Successful entrepreneurs know the importance of following the money. When their customers ask for something, these entrepreneurs find a way to supply their customers with whatever they want. That’s what following the money is all about—go where the money leads. After all, you’re in business to make a profit.

Successful businesses continue to expand their offerings. They continue to follow the money. Since it’s easiest to sell to your top customers—the hyper-responsive ones—that should be your focus as you follow the money.

Become intimately familiar with his or her customer list. To begin with, you should not only identify your top 20 percent, you should also segment your list by identifying the top 10 percent, top 5 percent, and even your top 2 percent.

Your top 2 to 5 percent of customers are not your typical customer. They should receive different marketing messages and even different offers than the typical customer. If your goal is to sell as much as possible and achieve the highest possible profits (and that’s a worthy goal), this can be made much easier by selling to your repeat customers in unique and different ways.

If you’re not exactly sure which products or services can be profitably added to your arsenal, here’s a very easy way to find out: Ask! Go back to your customer list and focus on your top customers. Create a survey to bounce your ideas off them, and measure the responses. It can be as easy as listing your ideas with a one to ten scale, and have them rate how likely (or unlikely) they’d be to buy or use it.

Your current customers are the ones most likely to buy from you again. Find ways to sell more to them. Follow the money: Find out what else your customers want to buy and find ways to provide it for them.

Learn more immediate profit producing strategies in The Fastest Way to Higher Profits, Jim’s latest hit book. It is available at www.HigherProfitsBook.com or www.Amazon.com (where it is also available on Kindle).

Who are you and what do you stand for?

Branding. We’re all exposed to continuous advertising. Yes, it’s now continuous (rather than “continual”) because it’s impossible to escape. You know it. I know it. It’s everywhere. And the businesses that are most effective are the ones that have established their brands. Brands are critical to recognition, and recognition is critical to successful advertising.

There has to be something that sets you apart from your competition. Who are you? What is your USP (unique selling proposition)? What’s your field of expertise? When people mention your name, what’s the first thing they associate with it? No matter what type of business you have, figure out what sets you apart and establishes you as the expert, the go-to person of influence. What do you offer that your competitors don’t? Review your strengths. Review your competitors’ weaknesses. By doing so,

Review your strengths. Review your competitors’ weaknesses. By doing so, you’ll quickly hone in on your USP and have a clearer sense of your brand.

When you figure out who you are, speak up—boldly, confidently, and continuously promote yourself to your customers and prospects. As you define who you are and build your brand, the goal is to have it linked, so that if someone said your name, a prospect would say, “Oh yeah, he’s the ____ guy,” or “She’s the one who. . . .” And fill in the blank with whatever your expertise is

What you stand for is now as important as what product or service you offer. Marketing is becoming more about talking to your customers and prospects, not talking at them. It’s all about interactions and building trust. Be honest about who you are, what you stand for and what you offer or your customers will see right through you and walk away

Looking for more ways to boost your profits? You can find them all in my latest book: “The Fastest Way to Higher Profits: 19 Immediate Profit-Enhancing Strategies You Can Use Today.” Your job as a business owner is to start nurturing, developing, and building a strong relationship with your customers.  Get your copy, read it now and implement what you learn!

Make it easy for your customers to do business with you. This concept is so important to developing and building stronger customer relationships that I’m going to focus just on that for a moment.

As a customer, have you ever walked into a place and heard the phrase “That’s our policy?” Those words are like a slap in the face with a cold, dead fish. I’m certain you don’t like hearing it, and I certainly didn’t appreciate that approach to my seemingly altered check at the bank. Well, neither do your customers! Even if you fill a very unique niche with your product or service, if you stand on policy or your terms and conditions at every turn, customers will figure out how to get what they need from someone else.

Have you ever tried to glue something, only to find that the glue was actually stronger than what you applied it to, so the end result was another break?

The same thing can happen when trying to stick like glue to your customers. If your foundation isn’t very strong, the best glue in the world won’t help you.

Your foundation is the relationship you have with your customers. It is your level of customer service—the way your business treats and values customers.

In order to succeed in any business, excellent customer service is paramount. I’ve always stood on the principle that you can never go too far with customer service.

Bill Glazer, internationally recognized marketing expert and president of Glazer Kennedy Insider’s Circle^TM, uses the phrase, “Inspect what you expect.” By that, he means that you should honestly evaluate how your company is addressing your customers.

How? There are two excellent ways.

1)  You can pose as a customer, or

2)  You can have someone play that role on your behalf—this is known as mystery shopping

Keeping ’Em

It’s far easier, and much more cost-effective, to keep the customers you have rather than trying to attract new ones. It’s also much more profitable.

In other words, fix your leaky bucket rather than constantly add more water.

Selling more goods and services to customers you already know (and who know you) is far easier than constantly making first-time sales.

Think about it. Who would you rather call: a customer who you know will probably buy, or someone you’ve never met, to whom you’ll have to explain your product or service and convince them it’s got value and that you are a trustworthy and reputable business?

Ninety-nine entrepreneurs out of a hundred will pick the first choice. It’s easier, and there’s a greater likelihood for a positive outcome: a sale!

Your existing customers find value in what you offer, and they trust you. That’s why they’re your customers.

Building trust and rapport is the constant hurdle in cold-calling and prospecting. Nearly every new customer is distrusting at the beginning of a sales cycle.

