Copywriting, Marketing, and Creating Raving Fans

I’m happy to show you how to create a sales plan that fits your personality and uses the loyal customers you already have. I’ll show you how to identify your ideal customers, and help you connect with them to create new sales opportunities and new referrals. This way, you can use what you already have to add additional sales quickly without hiring anyone or buying into anything.

You don’t have to sign up for anything, buy an ebook, an online course, or talk to a guy in a suit jacket with a briefcase.

I’m offering this free help because I’m a sales consultant that exclusively helps smaller service-based businesses. And there’s a good possibility that you may need my help for some future projects.

With that said, please understand that this isn’t a sales pitch in disguise - I promise to never pester you or pressure you in any way at all. In fact, if you feel like I’ve wasted even one second of your time I’ll give you $200 to take your crew out to lunch.

Now, before you go any further, you need to know that I can’t help everybody. I can only really be a benefit to businesses that have been around for a minimum of 10 years who have a customer base of at least 1000 customers.

Here’s what you do next. Read the tips below on how to create your own sales plan. You should be able to form a good plan of how to use the tips to cause real and lasting growth for your business. If you want help with any of the phases of the sales plan, just click the link at the end of the page. When you click the link, you’ll see a form with a few questions about your business and what you’re hoping to accomplish. Once I have that information, I’ll do some research of my own and we can set up a time to go over the details together.

Here’s How To Do It

The goal in what I’m going to teach you is to create new business in a way that is absolutely genuine and that makes the best use of your time and money. I believe that you have everything it takes to create a whole lot of new business - you may just need a little help in putting everything together.

Many of the people I talk to have all tried some kind of online Advertisement. Most without any real impact. The fact is - hiring marketing companies is expensive. And doing it on your own can be very overwhelming. Everybody has a different opinion about how to do it best - but they’re all wrong!

You’re the only one who can create a working marketing machine for your business. You may only need a little direction and then you can grow your business as much as you want to. No limits - and you can ensure a great paycheck for all your employees for years to come.

I’m going to walk you through the critical steps you need to take. None of these are easy, but they are extremely powerful. I’m going to show you how to specifically and accurately target your ideal customer and how to ultimately make them a raving fan.

Let's start by creating a foundation that everything else will build on and then we’ll move on to the fun stuff!

Here’s an overview:

1. Profile
2. Research
3. Deepest Need
4. Features to Benefits
5. Unique Selling Proposition
6. Sell it!

1. Profile

The first step - and the hardest one - is to write up a detailed profile of your ideal customer. Have more than one ideal customer? You can create as many profiles as you’d like. This profile will become the basis for your successful sales message. Picture one of your very best customers, or the type of customer you wish you had more of. Download and fill out this profile sheet. Answer all the questions with as much detail as you can.

If you can talk to an actual customer, that’s great! It’s OK to make up some of the answers, as long as they are as close to a perfect match for your ideal customer as possible. This is kind of like cloning your best employee. You need to know what exactly you are looking for.

Give them a name, add a picture - get creative!

2. Research

Time to research what you’ve discovered about your ideal customer. Look into all the details. Research the industry they’re in - find a source for current events, news, seasonal, and evergreen issues and visit the forums and any social sites they visit. Step into their shoes as much as possible.

3. Deepest Need

What is the deepest need of each of your ideal customers? The very best way to answer this question is to let him or her answer the question! Note that every Profile you create will have a different set of needs!

If you sell plumbing or heat and air services, your customer’s deepest need could be that service is performed extremely quickly and exactly on time or that they can purchase services online with the click of a button and no additional hassle.

If you’re a cabling contractor, your customer’s deepest need might be that their computer network is faster than ever before or that their construction project is completed on time.

If you are a landscaping company, your customer’s deepest need may be to have weekends off again - not slaving away keeping mowers running and the lawn looking nice.

Determining the deepest need is an extremely important step. So often we assume that our customers care about things that are really only important to us. When you can attach your customer’s deepest needs to what you are selling - you’ll be a rockstar!

4. Turn Features Into Benefits

We all love talking about features. Chances are, you have trade shows and endless product demos that center on the latest and greatest features. The problem? If you can’t turn your features into benefits, you’ll talk right over your customer’s head.

Have 35 of the city’s top technicians and the best tools money can buy? Your customer won’t care about that if you can’t solve their deepest needs.

