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Make It Easy To Do Business With You And You WILL Experience An Increase In Your Sales!
If someone calls your company and a receptionist is their first contact, can that receptionist make a compelling response to the prospect or customer's requests? When your personnel answer the phone, do they make it appear that the person calling them is interrupting them? (Boy, does this tick people off.) When people come into your business, how well versed are your personnel? How much time have you spent in preparing dialogues, phrases, questions, and advice for your people to ask or offer to customers? How willing are you or your people to answer questions and render truly informative advice, even if it does not directly or immediately benefit you? How conscientiously do you follow up on service requests, applications and inquiries? How well do you keep customers informed on the status of their purchase? How much do you take your customers, prospects and business for granted? By merely stepping outside your office and walking up to your business -- or calling your business -- wearing the hypothetical shoes of a prospect, you may see -- or hear -- a lot of flaws in your operation. Once they are remedied you can dramatically improve your current and repeat business potential. By making it inviting, easy, informative, non-threatening, educational, inspiring and fun to do business with you, you'll lift your company above your competition. This just makes good common sense, doesn't it?! In doing so, you won't believe the referrals you'll get without ever asking for them, the people that will call because so & so was so impressed with you and your business. Ways To Make It A Fun Experience Let's talk about this subject and look at some ways to make your business fun, non-threatening and a memorable experience. Typically, the first thing that happens is somebody calls your business. I can't tell you how many times I have recommended that the principals re-train their receptionist (sometimes I’ve even recommended them to be placed in a new job or let them go). Picture this: You just spent $10,000 (or it could be $100) on a marketing strategy with the call-of-action to call your business. This very excited potential consumer, who just read your marketing piece, calls your business and gets this sleepy, snobby receptionist that says, in a very monotone, boring way, "Hello. May I help you please?" If it was me calling you I'd hang up. First things first. The receptionist has got to have an exciting voice. You want people to be excited about calling your business, don't you? It all starts with the initial contact. Do you how they talk about how important the initial 10 seconds are (today it's 3 seconds)? IT'S TRUE!! The first thing you work on is the tonality of the voice -- get some excitement in your words. Then you make the person feel good about calling your business. For example, in an emotional, excited voice, you could say, "It's a great day at XYZ business, and we're really glad you called. How may I personally assist you?" Or, you could say, again in an emotional, excited voice, "Thank you for calling XYZ business. My name is ____. How can I personally assist you?" Or something like that. The key is the tonality of the voice and the words that you emphasis. Does all of this make sense? You also want to work on the words -- test them -- to see which phrases create the best results. Don't be boring, snobby, or short with the people who call your business. That's business suicide, yet I've called many of businesses and that's what I got ... a boring, snobby, short person! Do you want to do business with somebody that is boring and very blah? Absolutely not. Then why would you want to put that kind of a front -- your receptionist -- in your business. What people are looking for is a state change. They want to feel good. If you can link a "feel good feeling" with your business to the consumer, they'll want to do business with you. If the receptionist can immediately make the person calling her feel good -- change their state to a positive one -- you're over half of the way there. I simply can't emphasis enough the importance of the initial words -- and how they're said -- to you. They are crucial!! Let's take this a step farther. If you have already created your U.S.P. (Unique Selling Proposition), you could add that into your phone message. In fact, I'd recommend you do because this states the difference between you and your competitors and why they should do business with you. People Coming To Your Office/Business: How about when people come into your office? Have you made it a fun and an exciting experience for them? If they have to wait to see some, do you have a fun and exciting waiting room? Or do you simply tell them to have a seat -- next to a stack of all those boring magazines -- and so & so will be right with them? Come on, guys, why do you make doing business with you -- and selling -- so hard. There are a number of things you can do to make the wait enjoyable. Let's explore a few of those ideas: How about going to a game store and picking up a few of those brain teaser games. Put them on a desk for your customers to play with. Or maybe buy a few of those "Ripley Believe it Not" toys, and let the waiting customer amaze himself as he tries to figure out why the toy does what it does. If you choose to do these things, get your receptionist -- and staff -- involved in this. If they see him trying out these gizmos of yours, go offer him suggestions, a few tid-bits on the game. Make it fun for him. Give him a challenge. Here's what will happen. For