I know that some of you have been doing your business for years, and you have reached out to your warm market and maybe you did a great job working with them all. Now you have been entrenched in your family life and your business and everyone you know has either been exposed to your product or they are on your team. So now here you are listening to Emerge podcasts fired up about a new way of helping customers but thinking, where does one find these customers? Today I’m going to go over a list of strategies that you can work on to start building your potential customer base back-up. All you need is to get your first 5-7 appointments, and use the referral approach taught in Your Direct Sales Foundation to build your referral pipeline. Full disclosure, this podcast is supplementary to the other things you have learned in this podcast, our workshops, or Your Direct Sales Foundation. I’m hoping to spark an idea or two for you to get going. But if you haven’t taken the courses you will want to obviously. 🙂
- Just scroll through that phone. It’s been a while, I know. But you might think of someone who you haven’t invited to an appointment. Or, you might see a few people that you totally let slip through the cracks. You can call the latter and just say “hey, I totally let you slip through the cracks, I’m so sorry. What I’m doing now is setting up appointments to go over your health goals, how to use the product, and the most popular kits. My part takes about 30 minutes. You don’t have to buy anything, but if you see something you like, of course I’ll help you order it. Is that something you would be open to?
- Calling back your customers to schedule wish list appointments. “Hi, right now what I’m doing is setting up wish list appointments to help people make sense of what will help them solve their problems, how to make sense of the discounts and promotions so you get the best deal. This way whenever you choose to order you know what to do and what to get. My part takes about 45 minutes. I’m not going to ask you to buy something on the spot since you order products on your own, but of course I won’t stop you if you want to. Is that something you would be open to?” Then you can complete the appointment and ask for referrals properly. I bet if you called all of your customers you could schedule 2-3 of these in a week and get 7-10 referrals.
- The second technique when calling your customers back is to confess that you have left them unprepared to help their friends. I only recommend this approach with customers that you do connect with consistently. Otherwise you are just being annoying and calling me only to ask for stuff. “Hi, I’ve been chatting with some of my customers and realized that the products come up in conversation with people that they care about, but they aren’t really sure exactly how to give them the best service. After all, they aren’t trained. Have the products come up for you in conversation recently? Has this happened to you? What happened? Would it be helpful if I reached out to them and offered to help? All I would do is offer them an appointment to… you know the rest. Remember that referrals are a service to the community and to your customers, not something that you are taking from them to help you. Help the people. That’s the goal. And you can only do that if you talk to the people.
- Vendor events. The purpose of vendor events isn’t to get a bunch of names and pass out a bunch of samples. You won’t return your investment. The goal is appointments and kit sales. We have a one hour vendor training for $12 that will give you the approaches to do this which you can find at emergesalestraining.com/vendor.
- Once you get the appointments scheduled- time to nail it! Have confidence and conviction that you are helping the community. When we are in service to others, we get less caught up in our own fears and roadblocks around referrals. Use customer centered language. Remember that customers are always asking the question, “why should I care?” And we customers, are also lazy, so please make giving referrals to you easy. If you don’t get them from us, we aren’t going to chase you down to give them to you. It’s not our job. Once you schedule the appointment, you can let the customer know that if they think about someone that would also like to learn, you won’t mind if they tag along. This isn’t to convince someone to bring someone to the appointment, but to serve your customer’s community. Do you see how the words are different? They send a different message. You are there to serve.
Lead generation comes from a place of confidence. Confidence that your product is great. Confidence that your customer experience is top-notch. If you are feeling worried or scared about asking for referrals, I would recommend that you examine your customer experience. It is an experience so helpful that you are compelled to offer it to everyone? If not, go back to the drawing board and rebuild your customer experience process. Once it is, you can set appointments with conviction that your customers are well served. If you believe in the life changing properties of your product, and that you have an unparalleled customer experience, you have an ethical obligation to get out there and pursue appointments. Because you are helping people solve their problems sooner rather than later. And isn’t that what we all want?
Thanks for listening to today’s podcast. We love our workshops. The next workshop is May 20th from 8-10am on recruiting. Casha is going to answer the question, “Where do I find builders?” For $27 you will not want to miss it. Register at emergesalestraining.com/recruiting. All workshops are recorded if you catch this after the fact.