Before I get to the heart of this blogpost, as a coach let me again remind you how important it is to anchor your marketing strategies on a marketing system so that implementation will become consistent, easily duplicated by your staff and can be sustained in the long-run.

3. How to use software to manage your customer base

This is a good strategy in managing your time. The big key in customer database is keeping you updated on the movement of your customers – when was the last time you’ve spoken or seen them. We will not get into advanced Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software because it requires time to learn the technology. Your simple accounting software such as MYOB or Quickbooks can do the trick. However, if you don’t know much about MYOB or Quickbooks, I highly recommend that you get an MYOB or Quickbooks consultant.

When you go into MYOB, the principle is you have to create a master code. The first part of the code represents a group of products or activities. The second part is the movement of the product. For example, 100-10, 100-20 or AA10, AA20. 100 or AA represents the product while 10 & 20 represents the movement of the product. What we’re doing is we’re finding the products or activities based on the codes and you need to set this up in your accounting program. It is important to get your customers to fill up a form (i.e. order form, survey form, etc) and input the details into the MYOB. This will generate the invoice and include the date of the purchase. This in turn will simplify the tracking of your products’ movement that makes it easy for you to identify which customers last purchased your products the past 6, 12 or 18 months. For easier reference, when you get into MYOB, you create 3 reports based on these categories.

Another advantage of Quickbooks or MYOB is it automatically links your data to MS Word or MS Excel. Once you have the report, export it to your spreadsheet where you can do a mail merge and voila you have your letter ready in no time. All you need to do is stuff the letter into an envelope and mail it. When you have sent out the letter, keep the names in a datasheet. Anyone who rings up and requests the offer, you should delete them off the spreadsheet. On day 10, send a voice broadcast to those who have not responded from the 3 datasheets.

Another good thing about voice broadcast is once you have a recording, you don’t need to re-record your message. I have had a client record a voice broadcast 4 years ago and they are still using it week after week and it never changes. All that changes are the people that are getting into the system. What is even more amazing is it only takes 3 days to write the system, record the voice broadcast and input the database. Once you develop the reports and the system it can be easily done by your staff. Overall it takes 3 days of your effort to build the system and your staff can take 3 hours a month to do all these. The best part about this is once you’ve taken the time, it just happens automatically.

4. How you can use that customer as a referrer to gain new customers

I love this little technique. The principle behind this is you want to make sure that you’ve gone the extra mile to make your customer happy. What you do is you have a number of cards made up with a special neighbor offer. “If you call in the next 14 days and buy 2 we will give you 1 free.” You have a card that says, “Hi my name is David I just left this in your mailbox as a special offer. I finished servicing your neighbor, house #33. If you want this service please call and take up the offer on the back.”

The key is to write your message instead of having it printed. Handwriting the promotion will make you stand out and besides it will only take you 4 to 5 minutes to write the card. You can use the same template every time and you don’t have to come up with something extraordinary to do this. The idea is you put it into 5 houses both sides of the client that you just serviced. That’s it! This is how you use your client’s testimonial without asking them for it.

You need to understand the subtlety of the wording – the key is to make them feel special. The trust factor is also critical. Since their neighbor trusted you, they will also be willing to trust you. What you’ll discover is this works 95% of the time. The reality why this strategy works is because your competitors pick referral clients the traditional way.

That brings us to the conclusion of the four marketing strategies to reactivate old customers and get referrals from existing customers. I always remind my coaching clients to remember this — when you take the time to invest in your marketing system you effectively give yourself more time. There is one thing in life that we always forget at the end of the day, you can always make more money but you can’t get your time back. Unless you take the time to create the project, the lifestyle that you long for will never happen.