There are a number of ways that you can overdeliver to your customers or prospects, and as a result create a win-win situation for you both. They will be provided with additional value, while you will be upgrading your learning around a particular issue, adding another product or service to your business, or even increasing your mastery around your craft.
For example, let’s say you are a Communications Coach. You might consider offering a complimentary group call for your current clients. The discussion during this call will not only increase your understanding of some aspect of your business, but it might provide the raw material for crafting a top 10 article, an e-book or an e-course – more things which might add value to your clients in the future.
Of course, your clients will love the opportunity to have more time to benefit from what you have to say – and at no cost to them!
What can you do today to provide more value to your prospective and current clients?
Underpromise and Overdeliver
Before you even think of providing more value, you must set the stage from which you will operate. Always deliver what you promise to deliver within the time frame specified. Never leave any loose ends. But, when you do deliver to your clients, always provide them with more than they expect. Not only will this come as a welcomed surprise, they will consider you as someone who is generous and who really cares about them.
Complete Outstanding Projects
How many projects are you working on right now? How many projects have you started, but since abandoned? Even if you don’t like the final outcome, you might be able to salvage the project for another use, possibly by pulling material from it to create articles, or free reports which you can give away. Ask yourself, how much “raw data” do I have waiting to be converted into something of value for my clients? Can it be converted quickly if I’ll simply take the time?
Provide Complimentary Support
One of the easiest ways to provide additional value is to provide complimentary support for your products or services. You can provide phone or email support, or even an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) document that can be posted on your website. This gives the customer confidence that they will have a way to follow up with any questions or concerns that they might have. The beauty of this is that not everyone will take advantage of it, yet by providing it, you can create a tremendous amount of customer goodwill.
Provide Information and Lots of It
We all crave knowledge and information. Provide as much information as you can around your products and services. You can provide articles, special reports, and links to other resources on your website. You can write the articles yourself, or use those of others with their permission. In less than a half day, you could find a dozen articles and as many links to other informational sites to support what you do.
If you had your own articles to post, it would be an added bonus. You can feature them in your email signature, along with an autoresponder so that folks can receive a copy right away. A small investment of your time can provide valuable content for your website and a valued resource to prospects and current clients. As an example, you can visit http://discninja.com/signup.htm and see how I have created a give away called 14+ Essential Tools for Building Your Business - New Volume 6 for my readers.
Create a free e-course
It’s so easy to create an eCourse. An eCourse is merely a series of short emails delivered via an autoresponder designed to teach a concept or series of concepts in an easy-to-understand manner. You can easily take a top ten article or other information that you have and “chunk” it into a series of 5, 7 or 10 lessons, which can be delivered over as many days or weeks. Each lesson is a short description of the topic along with an example and perhaps questions or resource links for future follow-up.
An e-course is the perfect “product” to advertise in your email signature and can be triggered by the recipient merely sending an email to a specified address. From that point forward, the lessons are automatically issued without any further intervention on your part.
E-courses are a great way to showcase an upcoming product or program offering, a way to get people interested in what you have to offer. They are a great way to offer a lot of value with less than a day of effort to write a simple course and to set it up for distribution.
Start an R & D team
Offering prospects and current clients the opportunity to join and participate on your research and development (R&D) team is another way to offer value. Your R&D team can be used to test product or program ideas that you might have. By seeking feedback now, you can gather new ideas and you can see if the ones you have are worthwhile and of value to others.
The benefit to the recipients is that they can play a role in influencing the types of products that they like most. Many folks who have R&D teams also enjoy offering participants special incentives like coupons, discounts, or even a free sample of the product or program before it is issued to the general public. You can check out my R&D Team at http://www.discninja.com/R&D.htm.
Offer free teleclasses
Offering free teleclasses to prospects and current customers is a great way to generate goodwill while providing valuable content. Free teleclasses are a wonderful way for newcomers to experience who you are and how you operate. For folks who already do business with you, they look at this as a wonderful bonus to experience more of the quality service they have come to expect from you. Teleclasses are a cost and time efficient value add and an easy way to reach others on a global basis. To sign up for an example of a free audio teleclass that I offer to people visit: How to Increase Your Income and Leverage Your Time Using Assessments - Real Audio Version
Offer free assessments
Another way to provide more value is to offer free assessments. Assessments are wonderful because they provide the prospect or client with additional information. Provide useful information, links to other sites (or yours), references to helpful organizations or even titles of books to read. Gear the assessment outcomes to focus on various products or services that you have developed so you can drive people to consider your various offerings. People like assessments because they can do them on their own and get immediate feedback. Consider bundling an assessment with a 15-minute complimentary consult as a way to begin developing relationships with prospective clients.
Take Action Now
It is easy to get caught up in the “busy-ness” of life. When you put things off you stop the flow of everything. If things aren’t flowing, don’t expect new business to flow your way either.
If there are tasks you don’t enjoy doing, or simply aren’t getting them done, delegate them to someone else. You can hire a virtual assistant to handle things you either don’t enjoy doing or don’t know how to do. If you’re not moving along with business ideas or projects, consider forming a partnership or strategic alliance with someone else. This can serve to motivate both of you.
You may also want to join a mentor or support group to help you complete the process.
The www.90DaystoaProduct.com Mentor group is designed to help achieve completion. It’s very difficult to create in a vacuum. Why bother when you can be supported through the process?
If you are ready to complete one of more of the ideas listed above, or any others that you have been considering then join the next
www.90DaystoaProduct.com mentor group. You will find in this community a group of very creative and supportive people all working towards one common goal – completion of one or more products they can use in their business. Just take a look at all that is included in this very dynamic program and you’ll realize how much value you’ll receive above and beyond the satisfaction of having completed your own product(s).
