How to win 'real' new clients

You can do both, increase market share..and increase the market.

Let's say that you sell shoes. You can advertise to sell shoes to barefoot people...and you can advertise to cause shoe shoppers to buy from you, instead of somewhere else.

But selling to an existing market is easier. And it's easier to talk about, because the numbers already exist.

One way to increase your market, is to actually increase the area you draw from. But ultimately, the business is coming from someone else.

This really happened many years ago.

I owned (and still own) a vacuum cleaner store. I got a call one day from a Kirby salesman. He said "I's appreciate it if you just stopped selling rebuilt Kirby's. It's hurting my business."

And Claude The Evil said "Absolutely, I'll stop selling them, because I'm taking sales away from you. Of course, I also sell other brands of vacuum cleaners. And I'm sure I'm taking sales away from Wal-Mart, so I'll stop selling the other brands too. And you can buy bags and filters at the hardware store, so I'll stop selling those too. So, it seems that every sale I make is hurting someone...I'll just go out of business to make everyone happy".

He said "Now, you're just being ridiculous"

And I said "I know. You just want me to make you happy, am I right?"

"Yes"

"Claude "Well, it's important to me that you are happy. But you know what's even more important to me? That I'm happy"

And he hung up.

You increase the market by increasing the area people are willing to travel to your business (change the business/positioning). Or by getting the business to sell something else in addition to what they're selling.

Either way, the business owners I talk to have no stomach for such things, assuming they understand.

Even successful ones.

But if you can get them to change, it helps them a lot.

You might get them extra money, lots of it, if you can reduce the area they cover without reducing the number of jobs (as in a roofer / window replacement guy who's willing to travel 30 miles to do a job; if you get him the same number of jobs from within a 10 mile area, you create free time... That he/she can use to do more jobs...

I do think a lot of times about changing something in how they do business that gets them more revenue/time/profits that is not what most people think of as marketing.

There is only a limited amount of Dollars in people/business's pockets and no matter what business you are in, you are stealing those dollars from going to another business.

And the idea of "New" clients instead of just maintaining the steady amount that a business currently has is call Growth. In order for a business to experience Growth...Growth must be in their business plan. If it is not with in that business to have Growth in their plan, then it is most likely that they are not going to grow (get new clients) because they are ignorant to it. Well everyone can get stuck by dumb luck now(like closest competitor going under) but even then, if the business is does not have growth in mind. They would not be able to withstand the increase in business.

There is a fairly large leap between marketing and business...in this case the business portion has to come way ahead of the marketing portion.

Pricing and value perception and market reach are areas to have clients consider.
Of course it depends upon the business.

We've just done - and are doing - improvements at my hotel. Major ones are insulation between
walls to dampen sound, and new carpet (remnants from a Hyatt install, we knew the carpet dealer, so it's $40 sq yard stuff) and high grade carpet padding (the quality padding was not much more than low grade padding). We could not have increased prices as much with out these improvements - especially the carpet. A ton of credit also goes to my good housekeeping staff - clean rooms and a good environment are what we sell.

In my small town, there are three hotels. In the past, we have basically competed pretty head on with the cheap, chain hotel. The third hotel is a very high end boutigue hotel for couples with a lot of money to spend on lodging.

This year, instead of just $5 to $10 higher than the chain hotel, we have been about $30 per night higher. I also leveled off our pricing to the highest tier. We used to have three tiers of pricing. Going with one tier has made it easier for people to choose the room they want. (We actually had people try to cram four people into a room with a king bed in order to save the $5 or $7 dollar price difference.)

We have reached a more affluent market. There is a price perception thing going on, ie. you can't find a decent hotel in this area for under $115.00.

It has been a record year for the history of the hotel. Moving that far away from the cheap, chain hotel has led to much nicer customers and we have had almost no complaints about price/value. I think that people looking for the cheap hotel are just too financially stressed to be traveling/vacationing, and will try to complain or get out of paying full price somehow. Or at least do a nasty review online.

The people we are reaching now are looking for a nicer place and don't want to have rude, noisy guests around them. And are - for the most part - realistic about having to pay for what you want.

With the higher prices, we are also coming on the radar of people who never previously considered our town. Again, the perception of what is available (or not available) in this section of the state. And, the realization that we are close enough to the ski areas, or what have you, that they want to do or visit.
(I don't have control over how we appear on hotels.com or TripAdvisor.com, etc., but I have noticed
that we do show up in the "also consider" sections with a better class of hotels than prior years. And in the other towns people tend to look at before my town.)

Sorry for rambling, but maybe people can extrapolate for their clients and/or their own business.

In the lawn care example that Savidge provided, he said the companies were competing the same 2000 or so lawns. Maybe there are 200 more lawns owned by people who are willing to pay a little more ( maybe add value - like show up at 10am sharp on Wednesdays, use natural products...) and who don't perceive that they can get what they want for the lower rates the lawn care businesses are offering.

Dan

My reason for this thread was a to highlight Savidges post cos I also felt it had been overlooked and deserved more recognition but more so was to suggest that our jobs as marketers is to get clients from the less obvious places, using lawn services as the ongoing example if I may, the challenge is to get prospects seeing having their lawns professionally done as adding value to their property, their lives, freeing up time for them etc etc and then finding a way to get them to start using such a paid service over DIY . that is developing TRUE new business , not just 'stealing' the client from A N Other supplier but introducing a whole shiny new paying client into the industry . Start to multiply those results and youre truly adding value to your customer, then of course the customer has to deliver and keep those shiny new clients . And you can help them there.

How to create a truly new client, (lifted from Deiss or someone similar but been used before he was born too) make them a no brainer offer to trial the lawn service, $5 , $10 , do the most fantastic service on their lawn, leave them with a coupon for the next service at $10, $20 , get the booking, do a fantastic job , leave them a coupon for next service $20, $40 , do a fantastic job , leave them some special plants that due to the gardener knowing the soil, garden, sunlight, drainage, clients likes/dislikes etc , colour scheme etc they know it will be a great fit for this garden , job done, leave them a coupon for next service $35, $55 do a great job, you have a full paying customer for life and how many people are they going to tell about you, especially when they see those new plants . That could take care of an entire street in a house proud keep up with the Jones' neighbourhood.

@Savidge

In case you are not already suggesting this, have your lawn care guys (or any other drive time business) route themselves so they make as many right turns as possible and go in the most logical order. This saves an amazing amount of time, miles, and fuel - especially in states where right turns at red lights are legal. It is also a lot, lot safer because they are not making left turns with oncoming traffic. Especially driving a truck and trailer.

I did this when I was a courier and shaved my Boulder, CO route from almost 2 hours to 45 minutes. UPS has proprietary software that does it for them.

UPS Trucks Don't Turn Left - Business Insider

I think of marketing as anything that will lead to new, repeat and referral business.