Are you so busy chasing down new customers that you completely overlooked these two prime sources for easy sales?

Source 1: Existing Customers

Here are two ways you can use your relationship with existing customers to generate additional business.

1. Offer Them Related Products or Services

Your existing customers already know you and trust you. It's easier and cheaper to get more business from them than to get any business from new prospects.

Find or create additional products and services you can offer to existing customers. Your new products and services should be closely related to those your customers originally bought from you.

For example, I recently spoke with a network marketer selling nutritional products. She also works with a health club that pays her a commission for each new member she signs up. She told me that over one third of her income is generated by offering related product to her customers.

2. Ask Them to Help You Find New Customers

Do you have a system to get referrals from satisfied customers? If not, you are losing a lot of profitable sales you could easily get.

One way to get referrals is with a brief Customer Survey. Send it by postal mail, email, fax or post it on a web page. The one I use asks only 3 questions:

1. What did you like best about our product (or service)?

2. What can we do to improve value of our product (or service) for you?

3. Who do you know trying to solve (state problem you solved for your customer)? ...or: Who do you know that wants to (state benefit provided by your product or service)?

The first two questions focus attention on benefits you provide. Your customer is more likely to volunteer referrals when they're thinking about value of those benefits.

One thing I think we ALL agree on: There are way too many scams out there. Both online and off. Things like:

Email from a "millionaire who needs help transferring large sums of money" This is one of most popular scams online today.

How about "You`ve won lottery!!" mails? You know that unless you`ve bought a ticket, or registered for lottery in question, you haven`t really won a thing. Prepare to be scammed!

Oh, and "Free Credit Report" mails, did you know that they`re usually just someone looking to get your ssn number, or some of them even bill you for using their "free" service later?

Watch out for E-gold and Paypal scams, where someone sends you a mail telling you that you HAVE to login, or risk losing everything. Both E-gold and Paypal have strict email policies, and neither of them would EVER ask for your login info with an email.

Then there`s "You`ve won a free gift". How many of those do you get per week? All you have to do is pay s&h, right? Well, that means it isn`t really free, doesn`t it? You know what they get when you claim that free gift? Usually your credit card number, or even your email address/phone number which can then be sold on as "leads".

I`ve put together a bunch of links that can hopefully help you with safely marketing online, without getting scammed.

Minimize Credit Card Fraud http://www.scambusters.org/CreditCardFraud.html

Museum of Scams and Frauds (I really love this one) http://www.quatloos.com

Great list of online and offline scams http://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com/index.htm

A forum for discussing get paid programs. Good, Bad and Scams http://www.isaaf.com

List of scams with a touch of humour http://www.worldwidescam.com