Making Partners out of Customers and Upselling Value
It has been a great couple weeks since making the decision to focus full time on my online projects and specifically my Geo projects. One of the problems many businesses have when initially launching is focusing on quick, small deals to get money in the bank and losing out on what can be larger opportunities to either create a partner out of your customer or in some cases not go after the quick deal and create a larger opportunity by focusing on ways to bring additional value to your customer.
This is the type of thing that keeps me up at night while bringing new people into the business that is my focus today and I am sure this is what keeps many small business owners awake, will the feet on the street be able to recognize opportunities for what they could be and not go for the quick buck on a smaller deal.
We recently had a customer that we went and presented too, the original opportunity had been for a single ad on a single page but when researching the business it became evident that they would benefit from a larger regional ad and we could ad even more value by creating a network of sites that added even more value for the potential advertiser. Based on this we created a proposal that was several times the original deal but the impact on the customers business was even larger. Based on this we won the deal. So what was a small deal was now a large deal.
Based on us spending the time to create something specific for this customer (that is repeatable for other customers) they perceived enough value and goodwill that they are now bringing us into their customers to present our solution, they are now a true partner and will help us grow our business and really become extra "feet on the street", thats the best reference from a customer you could ever get.
The point of all this, if you are selling advertising on your website make sure you think of the larger picture and create real value for your customers, at the end of the day they may become your best partner and the most cost effective sales team you could ever imagine.
