I hope you never have any customers.

That’s right, NO customers! (Who remain just a customer) But I do hope you will have lots of CLIENTS. Let’s examine the definition of customer and client. Customer: A person who purchases a commodity or service. Client: A person who is under the protection of another. First, let’s get a mindset for the real true potential value of one of your clients. By the way, you will have the tendency to want to keep calling them customers and that is okay as long as your attitude toward them is that they are your clients and that you treat them like clients. This applies to customers in any type of business; travel, home care products, long distance telephone service, skin care products, etc, but for sake of illustration and since so many network marketing companies are nutrition companies I will use the nutrition company example.

The first customer you ever land should be YOU. You should be your first customer and your best customer. Only by using the product and becoming a product of the product will you become passionate about your product.

Let’s say you approach a friend about your business and he tells you that he is not interested. You may even ask him the following question. “Bill, if I were to ask you if you were more interested in your health or more interested in your wealth… what would your answer be?” You really hope he says, “both.” Well for whatever reason, he tells you he is interested in his health, then LISTEN to what he said and DO NOT push the business but rather turn the conversation toward the product.

Show a sincere interest in the person’s health concern. Ask them if they currently take vitamins or food supplements. Find out if they are taking pills, capsules or powdered supplements. Compliment them for their choice to take supplements. Ask them what types of supplements they are currently purchasing and why they are taking those particular supplements. Ask them approximately how much they are spending on supplements on a monthly basis.

Now ask them if in buying their supplements if cost or quality is the most important factor. If they say cost, then talk about how inexpensive your nutrition product is on a daily usage basis. If they say quality, then talk about the high quality of the ingredients used in your product or product line. Next ask them if they would like to try your product and see what sort of benefits they might notice. If they ask how much the product is, answer, “I can supply you a month’s supply for $________ and quote the retail price. (If they said price was most important you could say but if you come and pick it up I’ll take $5.00 off. If they still hem and haw over the price then say I can show you to get it for $10.00 off (or whatever the discount would be) by signing up as a preferred customer.) If they said quality was most important to them, then simply state the retail price of the product and say that you will personally deliver it to them or bring it into the office or gym.

Either way, whether they are a retail customer/client or a preferred customer/client you will earn from $10 to $15 per bottle, box or package. (Depending on the company and what product you are selling.) (And for simplification let’s say the product you are selling is in a bottle.) Note: that earnings is per bottle not customer/client. A client could buy several bottles or even several different products depending on your company’s product line. Let’s say your friend has a spouse, then that could translate into two bottles a month. But what if they have parents they care for or children still at home and need a bottle for each of them… that could translate to four to six bottles a month or $40 to $60 a month for your earnings for just that one customer/client. Now if they were preferred customers and you were only earning $10 per bottle that could be $720 for the year. If you had ten customer/clients like that then you could be earning $7,200.00 a year. So look at your customers as clients who will be with you for a long time.

When you have the vision to see the big picture you are a lot more willing to invest the time and money to have them sample the product and get them set up on a preferred customer auto-ship.

A two bottle a month customer/client will still produce $20 a month in earnings which is $240 a year. But all this does not just happen… YOU have to MAKE it HAPPEN. And it is more likely to happen when you look at them and treat them as CLIENTS not just customers. YOU need to establish and develop the RELATIONSHIP with your customer. Until you have “connected” with them, they are just a customer… But when the relationship has been established then they have become your CLIENT. Part of developing that relationship is COMMUNICATING with them and helping them understand and realize that your product is bringing them benefit and or solving some of their problems. Maybe they were having problems sleeping, with acid reflux, feeling lethargic or perhaps they had aches and pains that have all gone away. In any case as you learn through communicating with them that these are some of the benefits they have derived from using the product, make a point of it and point out the VALUE of that benefit.

Whenever you build the VALUE of the product the PRICE no longer counts.

Remember when people go to the hardware store to buy a drill it is NOT the drill that they need that made them buy the drill; it is the HOLE that they want. By working with your customers and helping them solve their problems they become CLIENTS and you become their TRUSTED health product provider.

Call them occasionally and ask how things are going. They may have a referral for you. If they really show no interest in being a distributor you can offer them a free bottle for any referral that stays on auto-ship for three months or more. Find out their birthdays and send them birthday cards and other seasonal cards. Let them know that you genuinely care about them. Now consider that many of these clients may eventually become distributors, now you can really see the value in investing the time in developing the customer into a client. As the months go by you will realize that you have basically two types of customers: those interested in PRICE and those interested in QUALITY.

