When someone calls your office do they reach a real person or an automated voice mail system? Do they have to click through a menu in order to real a live person? If that’s the case, you may find that you’re turning some of your prospects off.
What can you do to encourage prospects to call you back? Here are some of my tried and true methods:
Answer your phone during working hours. Yes, you may take off for the lunch hour, but for the most part if you’re sitting at your desk you should answer you phone.
If someone is calling you, answer the phone with a smile in your voice.
If you’re calling on a prospect, make certain you speak clearly and also make certain you leave your phone number more than once so they don’t have any wonder at what your number was.
If you leave a message, don’t ramble. Get to the point. Write down your points if necessary. Don’t waste a prospect’s time by making him or her listen to a long message before you get to the point.
While you may bring with you an impressive resume, you don’t need to drop every name of every client into your voice mail. There will be time to share that information when you connect.
End the call with a “call to action.” Whether that call to action is, “I will call you back at 2 pm,” or “I’d love to hear from you and I will be in the office until 5 pm to discuss your XYZ need,” you should leave them wanting to call you back with a plan of action in mind.
Before you make your next call to a prospect, listen to your own voice mail to see if it is inviting when a prospect calls you and whether it shares pertinent information.
There aren’t too many times when I make a sweeping statement as it relates to business ownership, but when it comes to blogging, I believe that every business could benefit from having one. Why? There are myriad reasons, but I will share my top three here:
Your blog is a platform to share your unique knowledge and expertise. If you are the expert in your field, then you need a platform on which to share it and your blog is the ideal place for that knowledge-sharing. Provide your readers with hints and tips that are in your area of expertise and that will help make their lives easier.
Use your blog to announce specials, promotions, coupons or other deals you may be offering. While you will also want to share that information on your social media platforms, use your blog as the jumping off point.
Ask your clients or potential clients questions and use the blog as a platform to answer them. If even one individual writes to you, they are in the midst of a pain point and if you can offer a solution to that pain, they will continue to look to you as the resource.
Consider, too that adding a blog to your website — and updating your blog regularly — means that your website will keep being ranked by Google. That is because Google loves fresh content and “rewards” you for it by keeping your site higher in the search engines. PS frequent posting isn’t the only way to get your site found — you need to employ quality SEO, but that is the topic for another blog post.
Do you ever wonder how your competition “gets found”? Do you ever assume that in order to “get found” you need to have deep pockets and a major advertising and promotions budget? While having a large budget may help, if you’re not trying to be found in places that make sense for you and that are natural for your clients to seek you out you will be spinning your wheels and spending money needlessly.
Here are my three top tips for helping your business be front of mind and top of search:
Build a local search profile. Grab your Google location, add your business to Yelp or even Yahoo Local and Bing Places. Make sure the information is accurate and that your profile is complete. Use keywords for the goods and services you provide as well as your business summary, contact information, photos and business biography.
Ask current clients for reviews that they will post on your local profiles. Having reviews posted are extremely important to not only getting found, but to building the credibility of your business.
The more complete your profile, the more highly searchable your business will be. Add a photo of the business owners, make sure there is an address and a phone number. If you’re a virtual business there are many ways you can get a business address whether it’s a post office box or an office share situation. Search engines take notice if you have a complete business profile with your key words. Make certain you update the profile when changes are made.
What steps have you taken to help your business get found locally? Have they worked?
No entrepreneur can operate in a vacuum. Chances are you started your business because you have a particular area of expertise and have cornered the market on a niche at which you’re extremely skilled.
When you take a step back though, do you do all of the work yourself? Even tasks that you’re not good at like bookkeeping or marketing or sales? If you try to do it all, without relying on the strength of trusted partners, you will spread yourself too thin and your focus will be drawn away from your core competency.
What can you do to make certain you’re working toward success? Cultivate partnerships. Here are my suggestions:
Understand what you need in a business partnership and what skills that partner can bring to the table. As mentioned above: bookkeeping, tax preparation, marketing, etc.
Get to know your potential partner and talk with other clients with whom he or she works. You need to trust your business partner to have your best interest in mind when you collaborate so that you can concentrate on your business rather than second guessing and checking up on the partner you’re working with.
Communication is key. If you don’t have open lines of communication and aren’t setting up regular phone calls or texts or other types of check-ins, items could slide and you may not be aware of it until it’s too late. Make “communication with business partners” part of your weekly to-do list.
What can you do to enhance partnerships as a way to grow your business?
Whether you’re a job seeker or an entrepreneur, there are effective ways in which to network and there are ways in which your networking efforts will falter. Once you’ve honed your elevator speech, shaken hands and exchanged business cards, what next? Do you talk about the weather? Politics (not usually a good idea)? What comes next? Having some conversation starters can certainly keep the networking efforts moving along and here are a few tips for your next meet-and-greet:
Understand your reasons for having attended the networking event. Is it to find a job? Uncover new opportunities for your business? Simply to get out of the office and see new/different people? Hone your personal and professional skills? Once you know the reasons you can formulate a plan.
What kind of topics do you want to discuss? If you’re meeting someone one on one, why did you plan the meeting? Was it information gathering? To use their service? To offer yours? Also, don’t forget to have some ice breakers on hand. Consider talking about books, movies, sports or even just asking them why they are attending this event, what they hope to get out of it. Ask the person with whom you’re speaking what they like best about the work that they do. Be genuine in your interest.
Make certain the conversation is a give and take. You don’t want to monopolize the entire conversation but then again you don’t want to walk away having said nothing about who you are and what you do.
What are your best tips for making the most of networking events?
If you sign up for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn you will automatically be found, build your friends, followers and likes and your business will take off, right? Stop. Take a breathe. Relax. Social media is more of a “slow and steady wins the race” marketing tool. You need to have a strategy in place. You need to know where your clients gather, ie. if your demographic would never be caught on Facebook, then that is not the social media platform for you even though “everyone else is there.”
How can you harness the power that social media can bring?
Being social is key. Build friendships. Involve yourself in conversations. Don’t use social media as a “free” platform for advertising your goods or services.
Find the social media platform that makes sense for your business. Perhaps LinkedIn makes more sense than being involved in Facebook — you need to know where your potential clients gather and go there to build relationships.
Be patient. Rarely is anyone an overnight success. Building relationships on social media takes time, dedicated effort and persistence.
Do you have any deals or free giveaways you can offer on social media to help spread the word about who you are and what you do? If so, offer it as part of your weekly social media posting.
What can you do to make the best use of your efforts on social media?
major advertising and promotions budget? While having a large budget may help, if you’re not trying to be found in places that make sense for you and that are natural for your clients to seek you out you will be spinning your wheels and spending money needlessly.
