coaching club


November 2008
Customer Service Excellence

If you missed this month’s coaching call, you missed a strategy session on CSR Excellence.   We talked about the best ways to get the best out of your customer service representative. 

All of your marketing budget is spent basically trying to do ONE or ALL of THREE THINGS —

  1. Get someone to call the first time.
  2. Getting an existing Customer to call you again, WITHOUT competitive intrusion.
  3. Getting an existing customer to readily and automatically refer you.

But if your customer service fails, you’re not getting any of the above – which is why Adams also covered:

  • How many calls can you afford to lose in this economy? And mostly, you’re GIVING them away, without your knowledge.
  • How many customers just quietly head to your competition due to inattentive, uncaring, impersonal service? (71% of those who “leave” cite this as the reason.)
  • What are the ways to eliminate poor customer service and DIFFERENTIATE? Great advice given here.
  • Question Asking Techniques that reinforce the sale, not lose the sale.

Plus much more (there’s just not enough room!) And, of course, there are the free Marketing Tools available only to Coaching Club members. If you missed the call, you can listen to it here.

We also had a plethora of free reports to give out on this call —  just click on the form below:

Free Report: "7 Phone Habits that Drive Your Customers Crazy."  Your customers may not tell you... but we will!
 
Free Report "17 Ways Exceed Expectations."  Why be ordinary when your company can be extraordinary?
 
Free Report "Avoid Spam Words."  These words can keep your CSR's emails form ever reaching your customers, which means you could be losing money every time someone hits "send"!
 
Free Report "Customer Service is the Front Line to Your Bottom Line".  Nothing affects your profits like the way you handle customers. Learn how to get the most form your CSR program with just minor changes.
 
Free Report "Can You Name the Most Important Link in Your HVAC Sales Chain?"
Free Report "Can You Name the Most Important Link in Your Plumbing Sales Chain?" 

If not, your business may already be going down the drain. Get this free report and learn the fastest, easiest ways to start a CSR program that gets results, keeps customers calling back, and adds to your bottom line.

October, 2008
Hot Holiday Marketing, Regardless of the Economy
I think Adams had a double espresso with a shot of charcoal starter yesterday - - we clocked him at 300 words per minute during the first part of the call. I think yesterday’s “One Hour” Coaching Call actually gave you 2 hours and 47 minutes worth of ‘normal’ input. Some things we covered…

  1. Contrarianism.  A big word that boils down to one thing: differentiation. Adams calls it the “zig while they zag” method and shows you exactly how to stand out.
  2. Cocooning. This phenomenon is what virtually guarantees that service business will increase – despite tighter budgets and a depressed economy.
  3. Prudency by Asset Protection. It’s what all the economic experts are talking about, but how does it relate to your business? Simple. Your customers are your cash. If you want to stay ahead of the competition and rise above the flood of economic woes, protecting your customer base is the only way it will happen.
  4. Holiday Cards. How important is it to be different? With the 20 billion letters, packages and cards the U.S. Postal Service expects to deliver between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, you might want to stand out.

"Everyone likes to receive greeting cards during the holiday season," said Marc Wagenheim, product marketing director for Hallmark Business Expressions. "But corporate holiday cards done right will strengthen the personal relationship with each customer and also reflect the company's brand, values and culture."

Check out our cards designed specifically for contractors. 

He gave – as best I could keep up – 11 different things you could do during the Holidays, in order, from Halloween to Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Years. What he did NOT do was “load up the call” with freebies and references to items that you may or may not have, except maybe these 2 that you can find in the Downloadable Forms Section.

  1. The Top Mailing Lists for Contractors – this is a simple list of places “your” best list could be hiding. Some right under your nose, others to be bought.
  2. THE Ultimate Contractor CSR Script List  Hey, I’M A CSR MY OWN SELF and you cannot believe the number of rude, unprofessional voices I hear from contractors! If I was your customer, well, there’s a good chance I wouldn’t be after a couple of the calls I’ve made. Adams gave two examples of how a CSR lost a customer but that’s the tip of the iceberg


As always, THANK YOU for being a Coaching Club Member. This is the ONLY Marketing Coaching club for contractors. It is PART of your Customer Retention Club benefits too. Can you find another place to get hard-hitting expert advice and freebies INCLUDED with your PowerPack, Newsletter, or other Hudson Ink program?  Nah, didn’t think so. Please, tell thousands of your friends.
Be on the lookout for your COACHING CALL CD in your next MegaMarketer mailing.  Don’t miss next month’s call on November 12th.