starters, you've separated yourself from the typical, everyday business, haven't you? That's good! Very good! Your waiting room shows that you want their time with you -- even if it's in a waiting room -- to be fun and enjoyable. (You might even put a gizmo on your desk.) Second, who knows what kind of state this person was in prior to coming in and seeing you. However, after a tour in your waiting -- game -- room, they are surely in a positive, fun state, aren't they? Which in turn, makes your job a whole lot easier because you are linking "fun and exciting" states to your business. Are you with me on this? Good. Oh ya, don't leave him in there all day. His fun state will eventually turn to anger if you forget about him, or make him wait unreasonably too long. If you know how long you're going to be, let him know. If it turns out you're going to be longer, meaning he needs to play in your game room longer, make sure he is informed of this. Always be courteous and considerate of other people's time. What else could you do to spruce up your waiting room? How about a soothing, peaceful fish aquarium. It's proven that a fish aquarium is therapeutic and relaxing. You could put in a TV, and give HIM the controls. Be careful with this one, however, because the TV may interfere with the receptionist work. What ever you choose to do, be unique, be fun, and most importantly, make sure it is something that the prospect or client will enjoy. Then, of course, there are the common courtesies you can offer him, such as coffee, tea, water, a soda, even a danish. Make his time with you pleasant and enjoyable -- show him you really care about him. Okay. So now you've seen this prospect, he loved your product and bought it, and you took an application. Now what do you do? Tell him exactly what's going to happen now. For an insurance agency that could be underwriting, inspections, para-meds, or anything else that needs to be done before the policy is issued. As each item is completed, send him a note telling him so. If something gets hung up, call him -- or send/email him a note -- telling him this too. Let him know what's going on with product he purchased. But whatever you do, don't leave him in the dark wondering what's going on. The bottom line is: "Make doing business with you and your business easy, appealing, desirable and even fun." The rewards are many. If you offer your customer this kind of service, do you think that he might want his friends, family and associates to benefit from your business as well? Absolutely. In fact, you'll find a lot of your customers will give you referrals without you even having to ask. Why? Because they appreciate how you made them FEEL! Remember: 1) You cannot service too much. 2) You cannot educate enough. 3) You cannot inform too much. 4) You cannot offer too much follow-up and follow-through too far. 5) You cannot make taking an application too easy. 6) You cannot make calling or coming into your business too desirable. And you do all of this in the name of "Managing your clients, and prospects, states -- the way they feel." Here’s a few more idea’s. Making House Calls What if you go to somebody’s house to sell do a sales call and they have kids? A fun idea is to always carry a bottle of bubbles in your briefcase, or a fun game, or even some candy. That way, if the kids become obnoxious, as they some times will, you can be the hero by giving them something they can do while you talk to mom and dad. Plus, remember, the best way to a parent is through their kids. When you give the kids some special attention, or do something nice for them it goes a long way with the parents. Personally, when I made appointments one of the questions I asked is if they had children and their ages. If the children were young, I’d attempt to schedule the appointment for after they went to bed so I wouldn’t have mom constantly jumping up attending their needs and create a one legged sit. I started doing this after enough moms’ would say, “We have to think it over because I wasn’t able to hear the whole presentation.” How about going on an appointment with a businessman. First of all, I can’t begin to tell you how many businessmen love having their appointments the first thing in the morning, or even before work at a restaurant for coffee. If I had an appointment for the morning at their office, I’d bring orange juice, 2 bagels and crème cheese and 2 donuts. This always allowed me to create a very positive first impression, it invoked the law of reciprocation, it broke the ice and gave us something to immediately talk about, and finally, it created a positive state change. Please, make doing business with you easy and you will own the market place.
Three Immediate Things Happen When You Make It Easy For People To Do Business With You ... 1) They find YOU, call you and give you an opportunity to tell them why they should do business with you over your competitors (in other words, you get more leads), and 2) Because you made the experience of doing business with you so easy, warm, fun and friendly they're telling everyone they know that YOUR company is the one to go to for _____ (whatever your product or service is). That means more referrals and we all know how valuable referrals are, don't we?! 3) You'll find up-selling and cross-selling to be a whole lot easier! People like doing business with businesses the like. If all that isn't reason enough, if they need what you sell again, you'll be the first place they'll go for it. That means, one time customers become repeat customers. Of course, there's another way of to help you make that happen here.
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