This isn’t a trick question but one that most businesses must consider.

Typical businesses focus on lead generation and spend the most money in this area of marketing. While lead generation is great to focus on in order to increase your sales and profits, many people don’t have a system or strategy to follow once they’ve acquired the new lead.

The other less utilized and often forgotten area of marketing is client retention. Along with lead generation, this is a fantastic profit opportunity.

However, what both have in common in most businesses is not having a system of follow up and engagement that turn a greater percentage of leads and past clients into paying clients once again.

Luckily, there’s still hope.

I want to focus the solution on an underutilized tool that can help in either situation, and I’ll mention to you why it is perhaps the ultimate tool to generating more sales in the most efficient manner.

The solution that I’m talking about is doing teleseminars and/or webinars. For those who don’t understand this technology, a teleseminar or webinar is a way to get many people to connect with you at one time to listen to what you have to offer, both intellectually and your business’ offerings.

The difference between them is that teleseminars are more of a conference call to the multitudes while a webinar adds video to the mix using visual presentations.

So, why do I say this may be the ultimate tool to accomplish deeper relationships with leads and past clients? Because you can address them both at the same time.

Let me paint the picture for you.

Let’s say you do a monthly (or weekly, you decide the schedule that works best for you) teleseminar or webinar and invite all your news leads AS WELL as your current and past clients. This will be on a subject matter that your clients and prospects are interested in including updates to what they’re already familiar with.

The value for your new leads is that you’re offering free training (or paid, but that’s for another time) that is helping them become more educated about what you offer and how it helps them solve their problems. You’re building trust by giving something to them with no strings attached unlike the typical sales call that other businesses do.

The value to your existing and past clients is that you’re adding additional value to them after the sale, staying in contact with them, and further ingraining yourself as an expert in their minds.

Here’s the amazing part about this strategy that very few, if any, marketing methods offer to everyone involved; SOCIAL PROOF!

Since you have both new leads and past clients on the teleseminar or webinar, you can open it up at the end for a Q & A session where they’ll all here each other on the call. New leads will hear past clients talk about their experiences with your service or products which further develops trust.

If your past client John is on the call, he may say something like this “Alex, the email marketing strategy that you implemented for me is generating tons of new sales and it’s only been about 5 weeks. How can I use this new strategy to do the same?”

Do you see the power of this? Your past clients are giving you testimonials live while new leads are listening in. There’s absolutely no better way to accomplish this.

There you have it, a killer way to keep your clients engaged and add amazing value to your new leads without much effort at all. The only drawback that I see to this is you may become addicted to it!

I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas of how you can start capitalizing one this fantastic opportunity using teleseminars and webinars. They work for virtually every business.

Feel free to contact us for a free consultation where I’ll show you how this strategy can work for you.

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The website is called Foursquare and in a nutshell, it allows you to use your cell phone to “Check In” and share where you are with your friends. This is done easily via apps for iPhones, Android phones, Blackberry or a phone’s internet browser.

The benefit to this is to let people know where you’re eating, the businesses you shop at, and even local places like parks and museums you visit. You can even leave a quick review when you “Check In”.

Who knows, your friends may be near and end up getting together with you.

However, the power of Foursquare for you business is where it really gets interesting. You see, you can link up your Foursquare account to Twitter and Facebook and get your Check In broadcasted to your friends and everyone following you on both of those other platforms. So, if I check into your local barber shop, there may be thousands of people who will view that I went there and gives you exposure to all of my friends, Facebook pals, and Twitter followers.

Can you start seeing how powerful it is?

Now for the real secret to cashing in using Foursquare. They have a status called Mayor for whoever Checks In to a particular place the most. So, if I go to a restaurant called Frank’s Hot Dogs and Lobster (believe me, I probably wouldn’t) and I have the most check ins from their, I become the Mayor of Frank’s Hot Dogs and Lobster.

Wouldn’t it be grand if Frank’s Hot Dog and Lobster awarded the me, the Mayor, with a free order of fries and drink or something like that. What this means is that I would have put their name out more than anyone else using Foursquare and they’re simply showing me some love for it. It’ll cost them less than $3 to hook me up while they’re getting $1000′s in free exposure.

Although this new method of getting repeat business can work for any type of business, there are specific types that it lends itself too exceptionally well.

Stay tuned in the next few days since I’ll be posting three types of businesses that can drastically increase their sales by simply using the power of Foursquare.

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