Stay in touch and have fun with your marketing!

September 2008
Turbo Charge Your Retention Efforts

If you missed this month’s coaching call, you missed more than just an hour of the melodious sound of Adams’ voice. You also missed the at least four ways to blast your retention techniques out of the park – and your potential profits with them:

  1. Door Hanger Marketing.  These have a huge impact for a small cost. For less than seven cents per door, a business can get hangers designed and printed on orders of 5,000 or more. So for under $375, advertising can be ordered that can reach 5,000 homes. And if your customer wants to get in the door, they have to touch it. Brilliant.
  2. Radius Mailing. Target the customers within the highest probability slices of response to your message. Remember that a .5% response rate to a Direct Response letter can still bring huge returns, such as the following:
    5,000 letters x .5% = 25 leads
    At a 30% closing ratio and a $4,200 system average, that’s $31,500 in sales from $2,500 in marketing.
    With neighborhoods, there is a greater chance that the people living there are more like your current customers and will be more receptive to your mailings.
  3. Referral Generation. If you’re not asking for referrals, you’re passing up hundreds – or even thousands – of extra dollars you could be getting from your customer base. Their friends and family are your most easily converted prospects/ Luckily, even if you missed the call you can still get the free report on Endless Referrals (more on that in a minute!).
  4. Thank you Cards. There are 2 words that are potentially the most moving, significant words you can ever utter. The 3 biggies are, of course, “I love you.” The greatest single word is “You.” The 2 greatest words share one word from each list, and I bet you can guess it.

If you need additional help, please know that Mother Theresa said, “Of all the hunger I’ve seen in this world, there is more starvation for this simple phrase than any food could ever satisfy.”

Thank you. 

If you’re not thanking your customers, they’re not thanking you with their trust, referrals, or money – and that’s something you just can’t afford.
Maybe you forgot, or maybe you just couldn’t make the call. Whatever the reason, you don’t want to miss out on the great tools offered to Coaching Members:

Make sure you're signed in to the website, then go to Downloadable Forms, or click on the individual links:

  • The list of SPAM words - click here.
  • The Neighborhood Yard Sign/Fund Raiser letter strategy - click here.
  • Referral report - click here 
  • Radius Mailing - click here to be put on the 'waiting list' for this.
  • Automatic Thank You Cards - just give me a call or send me an email and I'll set up your free account
    All you have to do is call or email lisa@hudsonink.com and request your free Coaching tools.

To listen to the replay of the Coaching Call, go to our audio archive section. 

Hope you can join us next month!

August 2008

 We had a great August coaching call! I hope everyone got as much out of it as I did. I can honestly say I don’t think we’ve had a better coaching call to date.  In 58 minutes, we covered…

  1. “How do I establish myself as an expert in my town?” (A member wanted to create a publicity program but wasn’t sure where to begin or how to submit press releases.  Solution: Target every publication and news outlet in your area and offer free services to readers, listeners, etc. so that your contact information will be included.  Plus, you can e-mail lisa@hudsonink.com for a free publicity package that includes press releases ready to send.  That means you can triple your credibility and broaden your name recognition for free.
  2. “How do I make Direct Mail work and who do I send it to?” Two important things here: first, having a strong message that differentiates you from the competition, and second, targeting the right market.  Your house list is your best resource by far, but there are several others that can be lucrative as well, plus one I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole.  Don’t forget to ask for the full list when you e-mail Lisa, or just give us a call at 1-800-489-9099 and ask for it.
     
  3. My personal favorite…the income stream most contractors either don’t know exists or completely ignore.  What, you’ve been ignoring available profits and you didn’t even know it?  That’s exactly what happens when you fail to ask for referrals. If you missed the call, it’s not too late to request the Endless Referrals report.  It covers all eight steps to cashing in on referral requests. 

We ran out of time before we could get to the last segment of the call “Your “audio” weapons (radio, on-hold, audio emails, and even your CSR)”, but we still want you to have that information so if you want it, again, just call or e-mail.  You’ll learn about the timing issue on phone calls that may shock you. NONE of your competitors probably even know about this!

   What I’m saying is we had a great call, with great member input. Thanks to all who joined in. We’ll send all paid up members a copy of the CD in next month’s MegaMarketer, but you could benefit so much more by joining the next call for yourself.

   If you did NOT join in, we encourage you to take advantage of the next one. In the meantime, you can listen to the August call in our audio archive:  http://www.hudsonink.com/members_ektid124.aspx 

   If you are not a Coaching Club Member, you can read all about our MegaMarketer program by clicking here.