Categories
Business

5 Ways to Treat Your Customers Like VIPs and Deliver “Wow” Moments

Learn to deliver more than your customers expect and you’ll win them over and create a loyal fan base.

Customers expect good service, but what if you wow them with exceptional service, going above and beyond what they expect? This white-glove service will keep customers coming back and make them shameless fans for life who’ll recommend you to more clients.

To create “Wow” moments, you need to make customers feel like the most important people in your world. Let them know you’ll bend over backward to make their day better. It’s all about the overall customer experience — and the details in between.

Think about the last time you experienced a “Wow” moment at a business, one where you were really impressed. You probably did a lot more business there and told your friends and business associates about it, too.

The following are five ways you can “Wow” every customer by going beyond expectations and providing the additional value they don’t expect, at no additional cost.

1. Do what you say you’ll do, without exception

Doing what you say you’ll do becomes easy when you’re dedicated enough to build systems around “Wow” moments. When your goal is to impress customers, you look for ways to go the extra mile every time. The key is to get your entire team onboard to ensure that they all follow up and meet their deadlines so details don’t fall between the cracks.

Giving customers more than they expect can also come in the form of a free gift or more help and support. Everyone loves to get exceptional value. Even little things can create special WOW moments. Everyone loves to feel appreciated!

2. Admit mistakes and fix problems when things go wrong

Face it, mistakes and problems happen. However, if you don’t know how to handle them, they’ll hit your customer satisfaction, retention and business success hard.

Nightmare customer service is rampant in the marketplace. We’ve all experienced it. In fact, we’ve encountered so much poor service, we tend to take it for granted at times. That’s crazy! Why give money to a company that doesn’t care?

Some of the biggest customer-service mistakes include over-promising and under-delivering, hiring the wrong people, not empowering and training your team, giving customer policy more importance than customers, and not asking customers for feedback. Don’t make these mistakes at your business!  

3. Gain respect from customers with feedback

To gain respect from your customers, you need to earn it. Everyone within your organization must be on top of their game at all times to improve the customer experience. That includes accepting responsibility for your mistakes. Customers prefer businesses that own up to their mistakes and take the necessary steps to correct them.

In fact, customer relationships often get even stronger when a problem is handled well. To continually improve, look for feedback. Survey your customers on a regular basis, and reward them for taking the survey. After all, the feedback supports you and the decisions you make. Customers want to help you improve if you respect their time and value their opinions.

Getting customer feedback helps you gain a better understanding of your market and the competition. Customers are a great source of information, and they can help you, even more, when you ask the right questions. For example, ask “What can we do to serve you better?” Or ask the same question in more detail: “Tell us about the favorite experience you’ve had with us.” Instead of “How is our team doing?” ask “Who on our team made your customer experience special?” or “How did our team create an exceptional experience for you?”

4. If customers aren’t a good fit, let them go

You can get customers who are a nightmare to deal with because they lack respect for your value. When this happens, you need to know when to let them walk away. You may even have to fire a client, which is a difficult decision since your business depends on the income from that client.

Most business owners find it difficult to let bad customers or clients go. They fear the loss of income or suffer from feelings of failure. A business owner might try to stick it out with a bad client, hoping things will get better. But they rarely do. You need to know when to walk away from these types of people. Don’t let your business be held hostage by bad customers or clients.

Many self-employed people have trouble saying “no” to opportunities that don’t serve them well. But turning down opportunities allows you to walk away from people who don’t treat you and your work with the respect and dignity you deserve. It’s hard to say “no” when you need the money, but it will cost you much more in the long run when you agree to work with a customer who’s the wrong fit or who takes advantage of your goodwill. You don’t have to be everything to everyone. Focus on the top 20 percent of your ideal market to gain the best and most valued customers.

5. Always follow up and follow through

Many businesses spend a lot of time, money and effort chasing down new customers, only to lose them after the first or second transaction because they don’t follow up or follow through after the sale. If customers don’t feel appreciated, they’re likely to go to your competitors instead of making you their choice for repeat business.

Following up with existing customers is where the money is! When customers have had a good experience doing business with you, it’s a heck of a lot easier to get repeat business from them than to chase after new leads.

Always give customers more than they expect, especially after the purchase, to show your appreciation for their business. Following up makes customers feel special and gives them a chance to be heard and engage effectively. Existing customers who receive a follow-up are more likely to purchase more products or services. So make follow-up and follow-through a consistent mission for everyone on your team.

Source: Entrepreneur.com

Categories
Business

3 Cold Call Tips That Will Help You Book 15 Appointments a Day

The daunting task can actually be fruitful if you follow these rules.

Cold calling can seem daunting. You have a list of numbers to call each day, and you may find that your calls go to voicemail more often than to an actual person. You can’t seem to get someone on a call, much less set up an actual appointment. You try to call more people, but get the same results.

