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Be Easy To Do Business With - Turning Your Prospects Into Clients
| Guest post by: Meridith Elliott Powell |
Article Overview: If you want to turn your prospects into customers, then you need to ask yourself if you are easy to do business with? Well actually, you need to ask your customers if you are easy to do business with. When you sell, you sell an experience. Your next job is to ensure your prospects receive the positive experience you sold them when they actually do business with your company.
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Be Easy To Do Business With - Turning Your Prospects Into Clients
I love this idea, this concept, this rule! If you want to
turn your prospects into customers than you must be easy to do business with.
Have you ever asked yourself if you are easy to do business with? Whether you
have or you haven't, the truth is you don't know until you ask your customers.
We work in our businesses day in and day out, we understand how the process
works, what our acronyms stand for, and which department handles which service.
The question is do your customers? You can invest in the best marketing, have
the best trained sales force, but if you do not make it easy and enjoyable to
do business with you, than you will consistently struggle to turn your
prospects into customers.
Ever have this experience? You buy a new computer. You search online, visit the
local computer stores, ask your computer tech and you finally make a purchase.
This is the computer every sales person told you was easy to use and easy to
set up. You are ready to get started and boom you hit a snag. You call the
company, and while I am not sure I need to tell the rest of the story, for
arguments sake I will. First you get put on hold, then you get cut off, then
you get passed from department to department, and then finally when you are
connected to someone who can help you, they either talk over your head, are condescending
or do not speak your language. You get off the phone, you are frustrated, made
and vow never to do business with this company again. You end up calling your
local computer tech and paying some outrageous service fee to fix something you
were promised could be handled through free support.
Now, in defense of the company, I do not believe this is the outcome they want.
Especially in this day and age, who wants their customers mad, upset and god-forbid twitttering
and facebooking
negative things about them. No one. Then why are they so hard to do
business with? Because they don't prioritize making the customer experience one
the customers actually designs and one they actually enjoy.
So, how do you do that? How do you make sure you are easy to do business with?
I have read, researched and come upon many complicated systems and processes to
do this, but you know I think the best thing to do is just ask your customer.
Do it informally, through formal survey, or assessments. I have several clients
who ask me to once a year perform and customer assessment to determine what
they could improve in their systems and process to enhance the customer
experience. This is not only a fun process, but you gain great perspective and
information.
Making sure you are easy to do business with, makes prospects happy about their
decisions, customers loyal and advocates happy to keep sending business your
way! If you want to prospects into customers']);"> turn your prospects into customers then make sure your
customers believe you are easy to do business with.
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About the Author: Meridith Elliott Powell RSS for Meridith's articles - Visit Meridith's website Click here to visit Meridith's website   Great Questions Make All The Difference Handling Rejection Get Back On The Horse Competitive Advantage Not What You Sell How You Sell It YES You Have To Ask For the Business Your Brand Is Screaming |
Related Forum Posts
Re: Email Etiquette
- [quote="jvprosperity":24jznj58]
The P.S. suggestion is good but it depends on the type of communication (e.g. Autoresponder series verses one off emails to Clients or Prospects)[/quote:24jznj58]
Andy,
You are right. I was mainly referring to Auto Responder emails. To end a normal email, I attach signatures.
Takuya
Simple way to avoid Cold Calling
- Gary,
A chiropractor I work with hates cold calling (me too!) and he uses a technique to warm people up to using his services - it's so simple!
In Sales your dealing with 3 pools of people:
1. Strangers
2. Prospects
3. Returning Customers
You need to move people from one pool to the next. We'll concentrate on #1 and #2 as it's most relevant to your question.
My Clients does the following (you just have to tailor it to your situation - be creative).
My Client (we'll call him Bob) Bob leverages his time and resources to only get people that need his offer (pain relief) to put their hand up. Dealing with Strangers can get expensive and they don't like to be told what to do as they have no trust or relationship built with him.
So to get Strangers to put their hands up he writes up an offer with a free report on a particular pain relief - let's say lower back pain (note: he can simply just change lower back pain to neck pain and have a new report). and uses multiple marketing vehicles to promote the Free report - magazines, newspaper, forums, postcards, private clinics etc.
The only people picking up this information are the very people Bob would like as customers as they have Lower back pain. Bob's Free report ends with him stating his services and includes a Free in-house Consultation with no obligation.
You'd be surprised at how easily Bob converts Strangers into Prospects. Note: They become prospects when they ask for the Free Guide and in exchange provide their contact details. This gives Bob unlimited opportunity to contact them for the Free in-house consultation with no obligation to continue using him.
At this stage Bob's ability to close the sale lies in his office providing good customer service, Bob's ability to help the prospect and provide value at the free in-house consultation.
Notice, he hasn't had to pick up the phone to COLD-CALL his Stranger pool or his Prospect pool.
Hope that example helps to increase your prospecting!
Re: Who Did You Learn Most From and Why?
- Hi Martin,
You missed out on the most essential community that helps you grow - Your Clients. Well, I believe that my Initial Clients have been the ones who have given me the moments of 'aha' in my business. They have stood by me even when I was a starter and that has helped me shape and build my stand. They have helped me grow as an entrepreneur, learn to have loads of patience and make the most of what comes across. They have also helped me to strengthen me as a person.
btw, personally speaking, my Grandfather always kept me on track and lent me emotional support when I was down in any matter - be it business or otherwise.
My entry
- 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read
- this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody.
2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto.
3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book
Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Re: e-Commerce and e-Payment providers
- When I came back to Japan in 1999 I sometimes used to ask my students if they would buy anything on the Internet and at that time most thought it was too risky. I'd encourage them to try by using well known sites such as Amazon.co.jp and also pointed out that using a credit card on a reputable site was safer than using it at a restaurant.
I can't remember the last time I had that discussion or when the "tipping point" occurred in Japan.
To answer your other question, I use Paypal for several reasons:
1. Brand familiarity
2. Easy to use
3. Free to withdraw 50,000yen+ to my Japanese bank account - a huge benefit (but maybe other systems also offer that...?)
4. Easy to cancel subscriptions
On the down side, their transaction fees are quite costly, they are difficult to contact and when disputes arise you can sometimes lose even when you can prove via your tracking service that the disputed item was "delivered" to the customer's address!
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