Show Them You Care

For many businesses, particularly those providing services, more than 85 percent of business comes from personal referrals and recommendations, and yet many businesses spend thousands of hours, and dollars, trying to acquire new customers, and relatively little time and effort nurturing and retaining their existing ones.

Valuing and retaining your current clients and customers is essential. Not only will you benefit from their continued custom directly, you are also more likely to benefit from any new clients or customers they recommend. And given that it’s it's 6-7 times more expensive to gain one new client or customer than it is to retain one, retaining your existing clients and customers, and being highly recommendable, can have a huge positive impact on your bottom-line.

Clients and customers who already trust and respect you:

• are more likely to acknowledge, and value, what you provide and the benefits they gain from dealing with you
• may be more willing to accept your prices, terms and conditions without question or negotiation
• are often more loyal
• require less 'selling to' and
• are more likely to continue doing business with you, and even increase the amount they spend, as their trust in you increases.

They are also significantly more likely to recommend you to people they know and trust giving you an opportunity to gain new clients whilst reducing your acquisition costs and improving your profitability.

Some people may be willing to provide a recommendation or testimonial without giving it much thought. But, and it's a big but ... most people will only recommend you when they are confident you will be able to deliver on your promises as it's not your reputation they're putting on the line when recommending you. It's theirs.

So how can you improve your chances of being recommended more often and acquire low-cost / high-value clients who are positively pre-disposed to dealing with you? Adding value to your existing clients and customers on an ongoing basis is essential.

1. Deliver on your promises.
Over-promising and under-delivering is one of the biggest reputation damagers there is. It may be tempting to over-state your experience, capabilities and past achievements, but make sure you take the time to clarify understanding and expectations before agreeing to something you may not be able to deliver on.

2 Be Respectful.
Avoid assuming people want to be treated in the same way. Many don't. If you're unsure about what may work for them - ask! The very act of asking demonstrates respect, so long as you act on any information they give you.

3. Genuinely Care. We can only add value and serve effectively when we fully understand what a client or customer truly needs and wants. Discover their motivations before trying to sell yourself or your products or services, and if you feel you're not the best person to serve them, recommend someone who is! Random acts of kindness can have long-lasting, positive, effects.

4. Make Regular Customers Feel Valued and Valuable
Adding genuine, spontaneous, 'no strings attached' value such as forwarding a relevant article, website, or passing on a hint or tip you've come across, for no other reason than you feel it may be helpful or useful for them, nurtures the connection you have and shows you genuinely care about them. Good manners carry a huge amount of weight.


5. Show Good Manner
Be friendly without being overly familiar and be mindful of the fact that people will remember how they ‘feel’ about you more than what they read about you.

6. Act with integrity and live your values.
Be clear about what's important to you in terms of what's negotiable and what's non-negotiable and act accordingly. When you and your team live your values, and demonstrate them in tangible ways on a day-to-day basis, you build trust, and trust engenders confidence which helps improve your chances of being recommended or referred to others.

One of the greatest compliments, and reputation-enhancers there is, is to be highly recommendable.

People who are willing to recommend you, without incentive or reward, are putting their reputation on the line for you. Protect not only your own reputation, but that of the person recommending you, by delivering what's expected with integrity and you’ll find yourself more in demand than ever.

Article Contributed by Hannah Samuel, International Speaker with of Training Edge International
Email : Hannah@trainingedgeasia.com
Website : : www.trainingedgeasia.com

Know Your Social Media Tools

When social media is part of an integrated communications and marketing strategy, it can help to build better online relationships, manage and strengthen your brand, and enhance your overall online position. Done properly, blogs, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube can be used to create a band of loyal followers.

Let’s face it, when it comes to getting and keeping profitable customers there are only four basic components that we can manage:

• Product (your offering — the unique combination of product, service and experience)
• Price (the value that your customer perceives translated into money)
• Distribution (putting your offering within arms reach of the customer)
• Promotion (communicating your offering)
That’s all there is to the marketing mix.

Of course, it can’t be that easy, right? Some of us go wrong by becoming entrenched in traditional marketing strategies. And the rest of us go to the other extreme and become paralyzed by the overwhelming number of tools and Internet applications that seek to bring us together, yet separate us from real face-to-face contact.
Social media has been one of those magical and mysterious technical terms that seemingly everyone under 30 has been all a-twitter about. And those of us over 30 have been curious and more than a little suspicious about.
The challenge that traditional marketers have is in understanding how to use this new “ingredient” in their marketing mix. Is it like a “meat” or just a “spice?”

