How to Attract and Retain More Customers
To Your Business
Lesson 1 - Attracting Clients To Your Shop/Office
All rights reserved
ISBN: 9781476224893
Author: Peter Adams
How to Attract and Retain More Customers To Your Business
By Peter Adams
Copyright 2012 Peter Adams
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, License Notes No part of this book (publication) may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying
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from the publisher.
Published by Swell Accounting Services. For further information, contact:
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PO Box 4184,
Elanora, Qld 4221
Telephone - 0452395519
Fax – 61755224593
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INDEX
Welcome
Introduction

owner, and they were truthful, their answer would be – they do not have enough of them ….
How do we attract new customers? How do we attract those new customers for a reasonable
cost? And it really can cost less than a postage stamp to contact a potential new customer. If
you know how.
The table below shows the profits earned by retaining your customer. This subject will be
explained in more details in Lesson 4.
The single most important thing you must know before you begin:
To attract a new customer you must understand one very important concept –
customers do not care about you. What they do care about is what you can do for them!
You can spend lots of money on advertising with little return on your investment. In this
lesson, we will show you some ways on how to attract customers to your business without a
lot of cost. If you adopt some of these ideas, keep working on these ideas, we are sure that
you will gain customers.
There are thousands of people out there offering new ways to attract customers. These
include coaches, consultants to advertising companies and advertising sales people or DIY
marketing courses
Equally there are a thousands of ways (or more), of attracting new customers to your business
which are wrong and will waste your hard earned money and time.
Businesses have been told to advertise their product or service using social media such as
Facebook and Twitter. Unless you social media correctly, you will be wasting your time and
money. Our next lesson will cover attracting more clients using social media.
We need to look at new strategies for advertising as the old methods such as Yellow Pages
and Trade Shows are starting to fade. Have you noticed that Yellow Pages and White Pages
advertising are now online? Who wants to fumble through a thick book of telephone names
and addresses to find someone’ telephone number. It is so much better to search online.
When was the last time you went to trade show? Most advertising for trade shows are done
online.
Take a good look at the issues raised in the article below regarding decline in traditional
advertising. This article lists how we are not getting new customers through the traditional
forms of advertising. Hence, we have to look at alternative methods (and keep looking) of

- Not enough money, time, and effort invested in promoting.
- Promoting in the wrong places with low concentration of potential clients.
- Your message is weak and can’t break through the marketing clutter your prospects are
already exposed to.
Problem Area 2 – Wrong market or customer
Possible reasons:
- Wrong target market
- Wrong or unclear message
- Unclear benefits
- Low believability
- Low credibility
- Wrong offer
Problem Area 3 – Lack of Understanding
Possible reasons:
- Poor sales skills
- Initial risk is too high (credibility)
- Perceived value is too low (believability)
- Service/product is too expensive or too cheap for the target market
Problem Area 4 – Product or Service
Possible reasons:
- Poor quality of product or service
- Poor customer service
- Lack of variety of services and products
- No long-term strategy in place
Now that we have identified the four problem areas, we will look at identifying some of these
issues in our lesson.
Topics to be covered in this lesson are:
Step 1 What can you do for your customers?
Step 2 Identify your Customer
Step 3 What do your customers want?

