But how do you turn an ordinary client into a raving fan? All it takes is a little understanding of their wants and needs and some creative strategies for exceeding their expectations. Here are some ways to create raving fan customers who give the word-of-mouth marketing that your business needs to succeed.

Customize Your Approach To Their Problems

Learn as much as you can about what has been preventing your clients from getting the results they want in the past, and customize your marketing approach to highlight how you are the perfect solution. Instead of a typical “here are our available services” pitch, present yourself in a way that will make them take notice and say “This is exactly what we’ve been looking for!”

Create A Guide That Positions You As An Authority

Being seen as an authority is a powerful way to deliver the “wow-factor” to your clients that increases their desire to stay loyal to you (as well as the amount of business they bring your way). Creating a companion guide to your products or services is an excellent way to showcase your experience and to establish your position as a company who is on the leading edge. Add an extra layer of exclusivity by offering it only to current clients – just one more perk of doing business with you.

Master The Art Of Accessibility

One of the easiest ways to consistently impress your clients is to keep turnaround time on emails an phone calls to a minimum. In today’s world of poor customer service, having a swift response rate to client inquiries is a powerful way to keep them impressed and away from the competition. A quick tip on email – even if you can’t address a client’s needs immediately, reply to them and let them know you’ll get back to them soon. Reinforcing their feeling of being valued gives them another reason to be a customer for life.

Anticipate Their Future Needs

Your clients have a specific idea of where they want their business to go, but they may not be seeing all the options they have available to them. Talk with them and get a feel for how they plan to grow their business, and offer them advice or services that will make it easier for them to grow. Then connect them with the people who can help make those things happen. Open their eyes to ways they can make their business or their offerings stronger down the road, and they won’t forget how valuable it is to keep doing business with you.

Offer A Workshop That Gives Your Clients An Edge

Home improvement stores offer free do-it-yourself workshops to give customers a reason to shop at their store. Financial planners offer free investment seminars to educate clients on additional service options. Your business could do the same. Look at what it is that you sell, and consider the knowledge gaps your clients might have when it comes to choosing options or getting the most out of what they buy. Then offer a free workshop that closes the knowledge gap, and see just how much more your clients appreciate you.

Ask For Feedback After The Sale

The typical business follows up only when they have something to sell, but you can wow your clients by following up with a request to make their last transaction more satisfying. A simple phone call or email that follows up with the question “Is there anything we missed, or anything more we could do to make your experience better?” tells your clients that you are 110% committed to making sure they are treated fairly and respectfully – and that you’re not going to settle for letting them get anything less than the best from you.

Present Everything In Terms Of Value, Not Cost

If pre-sales marketing is all about presenting benefits, current-client marketing is all about presenting value. Each time you communicate with your clients, let them know what they are getting and how it benefits them. A client who receives “new logo samples,” for instance, is not going to be as impressed as a client who receives a package of “3 logo concepts shown in multiple layouts with original source files for editing.” Make sure your client understands just how much they are getting with each deliverable, and they will feel their money is well spent.

Reward Client Loyalty With Increasing Bonuses

Keeping clients long-term saves you the time and money of hunting down new ones, so why not pass some of that savings on to them? Offering clients some sort of bonus or discount periodically, just for sticking with you, is a sure way to impress – especially if the value of that reward keeps increasing. Whether you choose to give a discount that grows each year, or you throw in a free product or service here and there, these unsolicited gifts will make your clients hard-pressed to go elsewhere.

Give Your Clients Free Publicity

It’s not uncommon to feature your clients’ success on your own website to enhance your reputation, but have you considered boosting their reputation elsewhere? Consider working them to issue an online press release that showcases their company or have an article written up and submitted to a relevant publication or website. This “out of the blue” shot of publicity won’t cost you much, but will make the client remember you for life – and in many of their referral-generating conversations as well.

Under Promise and Over Deliver – Every Time

The surest way to lock a permanent “wow” into your customer’s mind is simply to exceed their expectations, every time. Don’t over promise. Be realistic and focused when telling them what you’ll deliver and when they should expect it. Then go the extra mile to make your deliverable impressive and on time (or better yet, early). This is simply the easiest way to secure your reputation – the very currency of marketing itself – and virtually guarantee a stream of revenue from your current clients, and the clients they refer to you in the future.

Every great brand carries with it a number of features that give it a marketable “wow factor” – that impression of excellence, commitment and quality that invites clients to pull up a chair and stay forever. To make your brand great, incorporate these strategies into your everyday marketing plans. You’ve got what it takes to “wow” your clients every day – it’s time to get to it!

