Tips for promoting your services

I have been receiving a lot of e-mail from service providers and consultants asking me to help them find new clients and to promote their particular business. The emails were not surprising -- times are tough and service providers and consultants are the first to suffer.

Today’s Enable provides a series of tips to help the self-employed and virtually any service based business promote itself. We provide tips from two Internet based sources and then Enable provides a few tips of its own. Hopefully these will help you get new clients.

Tips to promote your service

The first five tips come from a little-known but highly professional site called NetworkingNews. The site is actually geared towards writer/editors but the advice applies to any freelancer or small business-person.

• Expand your service offering. If you specialize in providing one type of service to your clients, consider offering them a complementary service. It may be something a client inquired about in the past, and you referred them to a colleague. Well, now may be the time to take on such work yourself.

• Expand your network In a nutshell, networking is a great way to get new business. Hit up current clients and colleagues. But more important, expand your network by attending occasional evening business functions aimed at bringing business people together.
  Or, join a weekly networking group. Many allow only one person per skill area in the group, so your network expands immediately to include these group members. And once they know what you have to offer, you’re likely to get referrals to people they know.

• Reconnect with former clients. Now that you’re offering new services (see #1), it’s a good time to call your former clients. Get on their calendars so you can get reacquainted and tell them about your new services.

• Connect with clients’ competitors. Perhaps your former clients can’t use any of your services right now. That’s okay. They now know about your enhanced offerings. And, although they can’t use your services right now, perhaps their competitors can. Call them and see if you can get an appointment. (It’s ethical as long as you’re not working for your former client at the same time!)

• Get acquainted with cold calling. Making cold calls is tough, but it can put you in the right place at the right time.

The next four tips come from The Poor Businessman’s Guide To Marketing

• Give out business cards. You don't get new clients if the cards stay in the box. I have a policy; give out at least one card a day. This forces me to meet one new person every day. You're working with the power of numbers, the more you give out, the more likely one will come back to you. It's amazing how many people call that got my card over a year ago.

• Become a member. Determine the organizations that your prospects belong to and join. This will get you increased face time with prospective clients. In addition, take on a position of responsibility within the organization. A leadership role will get your name out faster and bring you instant credibility.

• Network. Identify other individuals who work with your prospects and find ways to work together to cross sell products or services. The quickest way to obtain a referral from someone you are networking with is to provide him or her with a lead first. Be cognizant of your current clients' needs and try to refer them to leverage new business.

• Ask for referrals. If you provide quality, responsive service, many of your clients would be more than happy to refer you. Most of them, however, do not realize or consider that you are looking for new clients. By asking, you bring this concept to the forefront of their minds. Don't forget to thank referral sources for their confidence in you.

A few tips from Enable

• Don’t automatically lower your fees. Business is hard to come by, if you have a prospect, try to get your normal fee. You know what you are worth. You might think that you will get more work by lowering your fee – but in the end you will work hard for nothing and you have wasted the time you could have spent getting those clients that will pay your normal fee. You can be more flexible on the terms – but try to stand tough on the price.

• Brainstorm with yourself. Sit down with yourself and make a complete list of everyone you know – I mean everyone – family, friends, neighbors, parents of your children’s friends, etc. Next to the names write down what each person does for a living. You should find at least a few new prospects from this list. Contact them and sell them on your services. This is no time to be bashful.

• Send added-value e-mail (not spam) to selected prospects. Find customized information that shows how your service can be helpful and send this prospects. For example, if you are in the translation business, find an article that shows how damaging improper translations can be and sent it off. Do not spam. Personalize each e-mail and explain how your service avoids the particular problem.

I hope these tips will help you get new business and if you like, let me know how Enable can be of further service.

Published by Israel's Business Arena on January 29, 2002