What Role Should Social Media Play?

If I had to put social media in just one category of the marketing mix, I would choose promotion, i.e., communication. That’s not to say it doesn’t play a role in the other components, just not as BIG a role.

Social media’s primary benefit to your communication strategy is its ability to build relationships and communities between individuals who share interests AND who would not be brought together otherwise except for those interests. If you play the role of bringing people together around a product, service or interest — you increase your credibility, build your brand and may, in time, increase your profitability by creating a loyal following.


5 Easy Ways to Spice Up Your Mix with Social Media

1. Develop a social media strategy that fits your business. Deciding to put together a social media strategy is like drafting the project plan that goes in line with your business model. Never copy a strategy from competitors – use it as a base for reference.

2. Choose the critical few social media applications. No one says you have to use every single social media application that’s out there. Choose a few and choose carefully. Always ask yourself: Who is my ideal customer? What is important to them when they are buying what I’m selling? And which tool will help them connect with my business in an easy and relevant way?

3. Build your brand from the inside out. Think of social media as a giant digital billboard. Treat every post, every tweet and every comment as an opportunity to build your strength and build value around what you offer. Use your smart, knowledgeable and active employees to build your brand.

To start, consider adding a blog to your traditional Web site. Don’t forget to use your logo, company colours, a picture of yourself or any other branding vehicle. You can customize many of the social media tools to match your image. For tools like Twitter, use a photo of yourself in the profile and use your logo and company colours as a wallpaper when you customize your page.

4. Find the right place for social media in your strategy. Right now social media is a shiny new toy. The real work is in finding the right balance between social media and more traditional marketing tools like your printed materials. The ideal outcome is to have them all working together.

As a business owner, create a LinkedIn profile and use it as a place to connect to customers and collect testimonials. Once you feel comfortable with that, move into Facebook and either create or start a group that is focused on your industry, product or service.

You might consider creating a Twitter profile and searching and creating a community or village of people in your industry. Put your Twitter ID on your business cards, have a space or page on your Web site with instructions on how to connect with your online communities.

5. Go mobile. Many blog platforms offer mobile applications that you can download to your phone. Twitter is designed to be mobile. This gives you the opportunity to report and communicate discretely in real time. If you are a salesperson, you can document a creative application of your product. If you are a business owner at a conference you can share links, experiences and feedback with your customers or communities. You can inform your customer community about product fixes and improvements or product launches and even new blog posts.

No matter how you slice it, if you want to be in business in the next 20 years, you’d better be using the tools that 20 year olds are using to decide who to buy from. People can and do have conversations about you, your company and your products and services.

Don’t put your head in the sand and wait for the market to define you.


Article by Amit Kumar, Senior Consultant of Training Edge International

8 Ways To Build a Better Business

I have a thriving business today because I have embraced what I see as the eight massive changes to business building strategies and actions that have occurred since I began my business almost 20 years ago. These eight have also been key to the success of my colleagues at Training Edge International.

1) Spin to Story
Authentic stories sell. Most people ignore advertising because they don’t see it as the truth about our product or service. People embrace real stories about real people which is why genuine testimonials about what we do and case studies about how we have helped people to meet their wants and needs are key ways to attract customers/clients.

What are people saying about your product/s and/or service/s? Are you using what people are saying about you as a key way to build your business?

2) What to Why
“Doing well by doing good” or enlightened self-interest is a key way to build our businesses which is why so many people have embraced the triple bottom line of environmental sustainability, social responsibility, and economic prosperity.

How good is your business for people, and our planet? If you are doing good for people and our planet it is likely that you are making higher profits.

Profit is not a reason for being in business however, rather a result of being good at business. What’s your reason? Douglas Atkin, author of The Culting of Brands, asks: What’s your cause? What do you want to have happen? If you’re not out to cause anything then you might as well go back to bed.


3) Interruption Marketing to Permission based marketing
In the early days of my business I had to cold call. The biggest hurdle I had to overcome was the fact that people saw my call as an interruption to their work. Advertising of cause is the biggest way we interrupt people which is why many of us mute the ads when we are watching television.

Today if we are seen as interrupting people it is unlikely that they will hear our message.

