If you’ve been in business for a year or longer, you may have gifts in forgotten pockets — sources of additional revenue waiting to be discovered and tapped.

There are four ways to increase your net profits; reduce costs, increase prices, attract more clients or sell more to existing clients. When you consider that it costs you at least 60% and as much as 600% more to sell a new client than to an existing one, its clear that your best prospects are existing clients.

Are you selling as many of your services or products as you could to your existing client base? Could you increase your revenue by doing a better job of marketing your to existing clients?

You’ve established your credibility and the value of at least one of your services with existing clients. They made a commitment to work with you at least once.

How can you leverage this trust and client satisfaction into additional sales?

Tony called me from Washington D.C. with just this problem. He is an image consultant to politicians and corporate executives and struggling to increase his revenue. His new clients are happy with his services, but the engagements rarely extend beyond the initial contracted project.

He is having a tough time getting repeat business. Tony knows his existing and past clients represent additional revenue but he doesn’t know how to mine it.

Once you have a client, what’s the best way to sell them more of your products or services?

The biggest mistake that most small business owners make is to think that after they’ve competed the initial sale, their marketing job is completed. The opposite is true. Once you’ve made your first s.ale to a client, secured a commitment from them in the with a payment, you should begin your marketing strategy to get them to buy again.

Of course, you don’t want to constantly be “selling” to clients. That would get tedious for you and your customers and they’d be unlikely to want to maintain the relationship. Instead, continue to educate them about their areas of need and how you help clients. Use your products and services to provide value and to educate clients so they can discover what they need and want, even if they’d n.ever thought about it before.

For example, I’ve been working with a sports trainer to complete my recovery from shoulder surgery. In our first session he showed me which muscles needed to be reprogrammed with exercise to return to normal functioning. The obvious conclusion of his explanation was that I needed to work with him again to achieve my goals. Just by sharing a little knowledge he successfully extended the project.

This approach isn’t clever or devious; it is based on the notion that an informed buyer — an educated consumer — is your best client. Here’s how it works in practice:

1. Help Prospects Become Clients by Focusing on their Problems
People buy solutions to problems or needs that they know exist. Get your prospects’ attention by focusing your business marketing message on the problem(s) you solve in order to get them to visit your web site or contact you.

Then use your conversation or your marketing copy to help prospects further define their problems or concerns. Do this well and they’ll clearly see the need for your products and services.

2. Continue to Educate Prospects and Clients
Clients buy from you when they know how you can help them. That’s why they initially contracted with you or bought your products and services. Once you’ve signed on a new client, don’t assume that they understand the range of services or products you market. They may not even fully understand what they’ve bought.

Use each contact to continue to educate your clients and help them understand the issues, problems and solutions relative to your area of expertise.

For example if you’re a financial advisor and you’ve been hired to help a client with their investments, you might ask them a question about their estate planning, tax situation or insurance policies or retirement plan and provide them with an idea they can use.

Each time you do this your client will learn how limited their own knowledge is and understand more about why they need your assistance in additional areas.

Instead of selling clients on additional services, educate them. You’ll create a perception of need and increase sales.

3. Transform Client Satisfaction into Additional Sales
Do you have clients and customers that appreciate your products and services? Don’t wait until your contract is complete to tap the goodwill you’ve generated by helping them. Regularly ask them questions designed to get responses like, “I couldn’t have done it without you,” “Worth every penny,” etc.

Just after your clients have provided positive feedback is the perfect time to ask them a couple of questions about to identify needs and to mention the solutions you provide.

Once you’ve gone to all the effort to attract a new client, don’t walk away from the rest of their needs, just because they haven’t identified or clarified them yet. Educate your prospects and clients at every step of the way about the problems you solve and they’ll understand why they need more of your products and services. You’ll discover pockets of opportunity to help your clients and increase your revenue.

She had a professional-looking web site that was getting a good number of visitors, but very little lead generation.

