Getting More Customers
Do you want more customers? If your answer is yes, then this article will guide you to increased sales!
In the first section of this post we'll tell you why it's so important to get more customers. In the second section we'll give you 8 easy ways to create new leads for your business. And in the third and final section, we'll show you how tracking your company's marketing efforts can help you gauge whether or not your lead generation efforts are paying off.
Why Do You Need More Customers?
To the surprise of many business leaders, a thriving business can have too few customers! This may be counterintuitive, but it's absolutely true. Here's why:
The better you are at converting your leads into paying customers, the more money you make. If you have enough customers that aren't buying anything from you (i.e., they'll get their needs met by some other company), then your company still won't be as profitable as it's capable of being.
How do you know if you have enough customers that aren't buying anything from you? You'll never know if they're not buying from you or not, unless they say so themselves, but there are a few ways to keep your growth in check.
If your company has fewer than 25 customers, then it's easy to figure out whether or not there are customers who aren't buying. If your company hasn't sold enough products and services to pay for itself yet, then those customers won't be purchasing from you. So the longer a company has fewer than 25 paying customers, the more likely it is that those few will turn into many buyers (or at least into buyers who will help boost your sales in the future).
If your company has fewer than 25 customers, but they aren't buying enough to sustain the company, then it's time to grow your customer base. If you have more than 50 customers paying you at least $5,000 per year per employee ($5,000 times 25 employees equals $125,000 in annual sales), then you're an example of a thriving small business.
If your company has more than 100 customers paying you at least $5,000 per year per employee ($5,000 times 50 employees equals $250,000 in annual sales), then you're an example of a thriving medium-sized business.
If your company has more than 100 customers paying you at least $5,000 per year per employee ($5,000 times 100 employees equals $500,000 in annual sales), then you're an example of a thriving large business.
The more customers that you aren't getting to buy from you yet, the less likely it is that they'll ever buy from you. You may not be ready yet to give them the sales pitch they need to make the decision to purchase now or later, but at least they'll have the chance (the ability and knowledge) to make a better decision when the time comes.
You can have too few customers that aren't buying anything from your business and still be turning a profit. If you've got a growing marketplace, then every customer you have makes a dollar of profit for your business.
The Bottom Line: If you want more customers, it's essential that you get more customers. Getting more customers doesn't guarantee that the number of cash-paying customers will grow, but each customer who is not currently paying is one less potential customer who may start paying soon. At least they'll have the chance to do so!
8 Easy Ways to Create More Leads
Now that we've taken care of the why side of this issue, let's talk about the how part; eight easy ways to turn leads into customers:
1. Get out there and talk to prospective buyers about your product or service. Don't just talk about your product or service. Talk about your company and why it exists.
2. Get out there and get people to talk to you about what they want in your industry. When they tell you what they want, try to determine if those wants can be fulfilled by your business.
3. Don't push your product or service on anyone; be completely open and honest, without trying to sell anything at all! This will create trust and authority -- two factors that are critical for increasing sales .
4. Establish a company blog and continue to do blog posts about your industry. If you can write about it well enough, other companies with blogs and/or social media sites will link to you from their own sites.
5. Build a website and use it to talk about what's happening in your industry. You can create e-books for download on your site or even collect information on webinars or workshops you're hosting.
6. Create an infographic that features valuable information related to your industry or the problems that customers in that industry are facing right now, then share it widely in social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter .
7.
Conclusion
What can you do if you want to know whether or not your lead generation efforts are paying off?
The bottom line is, tracking what you're doing is the only way to know if what you're doing is working. If you aren't tracking your efforts, then no matter how hard you try, there's no way for you to know if your company's marketing efforts are paying off.
So track them!
Sign up for Google Analytics . Use their website tracking service and Google AdWords for pay-per-click advertising on the search engines. Track the leads that come into your websites from those sources and use that data to measure how well any other marketing campaigns are working.
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Getting More Customers