I have almost never spoken about how to handle ‘the customer from hell’ and preserve your public image.  However it is a necessary part of business.

It is sad, but you’ll always find someone out there who is so focused on getting an all time bargain that they’re quite prepared to see the supplier go bankrupt in the process.

It seems that difficult conditions bring out the best and the worst in people and over the past few months I’ve heard of some real humdingers.

Here are some suggestions as to how to handle those customers whose mission in life seems to be to take their suppliers for whatever they can get.

Let’s face it, we all love a bargain.  Consumers and businesses alike.  When you face increasing pressure to drop prices and increase value what do you do?

First of all, take a good look at your customer base, it could be that you’ve been concentrating your efforts on a marginal market.  Who are your best customers?  Who supports you the most?  Who believes in you and is prepared to pay a fair price for value?  It’s those types of customers you need to profile so that you can attract more who have this mindset rather than spend time and energy courting those who will leave you for a competitor at the drop of a hat.

Usually I find that the ‘bargain-at-all-cost’ customers are the minority. They are the ones who take the most time and effort to cultivate and bring in the least profit.  When you’re faced with a customer who’s bent on beating you down, your best policy is to restrain your impulse to react in anger, or to find some way to accommodate them that will hurt you in the long term.

I’ve found it much more effective to explain to this type of customer that by cutting your prices to such an extent they will eventually be the loser because

• you are unable to provide the level of service to which you are committed – you simply have to increase your turnover in order to stay in business and thus, the customer suffers in the end
• you provide a product / service which offers fair value at that price
• you provide a guarantee / warranty on what you sell and therefore must be able to maintain your organization in such a way as to be able to offer this long term
• competitors offering lower prices are able to do so for the following reasons:
  • they may be offering a lower quality product / service which may well not compare point for point with what you offer
  • they may be offering a loss leader to gain market share and the customer will soon discover that the rest of their prices are higher to compensate
  • some unethical suppliers use a tactic known as ‘bait and switch’ which essentially means that they supposedly offer a product you want at a very low price, but, when it comes time to buy, you discover that you actually need a far more expensive product to do the job – or that you are required to pay extra for essential features.

I have also found that many of the die-hard bargain hunters are wont to complain bitterly about job losses at home due to lower costs of off-shore outsourcing, so I will often mention that paying a fair price for fair value helps keep jobs at home.

I will often end my argument by assuring the customer that you are not ‘ripping them off’ and are working hard to offer them the best possible value at the best possible price.

At the end of the day, the customer will make up their own mind as to whether they will stay with you or not. At times, their demands are simply fueled by the need to let you know not to take them for granted.  Those who are 100% price driven are usually not the kind of customers who will be with you long term anyway.

Giving customers this type of explanation allows you to courteously deal with the issue, maintain your dignity, as well as theirs, and keep the door open for those who initially opt for lower prices only to be disappointed later.

Too few and you might walk away from a sale when you’re 95% of the way to a successful close – too many and you may risk alienating your prospect to such an extent that they will resist any future efforts.

However, in my experience, the vast majority of people err on the side of too few contacts.  Many clients are shocked when we have our first meeting and I tell them that the best statistical estimates are between 10 and 12 contacts before a prospect becomes interested.

In the 80′s the statistics were around 8.5 contacts.  In the 90′s, between 8.5 and 10.  Given the vast proliferation of email marketing over the past 5 or 6 years, I’d say 10 to 12 contacts is a fairly conservative estimate.

Having said that, it also depends on what you are selling as well as the price point relative to the market.

Business to business sales and higher price point sales generally take longer and require more communication than an impulse driven. low price point consumer product.

It stands to reason that with the amount of information we’re all bombarded with, one of the key criteria in how many contacts we’d need to become interested in buying something, is our desire and need for that item at the particular time that we’re approached.

It may take multiple approaches using a progressive ‘educational’ approach, giving the reader more reasons to take action each time. To achieve the optimum number of contacts, we have to realise that the number really depends on where the prospect happens to be in the interest cycle.

If they’ve already pretty much decided to buy, then your first contact may well be the one that tips them in favor of your offering as opposed to your competitors’. If they’ve just begun researching the subject, you will need further contacts to provide the information they’re looking for and to position your product as the ideal choice.  If they’ve never thought of purchasing this particular item, it will take even more contacts over a longer period of time – and a great deal of consistency on your part to maintain contact in the face of seeming disinterest.

So, how do you cover all your bases and ensure that no matter where your prospect is, that you provide as much, as frequently as necessary without becoming a pest?

The easiest way is to predetermine a theme that can be broken up into about 10 or 12 segments.

• Take each segment and create an informative email of perhaps 6 to 8 paragraphs each focusing on a single main point.
• Take all your information and create an e-book or report in a long and a short version which can also be offered at various points during the communication.
• Adding direct mail to your email communication in the form of letters, packages or even postcards can increase your impact significantly.  Of course, these will cost more than emailing, but depending upon the item you’re selling, the extra cost may easily be justified by the increase in response that ‘mixing’ media can bring.
• Combining direct mail and email adds to the perceived value and importance of your communication and also helps prevent email ‘overload’.
• Adding follow up phone calls provides another dimension and can be super effective – provided you are offering something of value and your call does not resemble the standard telemarketing approach in any way.

What should you do? Should you look for the newest ‘hot thing’ to roll out, or should you use an existing strategy?

