Marketing Your Consulting Services.pdf - epiheirimatikotita.gr

Luick tip . . .
Identify people to whom you are comfortable referring clients.
Contact each of these people to be certain that you are on their
referral lists as well.
Referrals Are your clients selling for you? Not a month goes by when I don’t get
a couple of calls from individuals who say something like, “Joe suggested I call
you to see if you could . . .” I call these “referrals in action”—referrals from present
or past clients who pass your name on to someone else. This is the best kind
of marketing. They found you. They called you. They hire you. So in the end, one
of the best measures of successful retention is whether your clients will market
for you.
The ideal situation for any consultant is to find that clients speak highly of you
and recommend you to other clients. Nothing, I repeat, nothing is more valuable
to you than a client’s recommendation. You earn that by exceeding your customers’
expectations, adding value in everything you do, completing the highest quality
work, building trusting relationships, and modeling the highest ethics. In other
words, doing a good job.
Expanding the ABCs: Adding Four Rs It is time to expand the ABC model presented
in Chapter One. It’s clear at this point that marketing is much more than
assessing the situation, building a potential client base, and contacting potential
clients. There are other important spin-offs: Building Relationships, Reaping New
Business and Repeat Business, and Receiving Referrals.
If the C of the ABCs is successful, it will result in reaping new business. Even if
you do not obtain immediate business, you will most likely build relationships with
potential clients. And these relationships will someday lead to more new business.
The new business will spin off into either repeat business or, at the minimum, new
referrals. And these new referrals will come back into the original ABC model as
building your client base.
I hope this chapter has clearly shown you how critical it is to build relationships
with your clients. And the model in Figure 9.5 is a picture of how it happens.
A Client in Hand Is Worth Ten in Your Plan: Will Your Clients Market for You? 207