How to Handle Unhappy Customers

We’ve been talking about word of mouth advertising, and here’s something that might stop you in your tracks. Every satisfied customer is likely to tell three friends about your business. Great! On the other hand, every unhappy customer will gripe to at least eleven people. Yeah, angry people let off a lot more steam, so it’s important to have a handle on dealing with them effectively.

Here are a few tips to keeping the lid on things when customers get hot.

1. Acknowledge the fact that they are upset. Yeah, admit that you can tell they are upset. They WANT you to notice or they wouldn’t take the time to contact you.

2. Make a positive statement that is reassuring. Letting them know that you intend to do something about the problem will make it easier to calm them down enough to get to the root of the problem.

3. Make a sad/glad statement. Tell them you are sorry they are angry, but happy they took the time to let you know so that you can help them.

4. Ask the magic question, “What will make you happy?” Don’t be in a hurry to make offers. You’ll find that customers are often satisfied with less than you would have quickly shelled out. Yeah, you might save yourself a lot of trouble by letting them decide what you should do.

5. Make a settlement. Let them know they are a valuable customer.

Keeping customers happy is crucial to the success of every business! Go the extra mile, you’ll be glad you did.

Next time, we’ll dig into more marketing tools that will help stimulate your business’ success.

Dedicated To Your Further Success.

All the best,

Allyn Cutts

PS To contact me via email, Click Here

About the Author

Allyn has spent over 24 years helping businesses like yours find new customers and increase sales to current customers.

Allyn consults personally with clients to design and deliver offline and online direct marketing strategies that focus on metrics and measurable results. You can learn more about Allyn Cutts at http://AmazingMarketingStrategy.com or you can call 610.437.4106 between 10 AM and 4 PM Eastern Time Tuesdays and Thursdays

You may reprint or distribute this article as long as you leave the content and the resource box at the end intact.

Little Ways to Create Great Success

It’s the little things that upset us…

Yeah, little things can annoy customers and send them away, or effectively make their experience pleasant and keep them coming back time and time again!

In the business world, little things are extremely important. Each one in itself may not carry an obvious wallop, but when you add the little things together they can mean the success or failure of your business.

What little things have you been neglecting? Now, don’t be looking for one magic strategy that will suddenly make your business boom! It’s probably not going to happen. Instead look around to see what you can do today, that will be a small improvement. Yep, customers notice them!

Are you busily working to stimulate referrals? Remember, they are the freebies of advertising! Yeah, you don’t get many opportunities to save a few bucks and increase your business visiblity at the same time. There’s one more thing to add to your “little thing” list that will bring big results.

Customers are the lifeline of your business…no customers…no money. Next time, we’ll talk about how to keep unhappy customers on your “loyal customer” list.

Dedicated To Your Further Success.

All the best,

Allyn Cutts

PS To contact me via email, Click Here

About the Author

Allyn has spent over 24 years helping businesses like yours find new customers and increase sales to current customers.

Allyn consults personally with clients to design and deliver offline and online direct marketing strategies that focus on metrics and measurable results. You can learn more about Allyn Cutts at http://AmazingMarketingStrategy.com or you can call 610.437.4106 between 10 AM and 4 PM Eastern Time Tuesdays and Thursdays

You may reprint or distribute this article as long as you leave the content and the resource box at the end intact.

How to Spark Word of Mouth Advertising

There’s no substitution that rivals the real thing, especially when it comes to marketing. Marketers have simulated word of mouth advertising to some degree of success, but not to the extent of first hand word of mouth advertising.

You’ve probably witnessed the technique called “Slice of Life.” It’s the typical TV or radio ad where someone calls a friend to tell them about a great new product they’ve discovered. Yep, you know it’s a written spiel that carries none of the impact that a real life friend calling you to rave about a new product would carry.

Now to the question, “How do I get people to spread the word for me?” Have you heard of Disney Land? Yeah, I thought so. The philosophy that has carried them to success is…do what you do so well and so uniquely that people can’t resist talking about it.

Disney surveyed first time visitors to find out what stuck in their mind about the park. The top two characteristics: cleanliness and authenticity. That’s right! The crisp, clean environment made the greatest impact on visitors. Is it any wonder that Disney considers as part of its marketing, rather than a maintenance expense?

People went away from their vacation so impressed that they did what most satisfied customers do - told their friends. Before long, these word of mouth references had people packing up their families and heading out for the best theme park around. You know the rest. Disney Land and Disney World are renowned family vacation spots.

How about it? Does your business strive for excellence and creativity? Yeah, these attributes are likely to translate into real life referrals - exactly what you should be looking for.

This brings an important topic to mind that we’ll look at next time: Little things with big benefits.

Dedicated To Your Further Success.