Evaluate yourself as a consumer. When dealing with a new vendor, do you immediately trust the person/business? Probably not, unless they’re a referral or have a long list of rock-solid testimonials. Even then, you may not trust them until you’ve verified the information for yourself. Your prospects are no different. Why should they be?

The first four of those obstacles are difficult enough to overcome. Why burden your efforts by having to clear the trust hurdle as well? With your existing customers, you don’t have to. You’ve already established trust and rapport.

As an entrepreneur or small business owner, how do you compete? How can you get more customers so you can increase your profits? Whatever marketing method or methods you use, it takes a lot of time, energy, and resources.

Maybe you’ve got sales representatives pounding the pavement and touting your products or services. If so, you know the expenses involved: commissions, benefits, mileage reports, quotas, training, and the list goes on.

Even if you opt for networking to spread the message about your company, you’ve still got to make a time investment, and, as an entrepreneur, you know that time really is money. How can you compete? How can you get customers?

Even if you’ve got the best marketing campaign in place and the most successful sales staff, you’ve got to track every effort to determine what’s working and what’s not. Failing to measure results is one of the quickest roads to business failure. How can you possibly know where to invest your efforts and resources without knowing what’s working and what’s not? If you’re guessing, you might as well throw your hard-earned money into the wind and hope for the best.

There’s no question about it—getting new customers has always been tough business, and in this current difficult economy, it’s even more so! Getting ’em is very tough.

Is there a better way to grow your business?

I’m glad you asked. There is.

As an entrepreneur, you know just how difficult it can be to get new customers, so once you get them, you want to be sure to keep them…to be sure they “stick” around.

Marketing to Get New Customers Is Tough

Think about all the advertisements you see on any given day. If there’s a space, there’s an ad. Newspapers, magazines, billboards, the sides of buses, the roofs of taxicabs, hotel keys, and flip-down trays on airplanes all carry ads. There are even ads on the backs of bathroom stall doors.

Television and radio have long been supported by advertising, and you’ll probably agree that the amount of broadcast advertising seems like it’s surpassing actual programming content.

We’re also exposed to a constant stream of messages vying for our attention online. Search ads, flash animation, pop-up boxes. With every click, there’s another advertisement!

There’s no escaping marketing messages.

Marketing to get new customers can be expensive and time-consuming. How can you compete? How can you get customers into your business?

Despite the rise of the Internet, direct mail advertising is still not only viable, it is incredibly effective. Just look in your mailbox if you don’t agree. It’s filled with postcards and letters enticing you to open them and read them. It must be working, or businesses wouldn’t continue using this time-tested marketing method.

Unfortunately, direct mail advertising can be expensive and time-consuming. You’ve got to develop a campaign (or pay someone else to do it), design and print the ads (or pay someone else to do it), buy and/or maintain your list and mail it (or pay someone else to do it), and finally, measure the results (or pay someone else to do it).

Getting ’Em

Most entrepreneurs spend a lot of time, energy, and resources on customer acquisition, and any entrepreneur will tell you that time, energy, and resources are the three most valuable commodities. They are also three of the most expensive and difficult marketing commodities to sustain.

I am an eager and continuous student of marketing and business. If you’re like me, you’ve probably also read countless books and articles about different marketing strategies designed to help you get more new customers into your business.

With every passing week, and with the constant expansion of the Internet’s power, it seems that there’s always some new marketing strategy or tool to learn about, with each proclaiming to be the best way to get more customers. No doubt, it’s a challenge to figure out what works best for attracting new customers to your business.

When I speak around the country about newsletter marketing and effective customer retention strategies, I like to use the leaky bucket analogy.

Think of your company as a giant bucket of water. The water in your bucket represents your customers—the lifeblood of your business. Every drop of water that leaks out of your bucket is a lost customer and lost sales, including all future revenue. Ouch!

If your company is like a leaky bucket—and every business is to some degree—then it is paramount to your survival that you continuously fill your bucket with more water. After all, no water, no business!

So the question is: How leaky is your bucket? How many holes does your bucket have that are letting your customers constantly pour out?

Be honest—does your bucket simply have a few leaks around the seams that let customers occasionally seep out, or is it riddled it with holes, and customers are gushing out from every one of them?

If I can be blunt, my guess is that your bucket has more holes than you even know about. But don’t be too embarrassed; most businesses do.

There are two ways to keep the water level in your bucket full and, therefore, customers in your business:

1)     Constantly add more water, new customers, while previous customers continue to pour out.

2)     Plug the leaks in your business, and keep the water you’ve already got in your bucket.

Ten. Embrace your leadership role. Let’s face it, people look to you for guidance. You’re the head of your company, the authority, the guru, the problem-solver. People, especially in this economy, do get worried. They look to others for leadership and guidance. They look to others for wisdom and confidence. This is a very, very good reason for sending out a monthly newsletter—you keep promoting yourself as the go-to resource in your industry.

Keep in mind at least 90 percent of the world are followers and as much as 10 percent of the world are leaders. Choose to be a leader. Wake up every day and ask yourself, “What am I doing to behave like a leader?”

To wrap it up, if you can change your negative attitudes and behaviors and adapt a mindset and strategies that set yourself apart, if you can wake up every day and embrace the challenges, if you are grateful for what you have, avoid the negativity, and surround yourself with positive people, if you take action and implement on multiple fronts, then you and your business will have an awesome ride.