The best way to turn your features into benefits is to start a list of features. List all the things that make your company better than the competition. Take an item on that list and ask yourself “So what?”

Here’s an example. We leave our worksite cleaner than it was when we got there. “So what?” Begin diving deeper into the benefit of leaving things clean and why someone would pay for that. The benefits to a clean worksite can include things like; we make your worksite OSHA compliant, no rookie mistakes - ever, 100% stress-free experience, etc. All of these things are the result - the benefit of a simple thing like keeping things clean. You may not realize these are the benefits, but think about what would happen if you didn’t keep things clean? What other details would you stop paying attention to? And what would happen if you did just the minimum amount of work to get by? You can see that the way you do business would fall apart really quickly!

After you’ve listed all the features you can think of and turned them into benefits, you’ll see that you have the makings for some really powerful sales material. These benefits will also help you clearly communicate why choosing you over your competition is a no-brainer.

5. Unique Selling Proposition

You can create more than one of these! In fact, you should have one that addresses each of your ideal customers’ deepest needs. Your USP is just a simple statement that explains how your product and / or services uniquely solve your customer’s deepest needs or wishes. Use a benefit to solve a specific need for a specific ideal customer profile.

Here are a few examples of a good USP:

• AAA Plumbing is the only plumbing company that guarantees a same-day on-time service call with a money-back guarantee.
• Jack’s Heat and Air ensures you never waste a dime on a service call with our free DIY tips.
• Jon’s Landscapes will give you back your weekend to do what you really want to do - we take the hassle of messing with weed trimmers and bags of cut grass to offer you the relaxation you deserve.

6. Let’s Go [Fishing] Sell!

This is the step we all want to start with. But do you see how working through the details above provides a really clear picture of what your sales approach needs to look like? The key to effectively reaching new customers is to figure out what they need and how to talk with them on their level. Selling is really like fishing. With the right location, boat, bait, and time of day, you can guarantee you’ll catch a very specific fish.

The ideal customer profile sheets you created will tell you where to find new customers, what they are looking for and how to catch their attention. There are dozens of ways to reach new customers, but not all customers can be reached the same way. Plan to meet new customers where they’re at.

You already have a list of customers that have spent money with you. This list is a great source of finding new work and ultimately new referrals. Divide your existing list into groups that correspond with the ideal customer profiles you’ve created. Don’t worry if some customers are left out - you’ll probably end up with a do-not-work-with-again list and a list of customers that just aren’t really ideal for you.

Your goal, whether you are reaching new customers or connecting with existing customers is to Engage them. This may happen through an email, social media post, online / print ad, trade show, phone call, etc. Remember - find your ideal customers where they’re at. If engaging customers is like throwing your lure into the water, you need to know that you’ve got the best possible chance.

Get them to bite. You need to know whether or not you’ve engaged a potential customer. You can do this by providing something they need to download, sign up for, or return by mail. Not all ideal customers will be online, but a vast majority of them probably are. If you don’t have a website that’s working for you, now is definitely the time!

Note: Just because you did something to engage a customer or potential customer doesn’t mean you are done! Keep engaging - if you know you’re fishing in the right spot with all the right stuff, it’s only a matter of time before you get a bite. Don’t worry - your attempts at engaging will not be viewed as aggressive and sales-y if you are meeting your prospects where they are by using relevant content.

You got a bite! When you get contacted to schedule a service call or a walk-through or receive a question to answer, you’re on the right path! You need to know how they heard about you, but as important as that is - you need to create excitement. Ensure that you give as much value as absolutely possible as soon as you can. You can create excitement through really great follow-up, thank you notes, coupons, phone calls - whatever helps to make your customer feel like you’ve gone above and beyond in meeting their needs. Make a goal of turning all customers into raving fans.

A customer for life is way more profitable than a one-time customer. Take every opportunity to fully engage your customer’s immediate needs before working on upselling or trying to get a referral. If you’ve created excitement, you’ve started to build trust. Making your customer aware of additional services or valuable add-ons will be viewed as a token of good-will rather than a bait and switch kind of situation.

How to consistently get referrals? Start with collecting a testimonial. Even if the service you provided is something you do all day, every day - remember that you’ve solved a real problem for someone. When your customer knows that you really care about their experience with you, they’ll be much more likely to spread the word. Record the testimonials if possible. Type them up word for word.