- Advertising agencies in Utah with direct links to listed agencies.

Even if you are able to show with sincere conviction that you can solve their problems, it still might not be enough to close the sale.

You are at a disadvantage from the start.

People must desire your products/services more than they desire an equal amount of their money. However, if you include a fantastic, solid guarantee, it can make a dramatic difference in your marketing response and closing rate.

The best guarantee that can be offered is a full, lifetime, no-questions-asked refund or replacement guarantee. If your product/service fails for any reason, it will be replaced or refunded. This guarantee removes the most risk from the client by putting that risk on you.

“Stand behind everything you do.
‘Satisfaction Guaranteed’ will make all the difference.”
- Sam Walton

Now, I have to point out here that there always will be someone who will abuse a powerful guarantee like this.

However, if what you sell is of high quality and value and you stand by what you sell, then the additional sales easily will offset the few occasions on which you will need to honor your guarantee. I advise you to add 1-2% to the price of your products to offset the cost of the times that you will need to honor your guarantee.

How well do you stand behind your products/services?

• Call your competitor on the telephone and pose as a prospective client.
• Talk to their sales staff
• Ask the right questions and most salespeople will tell you exactly what you want to know about their business. Many salespeople love to talk about themselves and their business. This can help you with your research.
• Collect your competitors’ brochures, ads, and sales letters.
• Record their voice messages and their radio and TV commercials.
• Visit their booths at trade shows and go to their showrooms.
• Also, check out their Web site(s).
  Most Web sites will give you a lot of information about how the company does business with its clients. The site may even provide a list of clients, which can become a great “target list” for your own sales efforts.
  While visiting the Web sites of your competitors, request more information regarding their companies and their products/services. Then, keep an accurate record about how quickly they respond.

What other ideas can you develop for gathering marketing information on your competitors?

Many businesses set up an online presence and then forget about customer service.

Too many times they take days or weeks to respond to client and prospect questions.

Even worse, sometimes they forget entirely. One great way to set your business apart from your competition is to attempt to respond to your online inquiries within minutes.

A short time ago, I was offered a one-on-one phone session with Chet Holmes, a protege of marketing guru Jay Abraham. Chet was promoting the marketing seminars that he was conducting with Jay Conrad Levinson.

Within fifteen minutes of leaving Chet an email message, I received a call from one of his associates, who asked me some qualifying questions and then scheduled a telephone meeting for the next day.

I was impressed, both with the fast response and with the information that I received from Chet Holmes and Associates.

These things showed a level of caring for the client that is extraordinary in today’s business climate.

What can you do to improve your customer service?

Be inventive, creative, or even outrageous to capture a bigger share of the available business.

Boring is and will always be boring.

Creative marketing will help you to crush your competition.

Follow your gut.
Go with your hunches.
Do it smart and careful.

Keep an eye on what your industry competitors are doing.

Many times it makes sense to do the opposite of what they are doing.

Do your own strategic marketing, it will set you apart.

Your future clients will notice that you are a unique business with different ideas.

What ideas do you have to out-market your competitors?

Do you have a written “Mission Statement” that explains what your business is about?

Does this statement represent the vision, purpose, and aspirations that your business communicates to the world?

More importantly, do you tell your customers and prospective clients about your mission statement in every marketing effort that you create?

What should this statement include?

Typically, it will include your USP or SOB (statement of benefit). It also will include what “attitude” your business is trying to communicate.

Is your business and marketing attitude friendly, exclusive, or inviting?
Is It classy, low-priced, or responsive?
The list could be endless.

“Ability is what you’re capable of doing.
Motivation determines what you can do.
Attitude determines how well you do it.”
- Lou Holtz

It is important how you integrate your attitude into your marketing.
If the public sees and hears your positive attitude, then they will know and understand that you are proud of what you sell.

They also will know that you are very serious about your business and are willing to go the extra mile to keep them happy.

Your attitude should tell them that your business is ready to be their sole source —their “go-to” solution.

Your attitude should be communicated in everything that you do and say. If each of your marketing efforts is consistent and professional, then prospects will pick up on your attitude.

When the statements that you make in your marketing efforts are positive and consistent, your clients and prospects should understand that you will deliver on them.

This builds their confidence in you and will increase your sales. Consistency and attitude are the keys to getting people to remember your business.

Do you know what your company’s attitude is?

Are you getting this message to your customers and prospects every day?

Do you ask yourself regularly, “Is this information reaching my clients?”

Even more importantly, how much do you love helping your clients?

How passionate are you about it?

I have met so many business owners over the years who are just not very passionate about what they do or sell.

This makes me wonder, “Why did they go into business in the first place?”

Having passion for your business is an essential part of successful marketing.

In fact, the passionate drive to succeed is a huge factor in the success of any business.

If you love what you are doing, then your success will be so much greater than what you will achieve if you don’t.

Whether or not you are truly excited about what your business has to offer will be very evident to all of your customers and prospects. It will come across in everything that you do, in all of the words that you write, and in how you speak about the products/services that you offer.

If you really believe in your business, then your intensity will be transferred to your employees in the amount of effort that they put forth, and to your customers and prospects in a way that will increase their interest in your products/services.

If you are passionate about what your business does, the result will be more sales. It does not matter what motivates your passion, whether it is making money, or loving the “in-charge” feeling that you get with self-employment, or enjoying the freedom of setting your own hours.