All the best,

Allyn Cutts

PS To contact me via email, Click Here

About the Author

Allyn has spent over 24 years helping businesses like yours find new customers and increase sales to current customers.

Allyn consults personally with clients to design and deliver offline and online direct marketing strategies that focus on metrics and measurable results. You can learn more about Allyn Cutts at http://AmazingMarketingStrategy.com or you can call 610.437.4106 between 10 AM and 4 PM Eastern Time Tuesdays and Thursdays

You may reprint or distribute this article as long as you leave the content and the resource box at the end intact.

Marketing Goals:Cut Your Ad Costs Without Losing Effectiveness

Do you know someone who has mastered the art of getting something for nothing?

It makes you wonder how they do it. When it comes to advertising, you can become skilled at marketing your business…free of charge…without looking cheap. Yeah that’s right, free ads with no money up front or payments to be made later!

I love it when a customer walks through my door who has never seen an ad about my products or picked up a flyer!

How did they learn about us? A good friend told them that we had great prices and friendly services. Yes! Nothing I could ever say in an ad could be as strong as the opinion and experience of a trusted friend or family member. Yeah, word of mouth advertising carries a big wallop when it comes to developing a loyal customer right off the bat.

Word of mouth advertising isn’t only the most powerful advertising method, it has been around for a long time and is still used in TV ads and radio commercials to affectively market products. There is no way you can say the things about yourself that someone else can say, and portray the grace and power that their words can transmit. The great thing about it - it’s amazingly simple!

Word of mouth advertising works on its own, but people who are business smart understand that it can be controlled and encouraged to increase its effectiveness. Watch for the upcoming email where we’ll talk about ways to stimulate a high rate of word of mouth advertising!

Dedicated To Your Further Success.

All the best,

Allyn Cutts

PS To contact me via email, Click Here

About the Author

Allyn has spent over 24 years helping businesses like yours find new customers and increase sales to current customers.

Allyn consults personally with clients to design and deliver offline and online direct marketing strategies that focus on metrics and measurable results. You can learn more about Allyn Cutts at http://AmazingMarketingStrategy.com or you can call 610.437.4106 between 10 AM and 4 PM Eastern Time Tuesdays and Thursdays

You may reprint or distribute this article as long as you leave the content and the resource box at the end intact.

Telemarketing: The CAN Call List

The DO NOT CALL LIST has many businessmen and women afraid to pick up the phone and call customers. Yeah, the taboo of telemarketing has kept a lot of us from taking advantage of a very effective marketing tool! If you’re like me, you go out of your way to avoid anything that could get you into legal trouble.

But how do you know when it’s always OK to pick up the telephone a make a call?

Follow up calls for clients or customers is always OK. In fact, it’s crucial to the process of building customer loyalty. Don’t be afraid to follow up with a client or verify customer satisfaction over the phone. Most often, your customers will appreciate the fact that you took the time to check in with them.

The thing about slow business that drives me crazy, is having nothing to do. You know what I mean…those days when you have plenty of time to ponder the lack of business and its impact on the profit margin for the month. During those times, the bill stack seems to grow taller by the minute, and the bank account seems to be shrinking rapidly.

Why not put those maddening hours to use, reinforcing your customer relationships?

There’s no greater feeling than having helped a fellow in time of need. Are you too busy to make the calls that really should be made? There are a lot of handicapped people who would be perfect for the job! An advantage of hiring someone to call for you, is that it doesn’t have to be done on site. Are there any young mothers who could really use the money the job would pay, but need to stay home with their children.

Yeah, there are a lot of alternatives to turning this job into a benefit someone in need. Of course, you want to train them - you’re looking for professional work after all.

Paying others to call for you can be accomplished through a variety of mediums and can be payed for in a lot of different ways. You may want to pay per call, make it a commission job, or hire an agency to do it all for you. Beware of agencies that ask for money up front. There are a lot of scam agencies, as well as reputable firms.

Does your town have a welcome wagon? Hey, these community services are great for customer leads! When a new person comes to your community, they’ll meet them, give them a stack of brochures (usually only one from each type of business), and other odds and ends that tell them about the community along with a few gifts. You know the saying, the early bird gets the worm…usually the first store the customer shops in becomes the store they regularly visit.

Yeah, you might want to look into getting your information included into your local welcome wagon…before your competitor does!

Once the welcome wagon has done its job, you get a list of the potential customers ripe for a follow up. Don’t let the lack of advertising funds steal the growth from your business! The telephone can be a wonderful asset for budget restricted advertising.

Is there free advertising? Sure there is…next time we’ll find out just how to go about getting lots of free advertising.

Dedicated To Your Further Success.

All the best,

Allyn Cutts

PS To contact me via email, Click Here

About the Author

Allyn has spent over 24 years helping businesses like yours find new customers and increase sales to current customers.

