly and deliver what they have requested – even if it is free.
Follow-up service: The quality of the relationship will often hinge on how well you respond to questions and problems. Even complaints turn into valued relationships when handled well.
Exceed expectations: You don’t build relationships by giving people what they expect. That won’t make them stay. You need to give them an experience that goes beyond what they expect so that they have no temptation to go anywhere else.
Segment Your Audience
Although the most effective communication is personal, you won’t always be able to talk with your clients and prospects one-on-one.
Target your messages to specific groups.
However, you don’t want to have one message for all. So you can use the information you have about people to ensure your message and offers are targeted to specific groups.
Splitting your list into different categories is known as “segmentation” and there are many ways you can segment a list, such as when they joined your list, what they have bought from you, whether they open your emails, or specific interests they indicate.
When you ensure your communication is tailored to the needs of individual segments, you will have much better results.
Step Up Your Offers
It’s said the most important sale in any relationship is not the first, it’s the second.
So you always want to be thinking of the next sale you can make to someone based on where they are in your process.
That is what turns one-off customers into long-term relationships.
Here are some of the keys to achieving that:
Find ways to turn a sale into a long-term commitment.
Upsell: Look for opportunities to sell people something in addition to what they have already bought. That may be at the same time as the sale or soon afterward.
Continuity: Find ways to turn a sale into a long-term commitment through some kind of regular fee arrangement.
Retention: Work on ways to keep people with you – especially if you have a product or service that people don’t need to buy very often. Look for ways to reward your best customers – even a “thank you” or small gift can pay huge dividends.
Referrals: While referrals are a very effective way of getting new customers, they are also great for holding on to your existing ones. People are less likely to move on if they have recommended you to someone else.
Reactivation: Past customers can become future customers if you stay in touch and give them an incentive to return.
Getting the Balance Right
All stages in the communication process are important for building long-term profitable relationships. However, the emphasis can depend on what stage you are at with your business.
If you don’t have many customers, for example, you will need to work harder in the early stages to get more people on board.
Many businesses make the mistake of putting all their efforts into attracting new prospects.
Even with a small number of customers, it’s often best to focus on existing customers and contacts first.
As a general guide, you should usually allocate your time as follows:
60% on existing customers – and most of that with your best customers
30% on prospects, seeking to convert them into customers
10% on everybody else, aiming to turn them into prospects
ACTION PLAN TO TURN PROSPECTS INTO IDEAL CLIENTS
These five actions will help you turn more prospects into ideal clients.
Identify the first five emails you will send to new people signing up to your email list.
Decide how you will communicate regularly with your subscribers – e.g. ezine or regular emails and plan content for the first six weeks.
Identify how best to segment your email lists between different types of subscribers.
Identify an offer you can make to encourage new subscribers to buy from you quickly.
Choose three to five ways you can get more referrals from existing clients.
The 5 Keys to Being Seen as an Authority
This is one of the five keys to building your authority as shown below.
Positioning: Identify your ideal clients and how you can best help them so you can attract them easily
Packaging: Offer your advice, skills, and knowledge in a way that makes it easy to attract a large number of high-paying clients
Publishing: Demonstrate your expertise in a wide range of ways so that people can see how you can help them
Promotion (Lead Generation): Take steps to attract more of your ideal clients to you instead of having to chase them
Persuasion (Conversion): Turn more of your ideal prospects into profitable long-term clients
Click on the links above for more information on each of the elements.
