Introduce, Involve, Increase (Upgrade)

Are you ready to grow sideways through your client base?  Once you have a client or two, a good way to get more business is to do a great job for them and then keep them in the loop and engaged in the process (no pun intended). 

Educate them a little on what benefits they are receiving from doing business with you and finally, increase the amount of work you do for them simply by introducing them to new, additional services.  It’s the same client; you have just offered a different service that will benefit them.  It’s what McDonald’s does every day.

It works like this at McDonald’s.  You come in and ask for a hamburger.  The attendant asks if you want cheese on it.  You say, yes.  Then the attendant asks if you want fries.  You say, yes.  Then the attendant asks if you want a large order of fries.  You say, yes.  Then the attendant asks if you want something to drink.  And once again you say, yes.  In fact, the whole process with them has become so routine, that most people now walk into their restaurants and before the attendant can even ask if you want a hamburger with cheese and a large order of fries with a drink, the customer already knows what they are going to be asked, and they just spew it all out at once.

You can do the same thing in process service.  How do you upsell when all you are doing is serving a paper?  Here’s an easy example.  Your client contacts you to serve a subpoena.  And you respond by telling them that you can do that, and then you ask, do you want us to place a rush on that?  And they say, yes.  Or, you ask them, do you want me to prepare the subpoena for you (which under certain circumstances you can legally do), and they say, yes. Two add-on services, just like that.

Here’s another example.  Your client may already know that you serve court documents, but do they also know that you know how to locate people who need to be served?  This is called skip tracing.  This is an additional service you can provide.  Or perhaps you can offer to do courier service for the client, or act as a notary public for sworn documents.  If you are qualified and licensed, you can also offer private investigations for your client.  Plenty of attorneys have a need for investigative services.  If you are already working on their process service, doesn’t it make sense that it is easier to give you the investigations, seeing as they already know you, than for them to locate an investigator, get quotes, vet them, retain them, etc.? 

So, in that way you introduce the client to a new service. You involve them in the new service by providing quality customer service (so they know, like and trust you) then educate them into process, and increase the level of services they want from you by introducing yet another new or additional service.  It could become an endless cycle if you could find an endless number of services to provide.  You could start out with the basic service of serving court documents for one client. Using the process above, before too long, you could be serving the court documents, running investigations, locating witnesses, notarizing documents, completing courier deliveries, retrieving court records, researching court files, preparing subpoenas, and on and on and on.

Looking for a great holiday gift for your favorite process service businessperson? Try The Business End of Process Service (Running a Process Service Company from the Ground Up).  You might also enjoy CounterSpy, The Industrial Espionage Counter-Surveillance Manual; my other book. Both may be found on Amazon.com.