Explain Your Business in Two Lines

You have only a moment to explain what you do, but it can be hard to pare down an explanation to the details. Try starting with only a minimal explanation of just two lines. Focus on writing down what is unique about your business. You don’t need a perfectly formatted document; this draft is to get you to eliminate unnecessary words.

While you should mention what you do, how your business helps is actually more important than your particular methods. A professional speaker, for instance, wouldn’t just say that he gets up on a stage and talks. Instead, his pitch might include an explanation of the fact that he motivates employees to focus on quality — or whatever his speaking is supposed to achieve.

Add Some Excitement

If you aren’t excited about what you do, there’s no reason anyone else should get excited either. There was some sort of passion that lead you to get involved with your business; let it show through. In some cases, your reasons may be your elevator pitch.

Do you see a particular need for your services? Focus on that need, and a passionate pitch might just write itself. Results are another easy way to get excited about your business. Think about the numbers you celebrate — the milestones for your business.

Test Your Pitch

Find a few people that will listen to your pitch and give you feedback. Ask them what terms they didn’t recognize, where it was boring and where it was exciting.

Your listeners’ questions about your pitch are especially important. You don’t necessarily want to answer every question about your business in your pitch — getting prospective customers to ask a few questions is a great way to hook them — but if a test subject has no idea what you do after listening to your pitch, it’s back to the drawing board. It may take a couple of tries to come up with a pitch if your business isn’t particularly common.

Adapt to the Situation

You don’t give your elevator pitch in a vacuum. It’s always part of a conversation. Your conversational partner probably has some specific needs that your company can help with — and he or she may have already described them as part of the conversation.

If you’ve already heard those specific needs, respond to them. Tell your listener exactly what you can do to help him; being specific is what can take an elevator pitch from the “I’ll be in touch” level to the “I’m calling you first when I get back to the office” level.

Be Open to Change

Your elevator pitch is not carved in stone. If you come across a better explanation of what you do, you ought to include it in your pitch. It’s even worthwhile to test out multiple versions of your elevator pitch and make changes based on the result. And if your business changes, it’s important to make sure that your elevator pitch reflects those changes.

When distrust rules, it’s harder for entrepreneurs to sell customers on the wonders of their new products and services. That means entrepreneurs need to create what I call a real reason to believe, which leads to credibility for you and your company.

Be Responsive

People are busy and impatient. They don’t want to wait 5 minutes on hold or talk to an answering machine. They’re tired of being treated poorly. So be responsive. Find a way to answer all your calls and respond to email quickly. A prompt, timely reply can make a huge difference to promote your trustworthiness.

Be Straightforward

People are extremely skeptical. They’re analyzing your words and behavior. They’re watching you like a hawk. So be straightforward and honest when you answer questions – even you have to answer, “I don’t know.” People appreciate the truth a great deal, and they may consider your honesty a winning point in your favor.

Be Present

Beyond being responsive, you need to be present. More and more people want to deal directly with businesses and avoid the corporate brush off. They’re tired of having to speak to an associate or an assistant. They want to deal with you on a personal level, so be there for them.

Be Patient

You may get tired of pitching your sale over and again to people, telling them the benefits of choosing you. Don’t cut corners and think up ways to automate the sales pitch (unless it’s on a website). Remember that selling yourself is part of your job. You may have heard the story a million times, but for every potential client, this is the first time – and it counts.

Be Personal

Consumers are tired of being faceless sources of income used to make a company rich. They want to build relationships, and they want to retain their identity. So be personal. Remember the potential client’s name, and use it often – both in greetings and in conclusions. Let your personality shine a little, too.

Be Confident

If a prospective customer hesitates and mentions a lower price offered elsewhere or seems to be comparing the benefits between you and your competition, be confident. Don’t bash the competition and be comfortable with what you offer. Ask the person what concerns they may have, and address them. Also, remember that it’s the person’s right to choose the best business – even if it’s not you. Accept that gracefully.

Be an Equal

Buyers are in a bad position. They need you, because they either don’t want to do a job, don’t have the item you own, or can’t fix their own problems without your help. That sometimes makes people feel that they aren’t in a power position – and that you are. Be careful with that power and treat people with respect. They are your equal at all times, no matter what you have that they need.

If you look back at all the things you should be (and there are dozens more), you’ll realize that business today comes down to upholding good standards of integrity, treating your potential customers – and your existing ones – with respect and honesty.