How do farmers get their plants to bear more fruit? By measured use of fertilizer and plant supplements to feed and nourish them.
Similarly, your list will bear fruit thru your use of “fertilizer” (gifts) and “supplements” (discounts) to get your clients coming into your business more often.
You’ll spread this rich, nourishing mixture using vouchers and other gift certificates delivered either by email or by handing them out at your location.
A restaurant, for example, could have a weekly drawing of a free meal.
Diners who enter and don’t win would receive an email that reads, “we’re sorry you didn’t win the free meal but we really value having you as a diner in our restaurant. Please enjoy this $20 meal voucher as a show of our appreciation to you.”
You will, of course, put conditions on the voucher to ensure you make a profit when your diner cashes it in.
- “Not valid with any other offer.”
- “Limit of one voucher per table.” Since very few people eat alone this means you’ll almost certainly make a good profit even if your whole restaurant is filled with diners coming in with gift vouchers.
- “Good for 1 …” Make the voucher good for a specific meal that has an especially high net profit (high price, low cost – high price eats up the voucher, low cost minimizes your loss)
- “Valid only until xxxx xx, xxxx” By placing a time limit on the voucher that’s shorter than the average frequency your diners come to your restaurant you’ll effectively increase the “frequency” that your current clients dine with you…one of the 3 main ways to increase your sales and profits we covered earlier.
The same method can be used in nearly any business where your clients buy from you repeatedly.
Give them a prize that expires…they must use it within a time period that encourages them to come in earlier and more often than they normally would.
- sports center – give out a low priced or even a free practice session (and make a profit selling drinks and food).
- yoga teacher naturopath or massage therapist – give a special discount price or a free ticket to an upcoming workshop (and make money selling higher priced products, services and full seminars at the workshop).
- computer servicing business – give a special price on a computer “check up” to help clients avoid a time wasting, costly break down (and make money selling computer upgrades and parts).
- mechanic – give a special price on a maintenance check and/or oil change and make money on any repairs that are needed.
- cleaner – offer a special price on special “spring clean” on a home, pool or office and then offer the client a regular long term cleaning contract.
- lawn maintenance business – offer a special price on fertilizing or weeding a yard and again offer the client a regular long term lawn maintenance contract.
The Secret to Making Your Fertilizer Work Like Magic
Focus on selling higher priced, “back end” products and services to everyone who takes advantage of your discount offer. By the way, if you’re making a substantial profit on any back end sales you make you can afford to be much more generous with your gift or discount offers.
One company I work with recently gave away FREE MP3 players at a cost of about $40 each. Each player was pre-loaded with an audio version of one of the company’s seminars (high-value offer). When prospects signed up for the player, a well crafted up-sell campaign invited each to participate in one of the company’s higher priced training programs. Of course, the company made enough sales of back-end products to more than cover the cost of the MP3 players.
What’s the secret? You can know in advance just how “rich” you can make your fertilizer – how much value you can offer your prospects. The calculation is simple once you’ve run a few offers.
- Work out how many of your clients who come through this gift or discount offer route buy your back end products and services and how much they spend.
- Calculate your net profit (sales – costs) from those sales
- Divide your net profit by the total number of clients that took advantage of your discount to get the average profit per client.
- This average profit per client is your “client value”…the amount of money you can afford to spend to acquire a client through this method.
You may find that you can afford to be outrageously generous with your gift and discount offers because you know how much money you’ll make from back end sales.
Fertilizer works… generosity pays.