The answer is simple: use a proven strategy.  Don’t try and reinvent the wheel. A new ‘hot’ thing that has no track record may or may not perform, whereas a strategy that has been used successfully before has a reasonably good chance of succeeding again, provided you use the underlying principle that made it successful.

Most of the people I see who are experiencing slowing traffic and even slower sales are people who are not using consistent marketing strategies. They may have marketed consistently in the past, but now they’ve fallen prey to the wet blanket mentality that’s so prevelant in recessionary times.

They’ve become fearful and stopped communicating with their market.  What they don’t realize is that if they had continued communicating, their traffic and sales may have slowed anyway but not to the extent that it inevitably does when they stop communicating.

My clients who continue to implement sound marketing strategies consistently irrespective of whether the economy is good or bad, reap rewards consistently.

Of course the economy affects them too, but not nearly as much as it impacts those who pull back on promotion until things ‘improve’.

Remember that saying, “faint heart never won fair lady”?  Well, it’s just as true in business.  Let’s face it, business is not for wimps, especially not now.  When the crowd says ‘pull back’ the winners say ‘push forward’. It’s a lot easier to push forward if you have a proper, proven plan that has previously produced profits (all those ‘p’s!.. not intentional, I promise.  But they do emphasize the point! I think I should copyright it as the 6 P’s… what do you think?)

Seriously, that’s the key to staying strong when others are falling by the wayside.  Just because cash flow is tight, it doesn’t mean that you can’t market.  There are a number of ways you can generate business at extremely low cost.  The most important thing is to implement these strategies consistently over a long period of time. The second most important thing is to carefully monitor costs and response so that you can maximize the strategies profit pulling potential.

If you simply assume that your market is not buying now – for whatever reason – you’ll be losing out to your more optimistic and proactive competition.  Sure, things may have slowed, but people ARE still buying.  It’s your job to let them know why it’s advantageous for them to buy from you as well as why they should buy now.  (BTW the fact that you need to get your cash flow going quickly isn’t a reason… at least not for your customers.)

Here are 3 examples of proven strategies I’ve used time and again with highly profitable results. In fact, with one email I implemented for a client long before email campaigns became fashionable, they received a $100,000 order within 24 hours. As the product had extremely low production costs, this amount was almost all profit.  With other clients, using sales letters and coupons, I’ve helped them generate profits ranging from $16,000 to over $60,000 within 4 weeks on a single mailing to between !,500 and 1,700 people at a cost of less than $1 per unit.

1. Sales letters:
A powerful sales letter can be worth way more than its weight in gold.  You can roll it out to as little as 20 prospects at a time – or you can send it out to 20,000.  The only limit is the size of your list and your budget.

A timely letter that demonstrates to the reader the significant benefit they’ll enjoy from purchasing now can be enough to move them toward action. Maximize the impact by planning at least 3 to 5 follow up sales letters that reiterate your message from various different perspectives.  Make your offer compelling and even up the ante by adding bonuses with subsequent letters.  Don’t forget to put a time limit on your offer.  Not only does it add some urgency but it also protects you from having to honor an offer you made 3 years ago that’s no longer available.

2. Emails:
Although there are some significant differences between a printed and mailed sales letter and an offer made by email, but there are enough similarities that you can use these mediums interchangeably. If you have literally no budget, you can achieve a similar effect to a sales letter by making a few tweaks and sending out your message virtually free by email.

If you have the budget for sales letters, consider using email as additional follow up. Remember, on average, prospects need to have about 10 to 12 contacts before they become interested in responding, so it makes sense to ‘layer’ your contacts to avoid annoyance and reach the level of contact necessary.

Successful emails are the ones that sport intriguing subject lines that compel the reader to open them.  If the headline is boring, they won’t open the email.  If it sounds too hyped, they won’t open the email.  If the headline features words like ‘free’, ‘offer’, ‘special’ as well as most of the other common terms used in spam email, it will likely not get delivered, and if it does, it will probably get caught in your prospects spam filter.

The subject line then has to be followed by a great sales message and a valuable offer.  It’s best to put a link in the email to your website where the offer is reiterated together with your ‘proof’ – credibility builders such as testimonials, guarantees and endorsements.

3. The coupon:
Honestly, although I’ve been involved in writing and marketing for over 20 years, the sheer profitability of this strategy still delights me!  Used correctly, it’s possible to dramatically increase the profitability of both your sales letters and your emails by including a coupon.  In the case of the sales letter, make the coupon a separate item on a different colored paper.  This will ensure it receives the attention necessary for it to work. The best colors, believe it or not are pink and yellow. Don’t ask me why, but that is what statistics and my experience bear out.   In the case of an email, even if it is a plain text email, include a clearly demarked coupon area at the top or bottom of the email and instruct the reader to print it out and bring it in to the business to redeem it.

Cash value coupons are often the most effective.  Recipients treat them as if they are cash.  They are perceived to have almost the same value and as they are ‘free money’ there’s a stong motivation to use them to purchase something.  If you have an offer that doesn’t allow a cash value coupon, at lease use a coupon to reiterate your offer and instruct the reader as to how to take advantage of it.

Just these 3 strategies alone can significantly boost your sales and profitability when they are implemented correctly.  Keep reading this blog for further tips on how to construct your sales letters, emails and coupons to make them consistently profit pulling machines!