John Hersey Leadership Blog

A good leader knows how difficult, in terms of money and time, it is to revive a dead customer or to get a new one out of a cold list, and a good leadership speaker and coach will tell you the value of a lifetime customer in terms of cash and referrals.

A true leader knows that the key to save money is to sell more to current clients, to the point that the salesperson becomes a part of the client’s team.  Yep!  This kind of positioning is priceless.

So, here we give you 5 tips to sell more to your current clients:

Slow down

Stop to evaluate and make sure you have done the best for your client and that you have earned the right to ask for referrals.

 Get informed

Get as much information as possible about their referral style, if it is aggressive, fast-paced, optimistic, or detail oriented; and learn all you can about their business and their challenges.

Ask

Ask for referrals from key persons and from personal contacts in other departments. 

Make a connection

Find a way to make an emotional connection with your client.  Aim to make friends with them, and for this, forget about emails, voicemail, or direct mail. 

You have to be there, it takes time and effort, but it is worth it.

People prefer to do business with friends, and true friends stick for life, even when the going gets tough.

Communicate regularly

Design a communication model to stay in touch regularly; one that builds top of mind awareness and that portrays you as much more than a salesperson. 

Get in touch at least every 6 weeks, make it short, sweet, benefit driven, and if possible, with an emotional trigger.  For example:

-      Help them learn more

Create white papers, tip sheets, quick columns, or FAQ sheets to help your clients understand what you offer.

 -      Use a quote

Send an appropriate and inspiring quote to your clients and write a few words on it.

-      Clip and send

Make it a habit to clip and send an article, cartoon or quote from any written source you read, or find something on the web that may help or interest your clients.  Send it to them explaining why you thought of them when you read it. 

-      Books

Choose the right book for your client and write a note on the first page.  Identify with a sticky note any special sections you find.

-      Call them

It is always nice to receive a warm greeting call.

-      Feel good things

Tell your clients about a success story related to your product or service that may inspire them.

And always remember to think of your customers as long time friends.

Contagious leadership is a style that is taught through example, and there are big opportunities out there, in very simple and everyday activities, to shape and strengthen it within yourself and others in your company.

Here we offer you 5 significant ways in which you can celebrate all kinds of success, big or small, in a meaningful and open manner to make contagious leadership stick within your organization:

Go public

Recognizing people for their good work is always effective no matter how it is done; however, if done in a public way, it will produce a massive impact, and its value will last longer.  

Do it immediately

The most important thing for an employee is to celebrate his or her successes.  The sooner you praise their achievements, the bigger the impact this will produce on them and on everyone else within the company.  

On the contrary, the longer you wait, the more the person will grasp that you are being insincere in your spotlighting, involved recognition, and vibrant communication efforts.

Be precise

Don’t just come out and say, “Well done, Amy!”  Specify what was it that the person did that was so outstanding, special, and worthy of praise. 

For example, something along the lines of, “You did an amazing job solving the situation, Amy.  The customers truly felt tended to and are very excited about working with us again in the near future.  This kind of response is what will get us far ahead.  Thank you for caring so much”, would work wonders.

Focus on the strengths

If you want to take someone down and annul every possibility of taking advantage of that person’s qualities, nag them incessantly by pointing out what’s being done wrong or is missing.

In contrast, if you are truly committed to excellence and to seeing the positive in everyone and in everything, focus on the strengths people have and on how you can potentiate them in benefit of your company and that person’s life.

Announce all accomplishments

Any successful action, no matter how small, is a good excuse to celebrate.

Celebrate good habits and qualities, instead of celebrating numbers:

>Send handwritten “God job!” notes regularly to your employees’ homes.  You have no idea how such a note from the CEO will make an employee feel.  Everyone will know about it in less than 24 hours.                                               

Give this a try:  Take a pen right now and spend 10 minutes handwriting five praising notes for five people in your team.  Tell them why you value them, and be specific. 

Next week, write one note per day; the following week, write two daily notes, and start paying attention to what happens and how things begin to change. 

Even without feedback, you will see the difference.    

> Honor even the smallest accomplishment, and involve the highest levels of the organization in the celebration.

>Establish a ‘Contagious Leader of the Month’ program.  Everyone votes, and the winner gets to participate in a contagious leadership lunch with the CEO.

>Create a ‘Contagious Leadership Wall of Fame’, showing pictures of all these leaders doing what they do best and  with a legend explaining why each one of them is being honored in such a way.  

There are endless ways to celebrate success.  A good leadership speaker can guide you in the process of discovering what works best for your company; nevertheless, it is just a matter of envisioning your organization and getting creative; it is all about having lots of fun and becoming highly productive.

Beverly and I recently flew to Portland, Oregon to join our friends for a week’s holiday. As we were boarding our UsAir flight a passenger asked the flight attendant a question about the baggage policy. The reply was, “We aren’t Southwest, Ma’am!”

WOW, talk about owning an advantage. When brands begin admitting that they are NOT a competing  brand,  you just know that the competing brand has made significant progress in capturing share of mind and most likely, share of market.

I have wondered from time to time why Southwest was investing somuch money advertising the fact that it does not charge for baggage. I wondered whether this was a significant point of difference. Now I know! Clearly, the passenger and the USAir flight attendant think it is a significant point of difference.

Doing something that captures the attention of your ideal prospect is what branding is all about, isn’t it?. Sometimes we so over think how and what to do to accomplish this that we miss the real advantage when it is staring us in the face.

Southwest Airlines has a serious advantage with the fact that it does not charge for baggage when every other airline is determined to nickel and dime us to death. They are pretty smart folks over there at Southwest. Of course they would make a considerable investment to leverage this advantage and turn it into increased revenue and market share. In fact, they own the advantage.

This makes me wonder what little advantages we all have that could be leveraged? What little advantages do we have that have been overlooked? Have we been concentrating on identifying huge advantages while the little advantages are stuck right in front of us?

Marketing advantages come in all shapes, sizes, colors and forms. Sometimes a wonderful advantage doesn’t even look like an advantage, until we look a second time. When airline ticket prices are $400-$1000 or more, who would guess that saving $25 bucks checking your bag could be a highly profitable advantage?

This is an interesting question, if you truly consider it. What makes this economy so interesting is that answering questions like that may well be the difference between getting by and getting way ahead. Think about it!

So, what advantage can you leverage? I’ll have more to say about this in the next post. In the meantime,

Be Well & Be Contagious,

John