Small Business Marketing

1. Rewards programs. Give prizes/discounts/points for every referral. Points are nice since you can encourage multiple references and allow people to redeem points for free or discounted services with you, building repeat customers.

2. Useful info. Provide a newsletter filled with fun, funny, useful information (NOT corporate bumpf or sales pitches) and encourage customers to share it with friends and colleagues. Of course, you will have a single, effective sales/discount/introductory pitch in the newsletter.

3. Discount coupons. Give each customer three coupons, with their name/ID# on them (so they can't redeem the coupons themselves). The coupons will give new customers a discount on your services, so the existing customer is doing a nice favour for their colleagues or clients by giving these out.

4. Ask. You'd be amazed how willing happy clients are to refer you to other people. It should be part of your standard closing with happy clients to request that they let others know about their good experience.

5. Make it easy. Give clients the URL of that discussion board about your industry where people post about their experiences. Provide postage-paid postcards they can sign and drop in the mail to friends. Send them a well-designed e-mail outlining their savings/value that they can simply forward to people they think might be interested.

There. That's five. Do I get a cookie? How about a referral? <Grin>.

-- David

REMINDER: Business Rescue - 5-part Teleseminar Series begins July 1:

http://www.orangetree123.com/Business_Rescue.htm

Listen in on two detailed interviews I did with my friends Kirstin and Tom Carey about rescuing your...

1. FINANCES So You Can Sleep at Night

2. MARKETING with a Plan that Works for You

3. INCOME by Generating Business Quickly

4. SALES through Easy Sales Techniques

5. BUSINESS & LIFE by Balancing it All Out

(Right-click these links and use "Save As..."):
Part 1: http://davidnewman.typepad.com/busrescue1_interview.mp3

Part 2: http://davidnewman.typepad.com/bus-rescue2.mp3

When an archer is shooting for nothing, he has all his skills. If he shoots for a brass buckle, he is already nervous... He thinks more of winning than of shooting. And the need to win drains him of power.
-- Marsha Sinetar

If you do what you love, you will do it more often, you will improve your skills, and you will grow into the person you want to be. Being is more important than having.

Before worrying about having more, you must first be more and do more. Having more will naturally follow.

Anyone doing deals must have the basic prerequisites of intelligence, instinct and savvy, but in my case, I willingly add ego. 
-- Donald Trump

To have ego means to believe in your own strength. So, yes, my ego is big. My ego is responsible for my doing what I do. 
-- Barbra Streisand

Often, people complain of someone else having a big ego. The real complaint, I think, is that the person in question has a bad ego, not a big one.

The dictionary tells us that ego is "the division of the psyche that is conscious, most immediately controls thought and behavior, and is most in touch with external reality."

By this definition, perhaps people in business need more ego, not less!

Other aspects to the definition include "appropriate pride in oneself" and also consciousness of your own identity."

These factors are critical to success in business - and in life! Dr. Michael Ray from Stanford Business School believes that the two central questions that businesspeople should answer to unlock their highest potential are "Who is my Self?" and "What is my Work?"

Looking at the definitions above, it would seem that a healthy (and big) ego is a critical tool in uncovering the answers to those two questions.

All great discoveries are made by men whose feelings run ahead of their thinking.
-- C. H. Parkhurst

Feeling vs. Thinking. The great debate. Well, did you know that in recent years, researchers have found that feeling often wins?

In other words, decision-making, in both personal and business contexts, relies more and more on intuition and emotion than on intellectual analysis and looking at hard data. And we're talking about GOOD decisions that led to the RIGHT outcomes, sometimes even in the face of great uncertainty and risk.

Not sure if all this talk about intuition is worth taking seriously? A Harvard Business Review article, "Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?" (September-October, 2000) maintains
that besides vision and energy, inspirational leaders share four other qualities:

* They selectively show their weaknesses. By exposing some vulnerability, they reveal their approachability and humanity.

* They rely heavily on intuition to gauge the appropriate timing and course of their actions. Their intuitive ability helps them know just when and how to act.

* They manage employees with something we call tough empathy. Inspirational leaders empathize passionately - and realistically - with people, and they care intensely about the work employees do.

* They reveal their differences. They capitalize on what's unique about themselves.