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Books on how to catch Mr. or Ms. Right using marketingstrategies may have hearts skipping a beat, but they do little toease the qualms of an entrepreneur. For those who have much more atstake than a broken heart, help is on the way. Jay B. Lipe, authorof The Marketing Toolkit for Growing Businesses:Tips, Techniques and Tools to Improve Your Marketing(Chammerson Press), turns the tables and shows how countless hoursspent perfecting one-liners can actually come in handy. Simply put,if you're good at the dating scene, marketing your smallbusiness can be a cinch.
- Puckerup.
- Get customers to run back for more byoffering small and enticing samples. "'Putting out'can score big returns later on," says Lipe. And if customersare responsive to this first nibble, Lipe recommends "tryingto go to second base with your prospects" by offering up-sellsthey can't refuse.
- Meet theparents.
- It's that dreaded first encounterwith the one person who stands in the way of a potential sale.Whether it's a mother selecting the best cereal for herchildren or a CFO approving a purchase order, don't look foreasy ways out. Says Lipe, "In the world of business, elopingjust isn't an option."
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