If you maintain a love and passion for your business, you will find that many people will want to do business with you, both now and in the future. Passion breeds success, and success breeds more success.

If you don’t love what you are doing—if you are not totally passionate about it—then go find something else!

“Passion is everything.”
-David Copperfield

People will have a hard time believing you if you don’t have passion for what you are doing. Your clients and prospects can sense it in you when you don’t believe in what you are marketing.

You might fool them once, but you won’t fool them twice.

Be passionate about your business. It will catch on fire.

What are you doing to show how much you love what you do and the things that you sell?

This statement also applies to your business.

What if you have developed a marketing campaign that is working well?

What if your marketing is bringing in all kinds of sales leads and increasing sales and profits for your business?

What if you have tested and proven your list and your headlines?

What if your offers in this campaign are the best that they can be?

What if no other marketing effort that you have tried has beaten its results?

Wouldn’t it be insane to change it?

You would think so.

However, many business owners get bored with using the same marketing message over and over again.

Consequently, they change their campaign midstream.

These owners never get the full benefit of their campaign.

This, folks, is insanity.

“Genius is one of the many forms of insanity.”
- Cesare Lombroso

Sometimes the reason that these business owners change their approaches is that they listen to their spouse, employees, family members, friends, clients or someone else who has gotten tired of the campaign.

As a result, the business owners changes his marketing before they should.

Whatever the reason, if something isn’t broken, don’t fix it.
If a marketing campaign is working, then stick with it!

A profitable marketing campaign must be allowed to run its course.

You will know when it is time to change or develop something new when your current campaign stops working.

Again, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.

You can see this mistake made over and over in many businesses.

Advertising and direct-marketing efforts that are working are abandoned midstream for the “next big thing.”

Don’t waste the money, time, and effort that you have invested in creating a marketing campaign by making this same mistake in your business.

How sane are your marketing efforts?

How often has this question been asked by you, your boss, your sales manager, or someone else?

The only one who really knows the answer is your former client.

So, why don’t you ask this person why s/he no longer buys from your company?

You might get lucky and find a customer who is prepared to talk, but keep in mind that s/he has moved on and may not want to talk to you.

Also, your customer probably will give you only one reason, then thank you for your efforts and wish you well. How much have you learned? Not much at all.

“Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.”
- Anonymous

I once lost a client for whom I had created a successful direct-mail campaign.
This marketing effort had produced a nice 1,148.85% Return on Investment (ROI).

I found out from my client that she was upset with the slow response that she was getting from me regarding a marketing questionnaire for which she had paid. After answering the questions, my client wanted her marketing analysis, but we just couldn’t seem to find a mutually convenient time to get together. Ultimately, I gave her a refund on the questionnaire and we parted friends.

However, to this day I feel that there had to be something more. Maybe there was a hidden “decision-maker,” someone else who had a final say about who my client does business with or who harbored some ill feeling. I felt very bad when I lost my client because I was hoping that there would be a long and profitable relationship for both of us.

Sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint the definite reason why someone chooses to stop giving you his/her business. It can be hard to determine what complaints s/he had about you that led to the decision.

Oftentimes, you are left with very little information.

Working backwards to discover what went wrong can be very difficult. However, if you are prepared to ask a new client for a little time after the first sale or, even better, after s/he has been buying from you for awhile, then you probably can determine the things that keep him or her coming back and buying from you.

After the relationship with your client gets past the new phase and is “long-term,” ask him/her why you get his/her business.

There will be many reasons, not just one or two.

You may have to probe a little, so ask some open-ended questions. I’m sure that it will be worth it.

Build a file or a database of the answers that you get—the reasons why your clients came to you, of course, but also (if possible) the reasons that they stopped using your competition.

Learn from their answers and discover what you can do to prevent clients from going somewhere else

“ One man’s loss is another man’s gain.”
- Unknown

You can benefit by using what you have learned with your next prospect.
This information will help you to convert him or her into a new client.

What are you willing to ask your clients about

How often do you put your business in front of a mirror?

One of the first steps in growing your business is confronting the brutal facts and asking yourself some tough questions:

• What are we doing right?

• What are we doing wrong?

• Are we being honest, or are we fooling ourselves?

• WHAT’S NEXT

When you take a long, hard look at your situations, the truth should become self-evident.

To help you discover the real truth about your business, ask open and honest questions, such as “Is this strategy working?” and “What can we do better?”

Talk to your clients, employees, and suppliers—in fact, everyone whose opinion you value—and ask, “What is the one thing that we could be doing better?”

Also ask, “What went wrong?” “What went right?” “Why do we get the business that we do?” and “What keeps us from getting the business that we don’t get?”

“Self-reflection is the school of wisdom.”
-Baltasar Gracian

Getting answers to these tough questions through open dialogue with your clients, employees, and suppliers will help to provide you with information that you can use to solve most problems.

More importantly, having a framework of questions like this helps you to confront issues that shouldn’t be ignored.

The “Stockdale Paradox”, a concept named for Admiral James Stockdale, a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for over seven years.
I feel that his paradox sums up this reflection secret.
In Jim Collins’ book From Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t (Harper Collins, 2001), he states, “Every good-to-great company embraced what we came to call the Stockdale Paradox.
You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of difficulties, AND at the same time, have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

How often do you confront your current reality?