In what ways do you have permission to communicate your message to people. Do you have an electronic newsletter for example that people have opted-in to receive? Do you have numerous ways to collect people’s details and do they know what will happen on a frequent basis once you have their details?

4) Media to Mass Media

When I first started my business, phone books, newspapers, magazines, radio and television were the media available to me, and most were inaccessible as I didn’t know anyone and I didn’t have a lot of funds to spend. Today we can use a multitude of media channels to add value and attract customers/clients, for free!

Are you blogging? Are you on YouTube? Are you using Facebook, LinkedIn or others to build relationships. Today one of the big questions we must ask and answer thoroughly is - What is our strategy for using social media to build our business?

5) Expert to Thought Leader
I could easily validate my expertise when I first started my business. Today being a expert is a given. In order to thrive we must be seen as leaders in our fields of expertise otherwise we get ignored.

How are you perceived in your markets? Are you seen as a leader or just one of many?

In all your business building activities are you positioning yourself as a stand out? And do you prove your standing in all your transactions and interactions with people?

6) Generalist to Niche
Once I tried to be all things to all people. I learned the hard way that I can only truly serve people in certain niches. Are you open for business to everyone or are you the go to person for certain people?

7) Provider to Partner
I was once a provider of certain services and usually I was hired for a specific period of time to provide a specific solution or meet a particular need. Today I don’t provide my clients with solutions to their challenges or problems, rather I partner with them to discover their own solutions. A consequence is that I get paid for the value that I provide rather than the time it takes.

Do your customers/clients see you as a partner or a provider? If your answer is provider then it won’t be long before someone makes your customers/clients a perceived better offer and you will lose their loyalty. Being perceived as a partner is a key way to build loyalty and therefore retain customers/clients.

8) Service to Experience

Providing our customers/clients with great customer service is a given today. Provide less than high standards of service and people will simply go somewhere else.

What kind of experience do you provide for your customers/clients before they buy, when they buy, and after they buy? Unless your answer is memorable across the board then you are not building the business you could be and not only are you are missing out on significant income and profits, you are most likely go backwards.

Article Contributed by Ian Berry, International Business Speaker with Training Edge International

From Contact To Connection

I met a person at a business function recently, we got along well and engaged in some pleasant conversation. Not long after that meeting this person contacted me and asked if I would promote their business to my contact data base. Whilst we seemed to click at the previous meeting I did not consider this person to be someone I knew very well. Their request made me wonder just how many people assume if they have met you at a business function, they can ask you to do something that would normally be reserved for close business associates.

Referral marketers know that simply having a good conversation with someone at a meeting does not make them a good business connection. With referral marketing it’s not necessarily “who you know” or even “what you know”, it’s more about how well do you know the person before you can move to the next step and include them as a powerful ally in your referral network.

Simply put, this means you must not only have a wide network of referral contacts, you must also have a deep connection with the most important people within your referral network. Most networkers strive to make as many contacts as they can so that their network is wide spread. They keep making contacts in the hope that the next person will be the one who will bring just what they need this week, month or quarter.

If you are going to make the effort to develop a wide network, make sure you also spend just the same amount of effort in developing deep connections with each of your potential or actual referral partners. After all, when the time comes for you to ask them to promote you or your products or services, you want to make sure you have a strong connection before you make the request.

If you are going to make a request of someone within your network, consider first, are they a contact or a connection. Based on my experience a contact is someone you know, though you haven’t as yet had a chance to establish a strong relationship with. A connection is someone who you know and trusts you because you have taken the time to get to know them and establish your credibility with them.

Taking the time to get to know your referral partners will earn you loyalty and support, rather than the person who rushes in and asks for assistance prematurely. This person will likely receive little or no support as they are not yet in relationship with their potential referral partner. Like a tall tree, taking the time to put down roots is imperative if you are hoping to grow your business big and strong.

I live in Brisbane, Queensland, in November 2008, we were hit with one of the most vicious storms ever experienced in my lifetime, a one in one hundred event. A 40 metre spotted gum was uprooted and fell over in my backyard, destroying half of my pool fence in the process. After the storm had passed I marvelled at the root system of this magnificent tree, it was shallow and broad, sadly not enough to keep the tree standing in the storm. Be careful this doesn’t happen to you and your business.