Allyn consults personally with clients to design and deliver offline and online direct marketing strategies that focus on metrics and measurable results. You can learn more about Allyn Cutts at http://AmazingMarketingStrategy.com or you can call 610.437.4106 between 10 AM and 4 PM Eastern Time Tuesdays and Thursdays

You may reprint or distribute this article as long as you leave the content and the resource box at the end intact.

The Keys To Telemarketing Success

Last time we talked about the cost effectiveness and value of telemarketing. Yeah, it’s a tool that just about any type of business can put to good use, but there are some tips to make your efforts more effective.

1. Organize, Organize. If you’re always doing everything on the fly, sooner or later it catches up to you. Even professional telemarketers use scripts. Jot yourself a few notes to keep you on track and set yourself up for success.

2. Be courteous. That’s a no-brainer! Seriously though, you have to remember that the person on the other end of the phone doesn’t have the luxury of reading your expressions. It’s important to keep your voice friendly. In fact, many experts say that smiling while on the phone carries across the wires in the tone of your voice.

3. You win some, you lose some. No, not everyone is going to appreciate your call. Hey, maybe you interrupted their favorite show or the family dinner! Don’t sweat it.

4. Practice makes perfect. Everything we do, was at one time new to us. We had to go through the tedious process of learning. Do you expect your first call to be on par with the best? Probably not. It may take as many as two dozen calls before you feel comfortable with your script and the telemarketing experience. Keep at it, and before long you’ll be an old pro too.

5. Teach it. Take the time to teach an employee to telemarket. Long ago, I learned that the best way to master a skill is to try to teach it to someone else. The act of telling and demonstrating a process to another gives you a broader perspective of the skill. Yeah, add to that the insightful questions the learner asks, and you’ll be surprised at the additional insight you’ve gained.

What about the DON’T CALL list? Yep, that makes you stop and think about what is actually legal in the telemarketing realm. Don’t be intimidated, you can still make calls. Next time we’ll talk about some legal aspects of telemarketing.

Dedicated To Your Further Success.

All the best,

Allyn Cutts

PS To contact me via email, Click Here

About the Author

Allyn has spent over 24 years helping businesses like yours find new customers and increase sales to current customers.

Allyn consults personally with clients to design and deliver offline and online direct marketing strategies that focus on metrics and measurable results. You can learn more about Allyn Cutts at http://AmazingMarketingStrategy.com or you can call 610.437.4106 between 10 AM and 4 PM Eastern Time Tuesdays and Thursdays

You may reprint or distribute this article as long as you leave the content and the resource box at the end intact.

Avoid Paying For Leads That Don’t Net Customers

What do free marketing and one-on-one personal contacts mean to you? I’m not talking about some kind of gimmick, but a real way to advertise to your potential customers that is amazingly easy. Yeah, you have the tool to do it somewhere close by - the telephone. Calls made in your area cost you nothing but a few minutes of time. Even long distance calls are pay as you go, compared to mailing campaigns where you need to print fliers, or media advertisements that cost thousands of dollars up front.

OK, get out your pencil and figure this one out. If you make three calls a day, in a year you will have contacted…right, nearly a thousand people. That’s a lot of advertisement for a few minutes of your time each day and at absolutely no cost!

Get out your gear and do a little “prospecting.” There’s a gold mine awaiting your call. You might find customers to invite to your store, make appointments for new clients, or add someone to your mailing list.

Yeh, just like everything else you do in business, you need a plan. Blindly calling no one in particular may not be the most effective way to impliment telemarketing. Compile a prospect list, write yourself a phone script and you’re on your way!

How about your customers you haven’t seen in a while. The telephone is a great tool to let them know that you miss them and have something great to offer! It could be a special sale, close-out offer, or a new product.

Hey, don’t forget about the customers who call you! One company I place orders over the telephone to, always has a last minute special to offer before closing out the order. No, I’m not an impulsive shopper, but I usually at least stop to think about the deal that is being offered.

This technique has been called Columbo Marketing, after a famous TV detective who always had to stop at the last minute and say one more thing. Yeah, don’t let them get away without taking a moment to tell them about a special sale going on in your store.

Keep a look out for more Amazing Marketing Tips in the next email.

Dedicated To Your Further Success.

All the best,

Allyn Cutts

PS To contact me via email, Click Here

About the Author

Allyn has spent over 24 years helping businesses like yours find new customers and increase sales to current customers.

Allyn consults personally with clients to design and deliver offline and online direct marketing strategies that focus on metrics and measurable results. You can learn more about Allyn Cutts at http://AmazingMarketingStrategy.com or you can call 610.437.4106 between 10 AM and 4 PM Eastern Time Tuesdays and Thursdays

You may reprint or distribute this article as long as you leave the content and the resource box at the end intact.