How To Give Your Customers More Of What They Love

In today's information age and social media world, we always want more--and so do our customers. Remember that it is always easier, less expensive, and more effective to sell more to existing customers than it is to attract, court, and sell to new ones.

The problem is that many entrepreneurs come to the plate with only one pitch. They only have their one "golden" product that their customers love and in turn are left leaving money on the table for the customer that wants more--more products, more information, more service, and more of you.

So how do entrepreneurs and small business owners quickly capitalize on the need to have multiple products at multiple price points to satisfy the needs of the marketplace and more importantly, their customers?

Create Multiple Products--Quickly

The first is to develop a customer product and sales cycle based on your customers' needs and levels of attention that you can give them. During this stage you need to look at your market and the resources in your company and see where they intersect to solve your customers' problems. Come up with as many solutions as possible, including your existing products and development demands. Now it's time to create multiple touch points and apply price points to them. Think about it like a musician that you love.

• The single costs $.99. That gives you one level of access.
• The album costs $9.99. That gives you another level of access.
• Then they come into your town and charge $50 for a general-admission ticket. Again, another level of access for what can be considered the same content.
• For those in the fan club, you get another level of access and also the ability to pay $200 to come backstage during the concert.
• And then you can bring this band in for a private function for $10,000. Again, increasing your access to them.
• Lastly, while at the concert, you can buy T-shirts, hats, buttons and for the seasoned band, other albums, B-sides, solo records, and DVDs from other live shows.

Do you see the common themes? The musician is using the same content and charging for multiple levels of access to their personal time. This is one of the easiest and most effective ways to give your new raving customers what they desire in the form of multiple products.

The Coach or Consultant

Let's put this into a different context. Let's say you run a sales coaching and consulting business. At the core of your business is coming into an organization and spending one or two days with them and providing information to their sales team, live and in person. When you leave, they might want more. What do you do?

• You can offer more sales content in a book.
• You can record your time at their office and offer it in a digital package.
• You can hold a follow-up live training event in the area for multiple businesses that you connected with.
• You can blog and offer other related products from other trainers that you recommend.
• You can hold mastermind or group coaching calls where the students can get direct access to ask you questions about handling objections or closing the sale.

In this situation, you are multi-purposing content and creating new levels of access that are essentially new products for your marketplace.

The Widget Maker

The last example that I want to give is for the widget company; the company with the physical thing that they sell. What do they do about creating multiple products and satisfying the needs of their customer base?

They can do a few things. They can offer multiple levels of the widget; a bare-bones version, a standard version, and an advanced version. This creates 3 products and a great opportunity to get a customer to buy multiple copies of the same product as their needs and their consumption levels increase. After you create multiple versions of the product, you can then go in a few more directions to add to your customer value and give into their demanding needs.

• You can create accessories, attachments, and resources that add to the overall value and experience of your product.
• You can create how-to videos, books, and CDs that help your customer experience your product (also think about including case studies and testimonials from happy customers who can share how they use the product).
• You can create a community of happy users that connect online (or offline at meet-ups) to talk about what your product does. If you sell something like scissors, think about the things people do with scissors like scrapbooking, and create a community around that kind of an activity. 
• You can crowdsource new ideas, joint-venture with another company, or buy another company to get products that are closely related to yours and put them into the marketplace and into your promotional plans.

There are multiple ways that you can begin to satisfy the hunger of a market that is looking for more and collect the money that is left on the table by only having one product or service to offer. They key starts with knowing your market and doing everything that you can to fulfill their needs, and once that need is fulfilled, look for new products, services, or levels or access to get them further ingrained into your brand and the results your brand can provide.

How are you satisfying the hunger?

[Image: Flickr user LittleLexxis]