Why not? Why weren’t prospects visiting her site and then immediately picking up the phone? And what could she do about it?

Marketing is about attracting attention; moving people to become prospects, to try your products and services and to sign up for your top end services or buy everything you sell.

For many it can seem complex and overwhelming but it’s simply a matter of helping people move from point A to point B to point C.

Every web site and business owner wants their lead generation prospects to become high paying clients, but most web sites don’t provide prospects with pathways to follow from point A to B and to C, to become mid-level or super clients.

Let me explain…

Imagine that you’re opening a new restaurant in a three-story building. The first floor is the lobby or waiting area. Moving up to the second floor, customers can order individual items from your menu a la carte; the prices range from $5 to $19. Customers who move up to the third floor can enjoy a spectacular view and a 4 course, fixed price dinner served with wine for $70.

You’re ready to open the doors and start making money. There’s just one problem. The architect for your building didn’t include any staircases or elevators. People can’t move from one floor to the next.

Of course, no one would build a restaurant like that but in fact, that is how many online and consulting business are structured. One of the biggest marketing mistakes people make is not providing prospects with options for moving from point A to B to C. In many cases the pathways don’t exist or the doors to the stairs aren’t obvious.

Ready for your web site marketing to generate more paying customers and or super clients?

Want to make it easy for prospects to become super clients?

Marketing pundits will tell you that to get prospects to buy your top end services, you first need to get them to buy your $29 product, then your $200 product, and then these customers will be ready to spend thousands.

It’s true you need to create simple and obvious pathways for prospects to follow to become clients, but don’t take this linear pathway idea too literally. While some customers will follow it, others won’t. Give your prospects multiple ways to try out your products and services.

Structure your marketing pathways with the following in mind:

1. Your first marketing goal is to get people in the door so they can get to know you. The best way to do that is to give something away for free. Offer prospects something they want. If you are opening a restaurant, free beer or wine would be a start. Online, free reports, online courses, or audio and video files can be successful offers. Or if you sell products, contests, and special offers work.

2. Once you’ve got a prospect interested, the temptation is to try to make a sale right away. Don’t. Take a deep breath and count to three. Rushing the sale can kill it. Your prospects will become paying clients when they know you, trust you and are sure you can help them.

You’ve gotten their attention with your free offer. Now educate them about the core areas where you can provide assistance. Give prospects a sample of your best goods. Finally, explain the solutions you offer in terms of their problems and how you solve them.

3. Your freebies will attract three basic types of prospects: people who like freebies and aren’t buyers; people who have limited budgets but will buy your entry and mid-level products; and people who have unlimited funds and may buy one of your entry-level products or may jump right to your top end services.

4. You’ll make the most money from people who buy everything you sell or who spend tens of thousands of dollars on our services, so how can you get more people to become these super clients?

Every web site and business owner wants their prospects to become high paying clients. The more you give away, the more prospects will move from testing your free stuff to immediately becoming your best clients.

Imagine if instead of just offering free peanuts in the lobby of your restaurant, you offered a sampling of the best appetizers served on the top floor along with wine to match. More people would be likely to become high-end spenders on their first visit, assuming your building has stairs or a high-speed elevator.

Yes, a better freebie will cost you more but you’ll make a lot more if you can motivate prospects to spend two to three times more. I’ve spent thousands of hours over the last couple of years creating free articles, and reports. The result? Each hour invested has brought me thousands of dollars in profits.

Does your web site marketing provide paths for prospects to become super clients? Take a minute to answer these questions:

1. What do you do to attract prospects, e.g. to get them in the door?

2. If you sell pricey products or services, do you have a low-cost way for people to get hooked on buying from you?

3. What pathways do you provide to move first-time customers to become second time customers and spend more?

4. Do you provide enough for free to entice some prospects to immediately become super clients?

Ready to make your web site sell and get all the super clients you can handle? Ineffective web site marketing is like throwing money in the incinerator and then suffering the indignity of watching it burn.