Tim Klabunde's latest CofeBuz posting, A Values Based Business Marketing Approach, is refreshing and relevant, especially if you are caught in the old-style sales manipulation/"closing" approach to marketing and sales. it is especially relevant to professional services and construction businesses which (should) rely primarily on repeat and referral business, and reflects the powerful effect of going the extra mile for your current clients.
In his posting, Klabunde notes:
What it looks like
Values Based Businesses do several things that most profit and growth oriented businesses have a hard time swallowing. Here are just a few examples:
- They always do something extra for free: I used to go to an auto shop that would always do something unexpected for me free of charge. They rotated my tires, replaced light bulbs, oiled squeaky doors; the list goes on and on. In return can you guess what I did? I never had my vehicle serviced at another shop and told everyone I knew to take his or her cars there.
- Take on pro-bono work: Values Based Businesses help out non-for-profits, low-income families, and even their everyday clients. They do it because it is right and because they really care.
- Finally, when they do it, they treat the non-paying client just as good as the paying client.
They treat every client like a first class client: Taking calls and returning e-mails promptly is just the tip of the iceberg. Values Based Businesses see what their clients need and help them to achieve it, even if it is out of their scope of work.
Simple ideas, and, if you are a number cruncher, these are a whole lot less expensive than constantly trying to reach out for new clients either by responding to cattle call RFPs, hiring commission-based sales representataives, or spending a small fortune on advertising.
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