Since the earthquake in Christchurch in September 2010 and more recently in February this year, our business has been inundated with business owners trying to re-establish contact with their current customers (more about that on my next blog) to try and improve cash flow in the short term and have been looking for help to attract new customers to ensure they have a good sales pipeline and revenue for the medium to long term.
When I have asked the question “Why are you concentrating on finding new clients now, don’t you have that focus anyway?”, the answers vary and some of them never fail to surprise me, the most common responses I get are:
- “This business has been going for years, we’ve always had customers, I can’t remember the last time I had to go and look for one!”
- “My customer’s are very loyal, my business has been built through word of mouth mainly, the problem now is, a lot of my customers are gone!”
- “I built up my business from nothing, I used to see all my customers, in the last couple of years I have been too busy answering to the demands of the business, I haven’t had time to go out and look for more customers”
Many business owners can’t remember how to effectively attract new clients to their business because they have been so used to the cycle of “success breads success”, for the record I don’t think there is anything wrong with that …… unless disaster strikes, that may be a natural disaster, it could be an economic or even an industrial disaster, but whatever the events are that have lead to a sudden loss of customers and revenue, as a business owner, you should be ready to put a plan of action in place to ensure you minimise the impact to your business.
There is a simple process that I take me clients through that will help them attract more clients:
Identify Your Best Clients
Before you can start attracting more clients to your business, you first need to understand your target market, the first step in this process is to understand your BEST clients currently. What do I mean by best clients, they
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