Invest time talking to new sources of finance. You might need them if your current providers prove difficult

I understand the point but this is where I diverge from Clive Lewis, if only in terms of practicalities.

There are only so many hours in the day and if you are spending more time on finance control issues and making sure that your business does everything it can to avoid financial difficulty, where is the extra time to come from?

From a marketing perspective, I want you to be strengthening relationships with your best customers to take advantage of the “flight to quality” where customers want to have confidence in their suppliers.

It is certainly worth finding out names and contact details through your network of contacts so that you are ready but I don’t really see the value for you or the other financiers in spending time in speculative relationship building.

Top-Five Marketing Strategies

Strategy 1. Think big and audit your time. No matter the size of your business, place a mental image in your mind as if you are the largest and most successful person in your industry. How much time is consumed by routine office work someone else should be doing? Spend more time with more important tasks such as marketing strategies, improving customer relations, and implementing new strategies to expand your services.

Strategy 2. Be different and stand out from the competition. Jordan Furniture sells more furniture per square foot than any other furniture store in the nation. They transformed their family-owned business into a multi-million dollar corporation by following a principle called “shoppertainment.” To surprise employees and customers, Barry and Eliot Tatleman dressed up like the Lone Ranger and Tonto and rode horses in their parking lot. They built an IMax theater inside one store to entertain children while their parents shopped. When you drive around the back to pick up your furniture they provide you free hotdogs and wash your car windows.

Strategy 3. Build relationships with your customers. For each month that goes by, customers lose 10% of their buying power. Create a customer database and contact them on a regular basis. Mail them a postcard, birthday card, sales flyer, newsletter etc. to keep your name, phone number, and service on their mind.

Strategy 4. Collect E-Mail Addresses. As part of your customer relationship process get permission from your customers to use their E-mail address. Periodically send updates and notices to your client list. As long as you have their permission and avoid overuse, E-mail can be a powerful and inexpensive marketing tool. Consider the Fox’s Pizza Den in Punxsutawney, PA, they ran an anniversary promotion offering a medium cheese pizza for the 1970s price of $1.40. To get this special price, customers had to go to their web site and register their email address to have the special coupon emailed to them. An amazing 500 email addresses were collected in two days.

Strategy 5. Avoid poisonous personalities. Unfriendly and negative employees cost you money by chasing your customers away. Spend more time and money interviewing and hiring people who enjoy helping people. Use behavior based interviewing and screening assessments to improve your chances for hiring success.

Customer Service and Customer Relations

* Ask your clients to come back again.
* Return phone calls promptly.
* Set up a fax-on-demand or email system to easily respond to customer inquiries.
* Use an answering machine or voice mail system to catch after-hours phone calls. Include basic information in your outgoing messages such a business hours, location, etc.
* Record a memorable message or tip of the day on your outgoing answering machine or voice mail message.
* Ask clients what you can do the help them.
* Take clients out to a ball game, show, or another special event – just send them two tickets with a note. Hold a seminar at your office for clients and prospects.
* Send handwritten thank you notes.
* Send birthday cards and appropriate seasonal greetings.
* Photocopy interesting articles and send them to clients and prospects with a hand-written FYI note and your business card.
* Send a book of interest or other appropriate business gift to a client with a handwritten note.
* Create an area on your Web site specifically for your customers.
* Redecorate your office or location where you meet with your clients.

Branding:

94% of customers would recommend it to a friend, according to John Owens, Head of Marketing

Sales Funnel Analysis

Bottlenecks and blockages can be avoided by analysing your sales funnel at regular intervals.

You will then spot the slow movers, and perhaps even those passing down too quickly. If they are moving slowly you can lubricate them before they get stuck. If they are too fast, then perhaps they are missing some qualifying stages without you noticing so check up on their sales records and analyse their progress.

And so it goes on, until as many prospects as possible fall out the bottom as fully-fledged customers. You can specify as many levels in your funnel as you want, but each must have a set of rules that qualify entrants to move on. These should be fixed rules and not up to sales personnel making concessions.

Along with the rules to move down from each level in the funnel, you are advised to have remedial action procedures in place, so once a bottleneck occurs, everybody knows the correct way to free it. These remedial are the lubrication I have referred to, and should be customer friendly and simple to implement.

If applied correctly, a sales funnel is an excellent and professional way to keep tabs on how prospects are faring on their route to becoming established customers. It can identify weaknesses in your sales structure and procedures. If you throw every prospect into your funnel, then you can get a good analysis of the effectiveness of your company in converting them to customers, and also identify the weakness in your sales procedures.

The Importance of Market Segments

Successful companies almost all have a significant market share; it is rare for more than three or four companies to be truly successful in any segment of the market.

It is not unusual for one company to dominate with every other company trying to catch up. Consider some examples.

* There are around three really successful supermarkets in the UK, with Tesco dominating.

* Software is dominated by Microsoft and Google

* BMW, Mercedes and Audi dominate the market for executive cars

* For many years. the US car market was dominated by just Ford and General Motors with American Motors trailing

There are a number of reasons for this:

* A dominant supplier controls the market and sets expectations of price and quality

* He develops a reputation and brand, he is highly visible

* There is a “comfort factor” in buying from a market leader

* Customers come to him first

Marketing becomes very much easier if you are a big player in your market place. If you are not, you will always struggle to be seen.

This is all very well for very large companies. But unless you are a Microsoft or Ford, you won’t be able to dominate sales to the whole world, you can only ever end up with an insignificant market share.