To put down substantial referral marketing roots I recommend you take the following actions:

Build solid relationshipsTake the time to get to know people, find out as much as you can about their business and their personal likes and dislikes. Ask what are their goals and aspirations, what are their interests and hobbies, what sport do they follow. The more information you can gather and share the better a relationship you will build. The better relationship you have the better the chances are that you can assist each other in your referral marketing efforts.

Network in the right placesMake sure that you attend the right networking groups for you. What works for one person may not work for another. Whatever you do don’t just join any networking group because someone asks you to. When you do join the group turn up regularly to all the meetings, contribute, build relationships, before you are tempted to ask for an opportunity to do business.

Think about, how can I help you, rather than, how can you help meOne of the most powerful tools in any networking group is to think about how you can help other people first. Share relevant information with your potential referral partners, invite them to other functions that might be of benefit to them, position them favourably with others they need to get to know. Keep in mind that you want to be in a position where you are always able to give them something, remember the philosophy “givers gain”.

Article Contributed by Lindsay Adams, International Speaker with Training Edge International and President of Global Speakers Federation
Website : www.trainingedgeasia.com
Email : Lindsay.adams@trainingedgeasia.com

Don’t Leave Excellence To Chance

HOW would you rate the experiences that you have had as a customer from the various service providers whom you have engaged with in the recent past ?

You must have experienced excellent service somewhere, sometime. And you must have experienced average and poor service too.

What makes you rate a service as "excel¬lent" "average" or "poor" ?

Universal patterns

I have asked this question to thousands of people across the world, and here is what they say:

■ Excellent

Service staff go the extra mile, exceed expec¬tations, are very good at what they do, engage in proactive communication, focus on asking for and listening to and working on feedback, very prompt, keep their promises.

■ Average

Service is not differentiated from others. The provider delivers only the basics and routine transactions, quality is inconsistent and interaction is robot-like. Problems take a long time to resolve.

■ Poor

Service does not meet expectations, staff members are rude and unprofessional, knowledge levels are very low and the envi¬ronment is chaotic and disorganised. Serv¬ice people make promises that are never kept, problems are not resolved and the company is very difficult to access.

These definitions of service quality are probably similar to your own. There seems to be a universal pattern that customers everywhere in the world can relate to.

And whatever your job is, and whoever your customers are (internal or external), they will probably see your services in the same way.

A lot of organisations and employees tend to leave the delivery of service excel-lence to common sense.

In practical terms, this means people say tilings like:
"Of course I can and do deliver excellent service — if I have the time, if I'm in a good mood, if the customer is a 'good' person, if.. .if... .if...".

Of course, for all the "if s " to occur at the same time is rare!

Is average service really OK?
Theoretically, average service should be neutral — neither positive nor negative.

In reality, however, when customers de¬scribe a service as "average", their descrip¬tions tend to lean towards the negative, rather than being strictly neutral.

If you ask a customer to tell you how you are doing, and he says "OK, adequate", is that good news or bad news ?

In a sense, customers giving you an average rating are potentially of more concern that people who give you a poor rating — and one reason for this is that they are very easy to miss.

It is very easy to ignore customers who say the service is OK, and focus only on the complainers.

But this is a potentially dangerous thing to do because "OK" is really "not OK"


Poor service is not intentional
How often do you or your colleagues come to work with the thought, "Today, I want to give really poor service to my custom¬ers"?
That sounds like a silly question.
The honest answer is that people very rarely deliver poor service to their custom-ers deliberately.

This applies to organisations also, as most will have some aspect of the message "Customers are important" in their vision or mission statements.

An organisation may segment its cus¬tomers, identify "priority" customers and define higher standards of service for them or even identify "non-customers^ that is, people whom they do not target their services to.
But none of this is equivalent to deliver¬ing poor service intentionally.

The paradox of service

So if excellent service sounds like common sense and poor service is almost never de¬livered intentionally, it follows that excel¬lent service should be the norm, and poor service the exception.

In real life, however, the opposite seems to be true.

Why is excellent service so rare, when it should be a matter of common sense? And why is poor service so common, when it is rarely intentional?

This is the paradox of service.

To resolve this paradox, organizations and individuals must first acknowledge that the service they provide cannot be left to chance, accident, luck, natural good intentions of people or common sense. It must be consciously managed.

Delivering service excellence
There are three important lessons to take away from here:

1 Service excellence is not common sense
It may sound obvious and simple, but it requires conscious and continuous attention from management and individual employees.

