Here’s a quick time out to re-focus your business:

WHO Don’t You Want?

Knowing WHO  you don’t want is the springboard to building your business.

Knowing  WHO  you don’t want is simply your current reality.

And your current reality can change.

WHO  Don’t You Want?

• in your business?

• in the projects you’re doing?

• in the clients you’re attracting?

• in your life?

What kinds or types of customers… er, clients…

Do You NOT want in Your Business?

Question and examine WHO you Don’t Want..

Focus on Your Do WANT!

If you realize that you can have anything, be anything, do anything…

Then the question becomes:

WHO  Do YOU WANT?

The trick is turning around everyone of your complaints to something you do want.

“I’m  sick and tired of wasting my time with price-shoppers and tire kickers!”

Becomes…

“I WANT to ATTRACT clients that appreciate the value I deliver and willingly accept my prices as fair.

Start to Focus on WHO you WANT!

Lots of entrepreneurs create their businesses out of their own perceptions.

If you focus on lack, you’ll get more lack. If you complain about price-shoppers, you’ll get more price-shoppers.

Knowing WHO you WANT helps you aim your business in the direction you want to take it.

Where do you WANT your business to go?

What do you consciously select for your business?

Decide this TODAY:

WHO…  the clients you WANT in your business!

Photo Credit:Flickr

Jerry Seinfeld Restaurant—stevenharris (Flickr.com)

“I got the best pizza in town.”

“I do great, amazing work.”

“My client service is better than anyone else.”

“My clients always refer me… everybody knows about me.”

“Just look at all these charts and my proposal. It all makes logical sense… you’ll see.”

Yeah right… and Dr. Phil is the most competent, highly qualified psychologist in America. (But he is one hellva marketer!)

Perhaps you need to face this fact:

High quality typically is a marketing problem.

Your prospects have no clue about the quality or an appreciation of the value of your work.  You’re the expert.  To the uninformed prospect who is out there, bumbling around, poking around on websites, and slurping coffee and munching on donuts in front of their computers, the best and the worst look pretty much the same.

That is, of course… until they live with and experience the difference in quality. Before the work is done and all the “i’s” are dotted and ”t’s” are crossed, and you deliver all the paperwork in your fancy binder, and get all the signatures…the only thing they have to compare… all that they see— is the difference in price.

So there you are with better products, better services, a richer more rewarding experience, a superior value.  Of course, you cost more.  Usually lots more.  And you’re competing with your better products and services against cheaper, inferior stuff that can make the same claims.  Your prospect is dazed and confused.  All they see is the price difference.

Here’s your challenge.

Here is your wake-up call:

When you have the better mousetrap, the superior solution, for your ideal prospect, it’s your moral obligation to market it as aggressively and effectively as possible.

Here’s the thing… and an up-front warning.  I’m going to get right up in your face here:

Marketing is EVERYTHING!

If you have a product or service you love and believe in and know it delivers value…

But…

You don’t know how to market…

It’s a crime!  It’s theft!

Here’s my point:

I believe you’re stealing from people’s lives, if you don’t how to reach them with your product.  You have the solution for their problem, but if you don’t know how to market to them, you’re stealing from their lives.

Marketing is the most powerful way to change people’s lives.

Many people think that marketing only as to do with business. That’s true.  Marketing is everything to your business.

But how about how you market you in your daily life?

How you market yourself affects how you interact with everything in your life… including yourself.

Read that again.

If you really “get” it, it could make you a fortune… or it could change your life.

It doesn’t matter what you do… make pizzas, cut hair, replace windows, fix furnaces, sell insurance, do tax returns, clean teeth …

Start thinking of your company as a MARKETING COMPANY.

Try it.  Watch your view start to change.

What say you?

Does “Best” thinking get in the way of your marketing?

What are YOU doing to distinguish Your business as a Marketing Company?

Flickr Photo Credit: llahbocaj

More on Marketing:

• he Fourth Rule in Attraction Marketing (ronmedlin.com)
• Putting Marketing on “ROIDs” Part 2: Responsibility Marketing (blogs.hbr.org)
• Provide Educational Info to Build Trust with Prospects (myventurepad.com)

 

Old telephone—macinate (Flickr.com)

Let’s imagine all your Internet marketing for your insurance/financial services business actually WORKS.

You’ve figured out the Google Game.

You’re getting traffic from the search engines.

Even some social marketing traffic from your Facebook Page, Twitter, and LinkedIn find their way to your website.

You actually have a website that DOES NOT SUCK.

Ideal Prospects… lots of them, in fact, more than you can handle… with honest-to-goodness problems, that you solve, people interested in the products /services you offer… interested in working with you are finding you, learning about your business.