out how you can be better. You will need to develop your niche for your product or service or
perhaps you may need to reshape your product or service to meet your niche.
For example, (Service) all law firms in your area and the town concentrate on preparation of
wills and conveyancing. You are a new solicitor to arrive in town which is predominately a
mining town with the demographics being young families. What do you see as a niche to
develop with your business? Answer – commercial law for the mining companies, family law
(hopefully not to be used) for the families in town.
Now let’s look at an example based upon a product. You are new in town (using the same
features of the town and its people above) and looking at setting up a business selling
electrical appliances. You already have two competitors in town – one competitor selling
whitegoods and one competitor selling browngoods. None of these competitors offer
extended warranty on their products just the standard 12 month warranty. How can we be
better?
Answer – we can develop two niches to our customers:
a. We can offer our customers both whitegoods and browngoods in the one shop. How is this
better for the customer?
b. We will offer extended warranty on all of our products (you can consider introductory
offers) so as to give you customers peace of mind for a longer period of time.
Now it is exercise time ……….
Exercise 1 – Thinking about the three points mentioned above, list down:
What is our business?
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What do our competitors do?
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up your own table in your own format to help you identify your current and new customer by
looking at such factors as Age, Sex, Nationality, Religion, Fears, Income and so forth
Create your own table. After completion of this table you will have a better understanding of
your current customer(s) and your potential customer(s) based upon the products/services or
potential niches that you have identified.
Ideal Customer
Let’s have a look now at an “ideal” customer. We have now identified our customer from
above. Applying the factors from above, how can we best define our ideal customer? Let’s
ask ourselves the following questions.
Who is your ideal customer?
What are the features that apply to our ideal customer?
Are our current customers the ideal customer?
Does your product or service match the wants of our ideal customer?
After you have identified your ideal customer, is your product/service matching the wants of
your “ideal” customer?
You may wish to complete Exercise 2 again now that you have defined your ideal customer.
By knowing who your customers are, you are more able to meet their needs.
Radio stations and television stations conduct regular market research to find out who their
listeners and viewers are and often adapt their programs to suit the audience. Radio stations
particularly have become niche service providers as they specifically aim their product at a
particular group, or niche.
Step 3 - What do your customers want?
Have you considered what your customer wants?
Customers will pay for needs such as electricity, food, clothing, most services but what do
they really want? People have the same basic needs things they must have for survival,
including food, clothing, shelter, and the supplies and equipment necessary to conduct and
manage their lives. Then there are the things people would like to have they want certain
things, and they buy them with money left over after their needs have been met.
Identify what your customer wants………… unless you are in the “Needs” business.
However, customers are cutting back on needs. Your customers may not be buying the $100

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Step 4 - Are you better than your competitors?
You have almost completed the hardest challenges for you to consider with your business.
Keeping ahead of your competition can be tough, especially when staying on top of the day-
to-day issues of your own business takes up so much of your time. However in our slowing
economy, where everyone is vying for the customer’s last dollar, it’s essential to know what
your competitors are up to.
By researching your competitors’ activities, what they’re doing, how they’re doing it and
where their strengths and weaknesses lie, you’ll be able to identify threats to your business
arising from competitors' actions and opportunities for your business to exploit.
Let’s ask ourselves (another brutal question) – are we better than our competitors? In order to
answer to this question we need to do a Competitor Analysis measurement similar to the
example below. If you would like full version of this template, please send us an email to

Once, we have prepared our competitor analysis worksheet, we can look at understanding
how we compare to our competitors and review opportunities for improvement. It is most
important to constantly update your competitor analysis worksheet perhaps every 3 months
minimum. If you can update this worksheet monthly, even better. Your competitors are
always on the move and so should you. You should be the market leader!
Exercise 5 – Prepare your own Customer Analysis Worksheet
Exercise 6 – How can you be better than your competitors? This question can only be
answered once you have prepared your Competitor Analysis worksheet.
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Step 5 - Develop your USP

For Plumbers
This is the wrong way
Emergency
24 hours-7 days a week
call
0409 904 039
Does this business give you a compelling reason to seek out Joe's services? The obvious
answer is 'No!' Unfortunately, as you can see, this gentleman has not developed a USP.
Perhaps he actually does do something unique in delivering his service, but from his advert
he is certainly keeping it a secret from us.
If Joe was to get to understand his customers their real fears, frustrations, desires and
concerns he would quickly realise that people who have dealt with plumbers, or tradesmen
in general, are mostly concerned and frustrated about their punctuality.
So the question is: why is Joe's advertisement not addressing this frustration?
Here is an example of the right way with a USP.
We Guarantee To Arrive On Time
Or Your Service Call is on us.
Call us on 0409 904 039
Which do you think is the better advertisement? Other USPs that have been developed are:
Video Ezy – “Get it first time or get it free”
Dominos Pizza – “There in 30 minutes or it’s free”
Exercise 7 – Develop your USP for your product or service
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Step 6 – Networking and Building Alliances
Networking is an ideal opportunity to meet potential new clients. This gives you the
opportunity to mention to the audience about what you can do for other people. Did you see
the last 7 seven words of the previous sentence? These words were “what you can do for

