If you’ve wondered how to go about doing a joint venture, I made a video explaining how to do it. This particular video is focused on painting contractors but the identically same process applies to any business.

Check it out at: http://freevideos.paintinginstitute.com/?page_id=17

Do you know what it costs you to get a new customer? Not a lead, but an actual customer.

If you don’t know, you’re flying blind and probably wasting a lot of money or leaving a lot on the table.

Many clients I work with have some idea of what it costs them to get a lead but have no idea what it costs to get a customer. You can’t assume that your leads convert to a customer equally from all lead sources so you must track this.

Here’s a good example of how bad your decisions can be without tracking this carefully.

In the early 1990’s I founded an Internet business selling a business opportunity in the promotional products industry. I was basically putting people and businesses into the business as distributors for only $1,000 while the franchises and others were charging $20,000 or more.

Because my margins were a lot thinner than my competitors, I really had to watch my costs to acquire a customer from each source carefully. I had an advantage though – my business was strictly online and I’d create traffic to my web site and then people would read my sales letter and send me $1,000 – sometimes without even talking to me.

I did like that aspect of it!

When I started advertising in the classified sections of national magazines to get traffic, I was using 12 different magazines.

My tracking told me that the leads I was getting from Entrepreneur Magazine were my most expensive leads and some other magazine whose title I’ve long since forgotten was bringing me leads at 1/5th the cost of Entrepreneur.

Had I looked only at lead cost, I would have naturally cut out my most expensive lead sources and put my money where my leads cost the least.

But, when I analyzed the cost to get a customer, not just a lead, Entrepreneur turned out to be my least expensive source of customers and that cheap lead source was the most expensive. Even with hundreds of cheap leads, NONE of them ever became customers!

Without proper tracking and analysis, I would have put more money into what wasn’t working and stopped doing what worked!

Do you know your cost per customer from every advertising method you use? If not, you are making decisions based on bad information. You spend money to get new business, so don’t blow it by not tracking the results properly!

We all know it’s important to stay in touch with our customers, but how often is enough?

You want to build your relationships, trust, get referrals, and more frequent orders, but you don’t want to be a pest either… So, how do you know how often to do it?
The answer is simple, test.

If you don’t test how often to do it, you’ll leave a lot of money on the table. Ted Nicholas, a famous direct marketer, told me at a recent seminar that even he didn’t know the answer for his own customers until recently.

He had thought contacting his customers four times a year was enough, but being a direct marketer and deciding to apply what he taught others to his own business, he tested going to once a month. Once per month turned out to be much more profitable than four times/year, so then he tried ever other week.

He thought he’d see the profitability drop off when mailing that often, but to his surprise, it didn’t. Long story short, he found the answer to be every week – 52 times per year!

Are you thinking, that’s him, my business is different? Maybe it is, maybe not.

The only way to know is to test.

If it turns out you can mail 10 times more often than you do now and have it be massively profitable why wouldn’t you do it?

Another example. Bill Glazer, a menswear store chain owner, has found by the same testing that the right number for him is also 52 times a year. Keep in mind, all the contacts don’t need to be by mail. Bill uses voice broadcasting, personal calls from the customer’s sales rep (4 times/year), direct mail postcards, email, direct mail sales letters, and even mailings with premiums and other “grabbers” enclosed.

All his contacts are interesting, fun and provide a true value for his customers. Bill has also accomplished something most retailers only dream of – he has people paying him an annual membership fee to be a “preferred customer” and have the first shot at any new merchandise!

The bottom line is that whatever you are doing now is probably not enough. I know many businesses who never contact their customers and just wait for them to contact them!

They’re losing business and will be losing customers too. Don’t let that happen to you. Many of these customer communications can be automated with today’s technology so not having the time to do it is no longer a valid excuse. Now we can automate email, voice broadcast, opt-in fax broadcast, and even direct mail greeting cards and postcards.

Let me know if you need help getting it set up.