#300
Rubadubdub, lots of customers in the tub.
If you’re like every other sales professional on the planet, 80 percent of your sales come from the same 20 percent of your customers. Your biggest challenge is to keep the customers you have in your “base” loyal to you so you can retain present business, while closing new prospects.
How are you doing that now? Let me answer that question in three words: Not well enough!
Want a great way a fast way an effective way an inexpensive way to do it? Sure you do. One hitch it requires work, thought, quality, and action. Rats.
Answer: Your personal newsletter.
A newsletter helps you keep the attention of (hold on to your) current customers. Elaine Floyd, author, speaker and newsletter expert extroardinare, calls it Bathtub Selling. “Here’s how it works.” explains Floyd. “You’re trying to fill the bathtub, that is, expand your customer base. While pouring water into the tub, you want to make sure none of the nice hot water (present customers) escapes down the drain. Think of the newsletter as the best soap, fine aromas, silky bath oils and the plug in the bottom of the tub.”
“A good newsletter keeps you in front of customers, adds value to your services, establishes your expertise and credibility and saves your valuable selling time.” Floyd adds. “It bathes the customer in the essence of “you” without you being there.”
You’ve no doubt heard about the great things that newsletters can do, but just can’t find the time to get one written. If so, you’re also getting used to losing some business here and there because you didn’t make a key call at the right time but your competitors did. You’re rolling with it when you find out that someone else just gets some business from your best buyer because, “I didn’t know you offered that product or service.” After all, you can’t be everywhere at once, right?
Wrong. A good newsletter is like a your own clone delivered through the mail. You can put together a simple one or two page letter, photocopy it onto your letterhead and BE everywhere at once. And, you can do your newsletter in a few hours.
Come on jump in, the (bath) water’s fine.
If you’re still not sure that a newsletter will help your selling, take Elaine Floyd’s quick quiz:
yes no
p p Do you have good customers you’d like to stay in touch with without interrupting them with phone calls or visits?
p p Is your product or service line changing quickly?
p p Do some of your best customers NOT know about latest product offerings and how each one benefits them?
p p Do your customers like hearing stories of businesses similar to theirs and how they’ve been successful?
p p Can you share information that saves your customers time and money, helps them get more business or prepares them for the future?
p p Have you heard any of your customers say, “I didn’t know you did that?”
If you answered “yes” to three or more of these six questions, then you need a newsletter yesterday. Your best customers are headed for the drain. And your competition is at the end of the pipe with a bucket.
Newsletters are powerful. Information powerful. Sales powerful. Customer loyalty building powerful. Reorder powerful, Referral powerful. Powerful enough? So, if it’s so powerful, why don’t all salespeople have one? Why don’t they all produce one?
Simple answer: Most salespeople won’t do the hard work it takes to make selling easy.
Biggest free GitBit offer of all time. For a free list of Elaine Floyd’s 10 steps for putting together a newsletter in an afternoon. AND a free copy of SalesMasterMind, a classic example of what a quality newsletter should look like. Just go to www.gitomer.com click FREE STUFF then GitBit register and enter the secret words, “Newsletters Rule”.
Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, and Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless. President of Charlottebased Buy Gitomer, he gives seminars, runs annual sales meetings, and conducts training programs on selling and customer service. He can be reached at 704/3331112 or email to salesman@gitomer.com
1999 All Rights Reserved Don’t even think about reproducing this document without written
permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer 704/3331112