When I first started cold calling, I struggled to get prospects on the phone. I diligently worked through my list of numbers, often with little success. Then I changed my approach, and for six straight months I booked at least 15 appointments each day. After learning these three cold calling rules, you can use them to help you meet your goals:

1. Get a “yes, yes”

This concept originates from the book How to Win Friends and Influence People, which teaches readers how to connect with people by being more likeable.

Getting a “yes, yes” is about attaining agreement. This strategy is not the same as tricking the prospect into saying yes by asking open-ended questions that are not related to what you are calling about. You want to obtain agreement on key principles that are relevant to the topic at hand. Start with small things that are principle-based and then build on those. You want to create a shared viewpoint by agreeing on things you have in common.

Most prospects you call are going to say that they’re happy with the services or products they currently have, so begin with that. If you are selling insurance, for instance, begin by saying, “I’m sure you have an insurance plan that you’re happy with.” The prospect will most likely agree that they do, but because you understand their position, they will instantly feel more comfortable with you.

Then move the conversation along using questions about things you will continue to agree on: Can we agree that time is money and that anything is possible? Is it possible that there is a better insurance offer out there?

Once you have the prospect agreeing with you, you begin to transition to the process of setting up an appointment with them. It’s important that you never disagree with the prospect because this can be seen as arguing. You can acknowledge their objections and agree with their viewpoint, but not their conclusion.

2. Cold calling is not a numbers game.

There is a long-held belief that the more people you call, the more appointments you’ll be able to set up. This method doesn’t account for the reality of the world we live in today.

Think about your own workday. You might be in meetings in the morning, running errands over your lunch break and taking your kids to a doctor’s appointment in the afternoon. It could be that you are only at your desk for a couple hours on a given day. If I only call once before moving to the next number, it’s highly unlikely that I will connect with the prospects on that call. But if I missed you in the morning, I may be able to reach you in the afternoon.

The key is to call fewer prospects each day, and instead call those prospects more often. I recommend calling each lead three to four times a day for up to three to four days. As an example, I was making 40 contacts each day to get 15 scheduled appointments. But don’t leave a voicemail since this will put the ball in the other person’s court. Only leave a voicemail after you’ve exhausted trying to get ahold of them as a last resort.

3. You can sell more to prospects who don’t have a need.

Most people fail at cold calling because of this one mistake. The mantra that we have all heard is that you must first identify a need when prospecting on the phone. This old way of thinking has you only focusing on prospects who have a demonstrated need. By doing this you have limited your potential prospects to a small percentage of any B2B market.

This is because 95% of all prospects will tell you that they are happy with what they have. They don’t have a need. They’re happy with what has worked in the past. If you’re only focusing on those who have a need, it can make your cold calling efforts frustrating and akin to trying to find a needle in a haystack.

The company Febreze was almost pulled from the shelves for this exact reason. According to The Power of Habit, Febreze advertised exclusively to people they felt had a need: people with pets or who smoked. But, these people were desensitized to the smell of their home and didn’t know it smelled bad. The market audience was actually with people who preferred their home to smell fresh and clean. Had Febreze only targeted people they felt had a need, they wouldn’t have survived as a company.

People are used to what they have until they are shown something different, so don’t eliminate this population as potential prospects. They are your best target market.

Categories
Leadership

12 Leadership Lessons from Mailchimp Co-Founder and CEO Ben Chestnut

My ongoing series in partnership with Entrepreneur, If I Knew Then: Leadership Lessons, is a unique platform for hosting virtual fireside chats with high-profile CEOs of major brands, from Indeed and Nextdoor, to GoDaddy and DocuSign. These insightful sessions spotlight the minds of successful leaders as they share one-of-a kind advice and lessons for both current and future entrepreneurs. 

For our 16th episode, I spoke with Ben Chestnut, the CEO of Mailchimp, a company he co-founded with Dan Kurzius in 2001 as a side project to their web design agency. Together, they designed Mailchimp to be a delightful, yet powerful email marketing tool that gives small businesses access to technology that was once reserved for larger enterprises. The company has now evolved into a platform that helps small businesses with everything from buying a domain name and setting up a website, to creating an online store and setting up eCommerce marketing automation.

Headquartered in Atlanta, where Chestnut received his bachelor’s degree in industrial design from Georgia Tech, Mailchimp has impressively scaled in growth over the past two decades, but its mission remains the same: to empower the underdog. Chestnut leads a team of 1,200 employees across six offices, including in Atlanta, Brooklyn, Oakland, Santa Monica, Seattle and Vancouver. Mailchimp helps empower millions of businesses and entrepreneurs globally with savvy marketing, commerce tools and award-winning customer support

Source: Entrepreneur.com