Excuse Me. Have You Seen My Customers?

By Robert Imbriale
Business Success Coach

Business owners are facing challenging times, there's no doubt
about that. What's interesting is that you can divide businesses
into two major groups: those that will survive, and those
that will be nothing more than a distant memory.

The difference is in how they run their businesses on a day to
day basis. Do they have a real solid marketing plan that allows
them to make changes as the economic climate shifts, or are they
just waiting for customers to stumble in the front door?

In tough times, it takes more effort to make each sale. That
means a business has to be able to reach their customers more
often with more offers than at any other time.

When times are good, making sales is much easier, and businesses
can indeed rely on sales from walk-in traffic.

This changes dramatically when times are tough. Customers who are
watching their dollars are not likely to be strolling around the
mall because they may be tempted into spending money they simply
don't have to spend.

What happens is that those businesses that have relied on walk-in
traffic suddenly find that that traffic is all but gone, and they
may find themselves asking anybody who'll stop and listen, "Have
you seen my customers?"

By taking a few simple steps a business can literally build
multiple streams of marketing into their business plan so when
the economy changes, they have other options.

The first big step is that every business, even retailers and
restaurants should be collecting names, mailing addresses and e-
mail addresses of everybody who buys from them. There are no
excuses for not doing this all the time.

Next, every business should be using both e-mail marketing and
direct mail to reach out to their loyal customers at least a
dozen times a year. Even in good times, this is an important
piece of the marketing puzzle and it will insure that you have
more marketing options at your fingertips when times get rough.

Finally, there is no substitute for customer appreciation. If you
take good care of your customers when they buy from you, and long
after they buy from you too,  they will be more loyal and many
times more likely to buy from you when times get rough.

What if you're a business owner who is already in trouble, and
have no customer list, and very limited funds to invest in
marketing? Can you still pull out of the nose-dive?

The short answer is yes, of course you can. The long answer is
that it's going to take some effort on your part to pull it off.

I recently consulted with a hair salon that was struggling to
fill their schedule with clients. What they were finding is that
people were waiting longer between hair appointments and they had
more open spots on their calendar than was healthy for the
business.

To make matters worse, their client list was not up to date, and
funds were too limited to mail their customers even a low-cost
postcard. If they were to do nothing, they would be doomed and
would be out of business inside of 6 weeks.

By helping them take full advantage of the resources at hand, I
was able to help coordinate a simple no-cost joint venture
between them and a local movie theater located in the same strip
mall.

It took just 2 weeks to fill almost every open spot in their
schedule with new clients, and more new clients are showing up
every day even in a "bad economy."

Another client was struggling to sell products on their web site
and had seen their sales diminish to levels so low that they would
have been out of business within 90 days. I offered to advise
them on how to boost sales and gave them a powerful strategy that
literally emptied their inventory within one week.

What I offered them was something most any business can do
quickly and easily and that's make it easier for your customer to
buy from you. Instead of selling their programs one at a time, I
created product bundles that were cheaper for the customer than
buying one at a time. Sales took off.

As you can imagine, I'm now getting more and more calls from
business owners to help them turn things around. I know what's
possible and I always look first for the under-used assets every
business has, and then I look for ways to reach more people for
little or no money as a primary tool for increasing sales fast.

Often, the hardest thing for a business owner who is caught up in
the day to day running of their business is to be able to see the
solutions that at their finger tips. This is where a good
business coach can literally make the difference between success
and failure for a business.

The most important thing to realize as a business owner is that
you're not alone. While it may seem that you are, and that nobody
understands the pressures you face, there are plenty of people
who are there to help. It's your job to reach out to them and ask
them for help because you're not going to be able to do this alone.

I've spent the better part of the last 22 years working with
business owners in every imaginable business and I know what's
possible and how quickly things can turn from looking bleak to
actually being incredible.

Don't wait to reach out for help. The quicker you do, the better
off you'll be.

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Robert Imbriale is the author of the best-selling book,
Motivational Marketing. He is a successful business coach, and
seminar leader who has helped hundreds of thousands of business
owners create bigger, more successful businesses, and he can help
you too. Tell him what your biggest challenge is with your
business right now! Go to www.AskRobertImbriale.com If you would
like to have Robert help you with your business, you can reach
him at 1-800-541-3816 or at www.RobertImbriale.com