Page 270 - Duct Tape Marketing

Turn Prospects into Clients and Clients into Partners with an Advanced Education System

industry group. The idea is to find a group that shares the same frus-
trations and uses the same language to express them.

Put together a teleconference panel aimed at discussing a common
industry issue or growing trend. Invite ten participants, but make sure
that at least two of the participants are happy clients that turned to you
to solve this frustration. Then, once the group is assembled, you sit back
and gently moderate only. If any selling goes on during the call, it must
come from your clients only. Let the group talk about the good, the
bad, and the ugly. Three things will generally occur from such a session:

1. Your current clients usually feel pretty good about the decision
they made (that will lead to more referrals).

2. Other callers come away with a very favorable impression of
your place in the market—who else is making this kind of
educational effort?

3. Several members of the group will call you the next day and
invite you to show them how you can help.

There are any number of ways to add a creative twist or two to
this approach, but nothing sells like a current user telling a skeptic, in
his own words, how great your product or service is.

The Client-Only Event
Let your clients know that you are holding an event exclusively

for them. Instead of making it a simple meet-and-greet, sell the event
as a roundtable focused on a specific issue of interest. You may even
want to line up a speaker to present new information and facilitate the
discussion aspect of the meeting.

Customer Loyalty Tools
There are plenty of companies out there that practice things

such as special membership pricing, frequent purchase programs,

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