8 ways to turn fans into missionaries

So peo­ple have said they luv your work and they know a lot of folks who would luv it also but your stu­dio doors aren’t com­ing unhinged by hoards of ador­ing fans from “what’s her name”. What’s that all about? “What’s her name” said she was going to send her neigh­bor your way but that was last year and nobody showed up say­ing “what’s her name” sent them.

You have now arrived at your goal of gath­er­ing rav­ing fans, buy­ers all gaga over your work and leave happy as clams after they bought some­thing from you. The truth is times are tough now and you need more rav­ing fans. That ‘s what this level is all about basi­cally, get­ting and keep­ing rav­ing fans. But you know what? Not all of those folks danc­ing away with your stuff are really going to remem­ber say­ing “I’ve gotta tell my neigh­bor to get over here”. That’s the part no one tells you, because the sales process really doesn’t stop here, this stage is all about help­ing those folks bring some more folks like them who will being more and more.

Remem­ber

Every­thing you have done so far not only counts, but also is what got you to this point in the first place, so you can use it to help your buy­ers help you.

If we go back to the stu­dio doors not com­ing unhinged, there are some key things you need to look at to deter­mine why and to help you make sure those doors do come unhinged. You set your­self up by get­ting your Who & What down pat ( at least for now) so that when you do see that spe­cial poten­tial rav­ing fan buyer, you can rec­og­nize her and you know what you need to do to court her on the way to this point. So here are some key things help you:

1. But they said they would they would send some of their kin­dred spir­its my way.

Well take it easy, take a deep breath before you get all pan­icy. Here’s the deal… Life hap­pens, peo­ple today have a lot on their plate we all have places to go and things to do and the list just keeps get­ting longer by the day, so cut them some slack.

Besides just life hap­pen­ing these days they may also be a lit­tle dazed and con­fused, see you might not be mak­ing it very clear as to the who, what, where and how to send their neigh­bors your way. The whole process is clear as mud to them so they throw up their hands and give up or…

They don’t know you as well as you think and your cus­tomer courtship process was not really all that clear so they  feel just a lit­tle reluc­tant  to send their BFF (best friend foreverrr)  your way. What if you bom­bard that BFF with e-mails, pitches and all the other yuk things that she thinks you might do? If that hap­pens her BFF won’t be so BFF and her BFF is more impor­tant to her than you.

2. But I gave her your name and info…

Ok…let’s turn things upside down and look at it from the BFF’s point of view, because it’s pretty much the same as your fan’s. The full plate syn­drome still applies here so that BFF may just never get around to show­ing up.

Then there’s the totally con­fused state of fig­ur­ing out whether she (the BFF) really will like your stuff, and she doesn’t have a chance of find­ing out, because her friend (your fan) didn’t have any­thing to give her to help her find you.  Your fan had no cards, no brochure, noth­ing to help remem­ber you and she wasn’t asked for her info either…so her BFF is left to hope she’ll run across you some­time some­where and we know how likely that is.…right?

Finally there’s the same scary part of what you might do if she decides to hunt you down and actu­ally buy some­thing. She really only wants to buy one thing right now if at all until she sees if you are going to stalk her like that car sales per­son did…you  never know! So what to do????? When in doubt don’t panic just.…

3. Go back to your W&W

Need­less to say, if you have done all the work needed in the ear­lier lev­els you’d be sit­ting pretty good right now. You’ll have a really good pic­ture in your mind as to who that per­fect rav­ing fan is and what makes them tick. You’ll also know what you have that can not only make their lives bet­ter and eas­ier but you’ll also have a really, really good idea as to what it is about your stuff that can help them live happy as clams.

If you haven’t done this or only done it partly, spend some time here its impor­tant and it will help keep you from chang­ing your address to a card board box…yes its that important!!

4. Keep fillin’ the holes

Well…sorta. Not all of your rav­ing fans are going to be inter­ested in rav­ing about you for the rea­sons  men­tioned above and many more. The good news is, those who do hang on, are doing so because they really, really like you and your stuff so much they want to be your mis­sion­ar­ies. Oh…there is a catch, some of those wanna be mis­sion­ar­ies may not have ever bought any­thing from you, they may have seen it, or heard about it from one of their friends and they just knew and your chal­lenge is to find them!!!

