Marketing
Issue No. 52 - April/May 2010
Make the first-time offer count
by Carol Haslam
Your business depends on retaining your existing customers and on finding new ones. Existing customers already have experience of your products, levels of customer service and how you deal with any problems which occur. Retaining an existing customer should be your first focus, but how do you build your business by getting new customers to stay with you?
Try to make it as easy as you can for first-time customers to buy from you.
You don’t have to sell new customers on the whole package or deluxe version of your product or service. Instead, offer something as an introductory level purchase. Allow these new customers an easy, lower cost way to become your customers.
Your mission is to facilitate the buying process by eliminating all possible obstacles which could interfere with the sale.
Some businesses make the mistake of going for the biggest sale at the first opportunity. The problem that is, prospects are cautious in the beginning — you need to earn their trust first.
A better choice is to make a small, initial sale to a customer and develop a customer-supplier relationship – one that hopefully blossoms into a lifelong partnership.
Since the first sale to a customer is the most difficult (and costly) one to close, it makes good sense to ease clients into the buying experience until they are totally comfortable and anxious to spend money, again and again.
The key is to get them on board as customers. Make this easy. Give the...