The “price shopper” is the person who is interested only in getting the best price. These buyers have very little loyalty, if any at all. You can bend over backwards to help them out, you can offer to sell them your product for your cost, you can even deliver it to them but next month when they see the new “Joe’s Jungle Juice from the Amazon River Basin” for a dollar less, they immediately place an order for the new Jungle Juice because it was a dollar less expensive. These people will leave you for a few pennies difference in price. They have checked out all the websites of your competitors and know their prices. They spend hours on the Internet looking for a sale or bargain before they buy. They can’t resist a bargain. They take pride in getting the best deal, not the best quality product or service. They don’t care that the cheaper product may have inferior ingredients.

The other types of buyers are looking for the best QUALITY and are what we call “relationship buyers”. These are people who are looking for a person with whom they can develop a relationship. They want someone whom they can trust. They are looking for a friendly person with a ‘quality’ product that will give them a benefit or solve one of their problems. They want quality and are not overly concerned with the price. They want a real person who is somewhat knowledgeable about their product, who will recognize them, remember them, do favors for them, and someone with whom they can develop a relationship. Once they discover such a person and develop a relationship they will become very loyal. They know that they could probably save a few dollars by shopping around, but they find the “price shopping” process consumes too much of their valuable time and emotional energy. They are willing to pay a few dollars more to get the BEST and to buy it from a real person who will be there for them. Relationship buyers, once properly cultivated, will stay with you for a lifetime.

You may discover that only 20% to 25% of your customers are concerned with price. The other 75% to 80% are loyal customers who are interested in quality and service. These are the ones who will become your CLIENTS and also from whom you will derive most of your long range earnings. They are also the ones who will eventually become your next distributor. A recent study showed that 68% of customers leave because they think that you do not care about them.

Another study discovered that customers simply want you to be there for them when they need you. So turn your customers into clients by establishing a relationship with them and show them you care by taking a sincere interest in them.

Make sure that all of your clients know how to get in touch with you. Give them a business card with your telephone number and email address and invite them to call you anytime, or if you have limited availability then give them the best times to call you. Most importantly; YOU stay in touch with them. Find out their birthday and send them a birthday card each year. Also send them appropriate cards on other holidays. Learn the names of their spouse and children. Ask about their family when you call them.

Call them at least once a month, usually a week before their auto ship is sent out and be prepared to share with them a testimonial or something that you learned about our product since you spoke with them last. Email them at least once a month. Give them news when you call or email them. Always have an interesting story to tell them or new information about your product that will be of interest to them. You can copy and paste product oriented material from your company website or newsletter and email it to them. Offer them incentives for giving you a referral that becomes a client. Send them a thank you note whenever they do and give them a gift if it was a large sale or when the referral has been on auto ship for several months. Have a conference call once a month for your clients and share with them some of the things you learned about the product or discuss one of the ingredients and then open the call for testimonials from the clients on the line and then take any questions that any of your clients might have.

Another thing that you can do is for the clients in your local area is to have a “meet and greet” at your home. You can serve refreshments, have prizes and sample any new products. As your clients get to know each other, this could turn into a pot luck dinner or if the weather is nice you could have a back yard cook out. If your home is not suitable for the meeting or there is not enough parking space then you could hold the meeting at a local park that has a barbeque grill, or maybe your development has a community center you could use for free or a small rental charge. They can bring the children and you can play some games such as volley ball, kick ball, or frisbee. Make it fun. Have each customer get up and give a testimonial and give out prizes.

Many of your customers will not only become CLIENTS, but they will also become your friends (if they were not already). It is easy for a customer to stop ordering form a supplier, but it is difficult for a client to stop ordering from a friend. They will become your client and you will be elevated to their health coach.

By developing relationships with your clients you will discover that you are developing long range, reliable, residual earnings that could continue coming in month after month after month, for years to come. Do you love your company’s product but don’t really like to recruit? Then build a group of 100 clients and you could find yourself earning $48,000.00 to $72,000.00 a year… (based on earning $40 to $60 per client per month)… even if you never recruited a single distributor!

But as your clients start referring their friends the natural thing for them to do is become a distributor and supply them; so you could wind up with a large distributor organization almost by default. When you feel they are ready, invite them to a business opportunity meeting or a local training seminar where there will be a lot of product information plus the business presentation. They just might become your next distributor. So if you have a lot of customers… get rid of them! Turn them into CLIENTS and watch your business grow.