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2 Questions (You are not asking) that will change your business overnight

Yes the technology world has made huge advances, from cookies that know what you are searching for and remind you later, to the ‘Minority Report like future‘ of no hardware for our computing soon to be a reality.

Yet there are still some things that computers will find hard to find out, and it only takes about 5 seconds to ask the questions and it will, if my experience proves me right, change your fortunes around!

Question No 1

How did you find me?

Business people are not playing Hide and seek, I think it is kind of obvious that you want to be found, surely that should be the mission statement of all decent marketing campaigns.

Apart from all the wonderfully clever enterprise software out there with fancy dashboards to tell you every screw and bolt used in your business and every single loo break your staff had in June, there is no better evaluation of your marketing than asking every person who calls into your company:

“May I ask where you found us?”

Being found in Business

When was the last time you called a business up and the first person to answer the phone asked you this? Nope I cannot remember either.

The one question we get asked from our business directory members is:

“Can I get a list of all the people that clicked my page on Biz-find?”

OK, so get me get this straight:

You want me to spend seven years of my life learning all about Social media to become a major player in the world of Digital Marketing, then start up a business directory and beg people to join to get it started, then start in another 8 countries, then use my social media reach to market all the businesses members for free, not be paid much at all during all this time, then, when people from all over the world start clicking your business on Biz-find and the clicks counter tells you there’s been quite a few, you want me to tell you exactly who every person is?? Not asking much there then!!

There is a company in UK that can tell you, via I.P. addresses, who’s been clicking your site, but that’s not a cheap affair I can tell you.

When you log into your listing on Biz-find we provide free of charge; a Google map and visitor counter in your private members area, we can tell you what countries your clicks are from, and how many your listing is getting, but who they are ?? Nope it’s 2016 not 2116!!

We have built a business around most people’s lapse in concentration, the lapse being; when we call them, as our Customer Service Representatives do, to check their listing is maximized for more clicks which is another free service we offer, we ask them:

“Well we know from the clicks counter (for example…500) people have clicked your page in the last three months, how many of them did we send to you direct?”

So far no one has been able to answer this question succinctly, meaning they don’t keep a check on from which source their inquiries are finding them. We know they don’t ask because when we first called the company, they didn’t ask us!

It takes 5 seconds of your time and a piece of paper and a pencil to say the name of your company, who they want to speak to, and how they found you, even a bootstrapped start-up can’t complain about the price of that magical piece of enterprise knowledge that can tell you what is working for you, and what needs kicking into touch!

Question No 2

Do you have any friends or colleagues who you know who could benefit from this? (Product or service).

This one was a staple of business many years ago, and it made the difference between salesmen who were constantly cold calling to find new clients, and the reps who spent Thursday to Tuesday playing golf and still had more sales booked at the end of the month.

What’s the problem with asking someone who is happy with your service to recommend a few friends to you to talk to? Heck B.N.I. and Mr. Misner got stinking rich of this idea of; ‘it’s who you know’ but we have forgotten to ask in modern business.

Referral marketing

Getting referrals is pure profit, there was no marketing to pay for , no hours and hours blogging, posting on Facebook or going to boring networking events in the morning and getting a ticking off from your GP for drinking too much at evening events. Your current customers are a massive part of your marketing, use them, ask for referrals, let them win at Golf, or offer something extra for them to open up their business network to you.

It’s that or the scary old Telephone and now with 7 hours of calling needed for a sale it hardly seems worth it any more.

We use referral marketing to full effect on Biz-find. We always get the same question:

“OK you are telling me; you are going to market our business to the all the visitors on Biz-find, then you are going to also put our business in front of your 500k social media reach, you will give me an upgrade for free, top of my business category, with video embed and more images, then I ask you; how the hell do you make money??

That indeed is the right question!

We ask you to tell us the things you are buying for yourself (B2C) and for your business (B2B) then we sell these leads to other members of Biz-find as sales leads.

If you were, for example; a carpenter, and we called you up with a customer lead for carpentry work needed by a business in your geographical are of work, the person is the decision maker, has the cash and wants the service today, and a full description of what they need:

My question is: How much would you pay us for that information?

Biz-find is a Business Directory with a difference we use our upgrades and extra marketing as a barter for leads, so we always have a list of the things people are buying. But you got to be quick as they fly out as soon as we get them as you can imagine.