Your visitors are excited, they’re engaged, they’re ready and want to do business with you.

Now…

Picture in your head, your Picture Perfect Potential Client, sitting in his home or office, his computer fired up, looking at your website.

He (or she) reaches for the iPhone, punches in your number…

On the other end you hear…

Ring… Ring… RING.

NOW….

Before you grab that call…

Listen Up

This is a key moment in your marketing and sales process.

It’s at this moment that marketing hands the ball off to your sales. All the marketing was practice, critical and important practice.

NOW… it’s game time!

Prior to this, your marketing was on auto-pilot, running without direct human contact. Ads, newsletters, free reports, website visits, maybe even a print mailer.

Now, you’re going to talk one-on-one with your prospect.

Your Picture Perfect Potential Client is gonna size you up in less than 3 seconds.

Malcolm Gladwell, a staff writer for The New Yorker, in his New York Times Number One Bestseller, “blink” offers a fascinating study of what happens in our heads during these crucial initial 3 seconds and writes:

“The instant conclusions that we reach are really powerful and really important, and occasionally, really good.”

It’s here many times, in that first quick impression, HOW you answer… or even fail to answer the call…that determines if you win or lose a client.

This is one of those little things that is a big deal.

You must have a process, a script for exactly how you’ll answer, greet, and handle a new prospect inquiry. Your best phone person must be trained in exactly how to handle these calls.

Understand this: Your local community wants to support your business.

But…

They won’t support you if you don’t get this basic business expectation down. Or, if Flo or The Gecko does it better than you, greets callers consistently better than you, you’re in trouble:

This is Your Insurance Business Wake-Up Call.

Now,  if you’re a small one-man show, tied up all day long meeting with clients, make sure your voice mail works and leaves the right favorable first impression with your prospects. Or, even better, consider investing in a live voice answering service

You only get one chance to make a first impression.

Return all calls promptly. Best thing to do is ask (and include this in your voice message) people the best number and time to reach them. Then call them at that time. It creates that initial impression that you are organized and on top of your business.

Oh, and one final thing…

While it’s important to make a positive first phone impression, it’s best to figure out a way to have someone other than you, the owner, The Expert in your field, answering that initial call. If YOU answer that first call, you lose all the critical positioning with the prospective client.

And… to land profitable long-term, Ideal Clients, on your terms, at your price, you need positioning, you want positioning.

Your phone’s ringing…

What do YOU you say?

Cash Register—tarale (Flickr.com)

Here’s a serious question for you to consider:

Are you simply ringing up customers— collecting cash, doing transactions, hoping to gather enough business to pay the bills—

Or…

Are you attracting Ideal Clients—

listening, delivering value,

and building, long-term, caring relationships?

As an insurance and financial services pro looking to build long-term equity and protect renewal income, this concept is… so key… so critical… so fundamental… to your marketing thinking.

In his book, Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You’ve Got, Jay Abraham illustrates the difference between clients and customers

He cites Webster’s definition to illustrate the difference:

Customer: one who purchases a commodity or service.
Client: one who is under the protection of another.

Jay states: “The difference in meaning is massive.  And there is a massive difference in the way a person who does business with you could or should be treated.”

Whoa… back up a minute here.  Read that again. Let it sink in… really sink in… before you read on.

Ah yes… that client experience… Oh, how we crave that, seek that, and will gladly and willingly pay more… sometimes a whole bunch more for someone who protects us… someone we trust… someone we’ll give our money to again and again.

Why?

Because someone finally hears us, listens to us, understands us… and delivers exactly what we want and need.

A quick story to illustrate the point

Need a sporty new polo shirt?  You can grab one at Wal-Mart for under 10 bucks… pretty much the same shirt at Neiman Marcus—$50-$60 or even more.

Now, why would any intelligent person pay 5 or 6 times the price for basically the same thing

Jay shares this story

“A man landed in jail following a drunken brawl during a Texas-Oklahoma football game.  The next morning the Oklahoma judge set bail for $250, but the man was far from home and knew no one in town.  The man pulled out his Neiman Marcus credit card.  He reached a Neiman Marcus vice president, who arranged for the bail to be charged on his account, and the man was set free.”

Try this one with Wal-Mart?

“Hello is this the Wal-Mart manager?  I got myself a little pickle here in Oklahoma, and I was hoping you could literally bail me out…”

Here’s my point: (and Jay’s):

“Treat your clients like dear valued friends.”

Invest your time and effort to figure out exactly what they want and need, why they choose to do business with you, and really understand how your clients think.  This is the first strategic step in positioning your business for phenomenal growth.

What say you?

How are YOU delivering that “Client” experience in your insurance and financial services business?