After every­thing shakes out you’ll have a bunch of tightly knit rav­ing fans who own and know how your stuff makes their lives run oh so smoothly. But they aren’t enough… you’ll need to go back and take a look at that group of folks you think might go nuts over your stuff (your tar­get mar­ket) and look again at where they­hang out and who they hang out with, along with what they do and the prob­lems they might have. Then, you need to start let­ting these folks know you’ve got stuff that will make their lives bet­ter than they ever imagined…you need to keep fill­ing the holes so you can make up for those folks who luv your stuff but may only buy some­thing once a decade.

6. Focus and sharpen

Remem­ber ear­lier, when we talked about con­fu­sion and uncer­tainty and sys­tems and processes that weren’t exactly clear? Well now is when you get to make the nec­es­sary adjust­ments, so those folks you’ve been los­ing stop falling through the cracks. Again, if you have really dialed in your Who and What, this stage will be a lot eas­ier, because you freed “what’s her name” to tell her BFF all about you with­out wor­ry­ing about you being a jerk or for­get­ting who exactly you were and what exactly you did that she luved so much. See, “what’s her name” knows how you work, and she knew all along the way what the next step was, that is after all why she is now your mis­sion­ary. She also is on your list and gets reg­u­lar e-mails, which seem like you are talk­ing directly to her. She also has the cool card you gave her, that had all your info on it and purty pitchure of your stuff.

Wait a minute, remem­ber,  you’ll need to keep devel­op­ing new fans if you want to keep mak­ing your stuff. So you need to make sure that the path you took “what’s her name” along is out there for all those other poten­tial fans to see. So go ahead and describe it on your web site, put it on a brochure, turn it into a tag line and put it on you biz card, and talk to the folks hov­er­ing over your work, about it. Also, as you are bring folks along keep them informed as to what to expect. Focus­ing should include:

• Describ­ing how you work with customers,
• How they can find you
• The steps they will expe­ri­ence along the way to buy­ing your stuff.

Now, its not nec­es­sary to give every­one a step by step, blow by blow descrip­tion of what and how they just want to know you won’t be a jerk.

7. Make it easy

If you want to keep mak­ing your stuff and not have to move into your parent’s  base­ment, your poten­tial fans need to know how impor­tant it is to you that they tell their neigh­bors, friends, and fam­ily just how great your stuff is. And they have to know HOW to tell them to. There are a cou­ple of very impor­tant things to keep in mind when doing this:

• Don’t spring it on them 2 years after they bought some­thing and well before you learned all this impor­tant stuff. They just might not like that… since you never men­tioned it before.

• Set up a good and easy sys­tem to help them help you. Think of it as a guide to help­ing them see through your eyes, so they can very eas­ily rec­og­nize your per­fect buy­ers. Make this “guide” reflect you, so if you’re really cre­ative dream up a for­mat that they will really enjoy and maybe give to folks they think would like your stuff. Above all…don’t be dull and bor­ing! Include the guide in your newslet­ter, put it on your web site, include it with all your sales, most impor­tantly make it easy to use and make your per­fect buyer pro­file really, really, really clear. Elim­i­nate all the worry and con­fu­sion that would be there with­out it.

8. Knock their socks off

Most peo­ple have learned to have very low expec­ta­tions of most busi­nesses since the ‘50s, when every­thing was made smooth and effi­cient and imper­sonal. And most busi­nesses live up to those expec­ta­tions. So besides all the other stuff sug­gested one of the best and eas­i­est ways to get rav­ing fans is to impress the $#@* out of them with your thought­ful­ness. We’re not talk­ing about giv­ing the farm away here, just the lit­tle things that show you appre­ci­ate them. So you can knock their socks off by:

• Send­ing them a hand writ­ten thank you card
• Remem­ber­ing their birth­day ( you’ll obvi­ously have to ask them first);
• Fea­tur­ing them in one of your newslet­ter or blog posts;
• Hold­ing their hand as you guide them along the path to buy­ing your stuff;
• Remem­ber­ing that they are there and they want to know you care about them, keep up with you;