What difference does satisfaction make?

Some time ago, we read a survey from US thought leader Rain Today(1) on “How Clients Buy”. Every year, they ask buyers of 8 service areas (accounting and financial consulting; architecture, engineering, and construction services; human resources consulting; IT consulting and services; legal services; management consulting; marketing, advertising, and PR; and training services) how they find out about potential service providers and what factors influence their decision to choose one provider over another.

Referrals and general awareness about a company still lead, of course, when it comes to how purchasers to initially identify and learn more about providers.

If you’ve been reading our columns regularly, you’ll know that managing referrals well is a bit of an art, and that we recommend a structured system of education and follow-up to make sure you get the most out of this valuable strategy.

Perhaps surprisingly, the next most important way prospects decide who to buy from is some kind of personal interaction: seminars, lunch-and-learns,conferences and events. For those of you who think regular advertising is enough, this is a bit of a wake-up call: don’t underestimate the power of face-to-face communications. You only need one great presentation to make a memorable impression.

So you’ve got prospects in the door, and you are doing great work at converting them to profitable paying clients. The next step is to keep those clients, and turn them into a robust referral machine.

This is where client satisfaction comes in. Did you know that almost no clients who are extremely satisfied will leave you and go elsewhere, whereas over 80 percent of clients who are only somewhat satisfied – who rate your service 4 out of 5, or 8 out of 10 – may be completely willing to switch?

Think about it! Most of your business would be happy to switch to another company…and that other company is probably knocking on their door right now.
Why? Because they think they will get exactly the same utility from any reputable firm, but there’s a good chance they’ll get people who are more willing to listen to their needs, faster turnaround on their requests, better communication and a more customized solution to their problems.

Here are the steps to creating and installing a customer satisfaction survey.
1. Send a personal letter to every client letting them know you will be starting to measure customer satisfaction, and that this information will impact how you do business in the future. Don’t send a form letter! Every letter should be personally addressed and started “Dear (customer name)”. You may also wish to phone people ; for example, the sales team could call their individual customers personally.
2. If you can, use an on-line tool like Survey Monkey or Constant Contact. These are easy-to-use, inexpensive solutions that tabulate your data for you.
3. Identify what you want to measure. Then, create a series of about 15 statements that customers could agree or disagree with; for example,”I always get quick response when I call with a problem.” or “My work is always delivered on time.”
4. Set up your questionnaire by asking customers to rate each statement on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 means “I don’t agree with this statement at all” and 5 means “I agree with this statement completely.” This way, your customers will tell you how they really experience your company.Send out your questionnaires to everybody you previously mailed. Alternatively, you can ask a third party to conduct your research by phone; we don’t recommend doing this yourself as you will tend to get biased responses (people will either be too kind, or too rough!)
6. Tabulate the answers. Look for patterns. How many of your largest, most profitable Ideal Clients rate particular questions 4 or even worse? That’s a big red flag, and you are in danger of losing them.

If you believe that customer satisfaction comes from simply doing your job, we hope this will change your mind. You must start to measure client satisfaction today, and identify who you can lose tomorrow.

1 RainToday.com is published by Wellesley Hills Group and is the premier online source for insight, advice,and tools for growing your service business.

Who is your customer?

Have you ever entered a store or business and been totally ignored?

Or worse, have you ever been "dusted off", literally dismissed as not worth the time by a salesperson or business owner who thinks they have better things to do than talk to you? Have you ever done this to a person who has come through your door?

Well it happens. We're human and we make quick judgements based on a person's appearance, how they look, what they're wearing, what kind of car they drive.

My advice is to get over it—anyone who comes through your door is worth your time. No matter what impression they give you. You just don't know who they might be and what the business possibilities are until you take the time to speak with them.

Case in point: a business owner told me about a large, multi-thousand dollar sale he made recently to some folks who came into his showroom one day. They were dressed neatly but in obviously old clothing. One could have easily dismissed them as a lost cause for a possible sale—but they were there to buy and they paid cash!

An old friend of mine, who is well off financially, delights in going to high-end automobile showrooms dressed in scruffy clothes. He recently bought a new Porsche. He said the if the salesman was surprised, he didn't show it—he was courteous and attentive from the moment my friend entered the showroom. Smart salesman.

In our marketing practice, we think knowing who your Ideal Customer is, is basic to an effective marketing strategy. That is: knowing the characteristics of your most "likely" customer so you can advertise and promote to other people just like them. This makes ultimate good sense—if your average sale is to men, aged 50 to 60, with a household income of $100 thousand and up, married with 2.5 children and living in the city centre, you just go out and find more of them by advertising in the places where these people hang out.

But, if anyone else happens to walk in your door, don't "dust them off", if they buy, there was no cost of that sale!

Im conserned at all the bad spellin

As the title of this post so graphically suggests, I am concerned about what passes for proper spelling these days. Seems that as written communication has become so much more popular, what with email, texting and computer usage in general, bad spelling has been revealed to be a worldwide epidemic.
Sure, there's spellcheck, but how many people bother to spellcheck their emails and texts (I don't think you can do that on a text message anyway)?
Texting is a whole new world as far as written communication goes—I'm not railing against the use of things like "C U" for "see you" and "4" instead of "for", you can only do so much with your thumbs, especially when you're also driving or watching TV.
What I do object to is just plain bad spelling in everything else—especially emails. I always consider it important when sending an email to be concise and to the point. Short sentences are good, point form works well. But I always check to be sure, my language is correct, I've capitalized and punctuated correctly, and that I've spelled everything right. After all, without seeing your face and hearing your voice, the recipient of an email communication is at a real communication disadvantage—so it's very important to be sure the "tone" of your message comes through in the words you use and the way you set them out.
Your recipient is making a judgement call on you by not only the way you write, but how you spell and structure your communications. Don't even speak to me about people who write in all caps (screaming), or those who can't seem to find the caps key and use all lower case!
My point is: you wouldn't go to see a client in a dirty shirt and a torn pair of pants, why would you send an email with a typo in it?
Check every communication and make the corrections. After all, it's your image we're dealing with!

A list of online advertising opportunities

Just ran across this list of places online where ads appear...if you are not using the web for advertising the breadth of the opportunity may surprise you!

Ads embedded in emails
YouTube and other websites where you watch but cannot download video clips
Promotion or sponsorship specific website
Corporate or overall company website
Pop up ads
Customer reviews and product information on retail sites, such as eBay, Amazon
Search engines and portals, such as Yahoo, Google, MSN, Bing
Video games (product placement, sponsorship of an online game)
Blogs (place on the Internet where one person is sharing their opinion on a topic via a journal-style text entry)
Mobile phone ads (text message promotions, ad placements around mobile content)
Forums (place on the Internet where multiple people are sharing their opinion on a topic)
Classified ads, such as Craigslist, Kijiji
Virtual worlds, such as Second Life (product placement, sponsorship of a virtual game or event)
Social network websites, such as MySpace, Classmates, Facebook, Twitter
Podcasts (a short video or audio file that you can download from the Internet where a person is sharing their opinion on a topic)
Email newsletters that you have subscribed to receive
Brand or product specific website
Banner ads (advertising that appears in the margins on websites)

Fix Follow Up Failure Final

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