Who are your business’s advocates? (probably not who you think)
Rachel was at a networking event today and came back absolutely delighted that one of our clients was singing our praises – she couldn’t have been more complementary – talking to people about the blog, the newsletters and our Idea Magazine. And this got me thinking. This client isn’t a massive client, in fact, far from it, she’s very small in terms of profitability and turnover. And yet she’s quite clearly a huge advocate for my business. She’s recommended us to a couple of friends and colleagues, and her encouragement on our marketing is so valuable.
Conventional marketing wisdom has it that you spend the most money looking after your biggest clients. It makes sense, they bring you in the most amount of revenue. The last thing you want to do is let them walk away from your business. And yet are we missing a trick in all of this? How do you identify your business advocates and look after them? I’m not suggesting for one moment that you stop marketing to your best customers, just that you sometimes look beyond how much people spend with you, and look at the bigger picture.
A great example of this is Sales Expert and Motivational Speaker Gavin Ingham. Now I’m convinced that Gavin will have absolutely no idea who I am. I somehow got onto his mailing list around the time of the last series of The Apprentice and have stayed there ever since because he talks a lot of sense. In fact, Gavin talks so much sense that I’ve listed him on my blogroll and regularly recommend his blog to my clients. Isn’t it lovely to think that people you’ve never met before are going round selling on your behalf?
So what’s the point of this post? In truth I’m not sure – I’m not sure that I’ve finished thinking through what I’ve learned from today. So perhaps I’ll come back to you on that. Just, I suppose, that your best advocates are often found in the most surprising and unexpected of places. What do you think? How do you make sense of all of this?