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Step 7 - Removing your Customer’s Fear or Perceived Risk
We need to look at two areas – (a) customer’s fear about dealing with your business and (b)
the perceived risk with using your product or service. Once we have identified the issues in
both areas, we can address these issues and retain our clients and attract new clients to your
business.
Ask yourself (or do research by asking your customers or potential customers) what are the:
Fears
Frustrations
Desires
Concerns
our customers have about you, or in dealing with businesses in your industry. By doing this
simple exercise you will be in a position to begin to identify how you can address those
pertinent customer issues, which others in your industry are not addressing?
So if you are a lawyer, for example, one of the fears and frustrations many people have with
lawyers is that they never know what the final cost will be for the issue they hire you “
When you come to XYX Law firm we give you a fixed price for your work, you will know
exactly how much it costs, no matter how long it takes us to finish your work.
This may not make sense to you as a lawyer but I bet if you asked 100 new customers, 99
would say they would like to work with a firm that did this.
Here are some simple and quick ways to help remove your customers'
Perceived risk about your product:
Let them sample or trial your product free of charge
Let them purchase at a low introductory price
Offer them a full, unconditional money-back
Guarantee (or, if you must, a conditional money - back guarantee)
Offer to pay a penalty if you don't perform, such as '110 per cent of your money
back if you're not totally satisfied
Exercise – Putting yourself in your customer’s position for about 30 minutes, list down the
customer’s fears, frustrations, desires and concerns with dealing with your business. You will

be more beneficial. Cost sharing is a major factor that should be taken into consideration.
Money saved is money earned.
Increasing the advertising exposure: As we all know, advertising plays a very important part
in increasing business; and cross promotion enables both businesses involved to gain more
exposure. It is like killing two birds with one stone; each business individually advertises for
both of the businesses.
The Guessing game: Cross promotion can be fun as the customers play a guessing game.
They try to find out who is responsible for advertising as they find them more witty and
unique, and not based on the typical format.
Building trust: Cross promotion facilitates reliability. When another company does your
marketing for you, it has the effect of enhancing your business' reputation and helps to build
trust among customers. It is equivalent to another company putting in a good word for yours.
Stimulates creative thinking: Cross promotion increases creativity. Like the saying "two
heads are better than one", the combined efforts of the creative teams of two companies can
come up with innovative ads, promotional products, and special offers. You can mix and
match them - coming up with exciting, new and effective ways to reach out to new
customers. Creative advertisements are usually very eye-catching and are easy for
prospective customers to remember. They always stand out in the crowd of other
advertisements. Always remember that creativity never goes unnoticed.
If you are struggling to punch up your marketing strategy, consider cross-promotion. Not
only will you be reaching out to new prospective customers that you may not have been able
to reach before, but you will also forge new, effective (and profitable!) business relationships.
That's what marketing is all about!
Cross-promotion has the potential for a big marketing payoff because partners can
successfully expand through each other's customer base. They can gain an inexpensive and
credible introduction to more of their kind of customer more effectively than with the
traditional "solo" methods of networking, advertising, or public relations.
Here are some low-risk and high-opportunity ways to jump-start your first cross-promotion:
Print joint promotional messages on your receipts.
Offer a reduced price, special service, or convenience if customers buy products from you

from using this form or referrals from building alliances.
As mentioned in Step 6 above, to increase your customer base, you will need to build
alliances and increase your networking opportunities. Once you can demonstrate to your
network and alliance that you offer a great product or service, then you can expand further by
asking for more customers.
Develop your own form to monitor “How Have We Performed?” This template serves two
purposes as mentioned above. At the end of this form include a section for asking for
referrals. This should be easy to collect if you have provided an exceptional service or
product.
Exercise 10 – What will we do now to obtain referrals and feedback? List 3 areas or
customers to whom you will target. Set your own Action Plan.
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Conclusion
As part of this Mini Course, we have set exercises for you to do. We highly encourage you to
do these exercises so that you can learn how to attract and retain new customers to your
business.
To those business owners doing this Mini Course, we are happy to receive your answers to
each of the Lessons that you participate in. If you would like our initial feedback to your
answers, we will be too happy to do so. Our costs for doing so are as follows:
Lesson 1 – Initial Feedback – Absolutely FREE
Lesson 2 – Course plus Initial Feedback – Normally $97 but to you today, only $47
Lesson 3 – Course plus Initial Feedback – Normally $97 but to you today, only $47
Lesson 4 – Course plus Initial Feedback – Normally $97 but to you today, only $47
Special Offer – If you would like our feedback to all four lessons today, please send