Here are some things you can do:

• Put service excellence into your goals and individual key result areas (KRAs); build metrics around service excellence and then constantly review, monitor and track it (Hint: "Customer satisfaction" should be a regular item on,your Ops Re¬view agenda).
• Review processes and engineer them to deliver service excellence.
• Recognise and retain employees who demonstrate service excellence.


2 Focus on the neutrals
• Strive to convert customers who give you an average rating. Find out :-
• Who are they?
• Why do they rate you as "average" and not "excellent" ?
• What can you do to change that situation or rating?

3 Dig deeper into poor service issues
Find the root cause(s) — don't just stop with the obvious superficial reason(s).

Ask the frontline employees — they usually know the reasons behind poor
service.

Article by Dr Anand Kasturi, a facilitator, trainer and executive coach with Training Edge International He has been working in the area of service management since 1986 and received the Customer Service Guru award from Oracle Corporation in 2007. For details, e-mail anand. kasturi@trainingedgeasia.com or
visit www.trainingedgeasia.com

Whose Fault Is It Anyway ?

Not getting all the business referrals you want? Then it’s all your fault!

I joined a close contact networking group many years ago, a group where we met regularly to pass business referrals to each other. I was the President of the group at the time and remember inducting a new member, we’ll call him Phillip. He attended the meetings regularly and when it came to the part of the meetings where we passed referrals to each other he would stand each week and say “Nought to report”.

After six months Phillip came to me and said “I’m not going to renew my membership as I’m not getting anything out of these meetings. I’ve got hardly any business from belonging to this group. This just doesn’t work!” In fact I’ve heard similar stories or variations on the same theme over and over. Phillip went on to say:

• This group is fickle, they used me once and never again
• I’ve bought something from every single person in this room, but they’ve never bought anything from me
• The members just don’t understand my business

What Phillip had missed in his membership of our group was that in order to get a referral sometimes you have to give a referral. It’s called the law of reciprocity, In order to receive, you must first give, or you get back what you give out.

Phillip was quick to blame anyone and everyone else in the room, except himself. If you belong to a networking group and aren’t getting referrals or if you pass referrals to other business people and aren’t getting any in return…whose fault is it?

I would suggest all you need to do is look in a mirror and you’ll see the culprit staring straight back at you.

If you are thinking along the same lines as Phillip, then you may want to consider the following:

This group is fickle, they used me once and never again
If you did business with a member of perhaps a new client, did you follow up to make sure they were happy with the goods or services you supplied? Did you go the extra mile to turn a customer into a regular client? Did you give them a reason to come back again and again to buy from you? Did you make sure the customer saw your best work first time?

I’ve bought something from every single person in this room, but they’ve never bought anything from me
Often people join networking groups thinking that it’s only the people in the immediate group that they are going to do business with. Raise your aim! Research by social scientists confirms that every business person knows at least 250 other business people. Why limit yourself to just doing business with the person in the room?

An astute networker will give outstanding service on the first engagement with a view to cementing a longer term relationship. Once trust is established, then you can begin to tap into those other 250 people that each person in your network knows. If you know ten other business people and they trust you, suddenly you can access 2,500 people. All that needs to happen next is for you to ask for a targeted referral to that network.

The members just don’t understand my business
Finally if the members don’t understand your business you will never get access to those potential 2,500 contacts. You must make the effort to educate your network. Take time to meet with people in your network. Organise to meet one on one with the people in your network and take the time to learn about their business. Then and only then, you can teach them about your business.

Here’s the Top Ten things to teach them:
1. Your products and services
2. The hours you are open for business
3. Where you are located and whether you are mobile or not
4. How can you be contacted, phone, email, website
5. Your target market
6. Your ideal referral
7. The kind of business you are looking for
8. What kind of business you aren’t looking for
9. How will other people know when to speak up and recommend you, give them words or phrases to listen for in everyday conversation
10. How to set up an appointment with their client to introduce you as a recommended and preferred supplier

The list goes on and on. The key here is to take time to educate the other people you want to bring you business referrals. If you aren’t getting all the referrals you need it’s probably your fault !

Article Contributed by Lindsay Adams, International Speaker with Training Edge International and President of Global Speakers Federation
Website : www.trainingedgeasia.com
Email : Lindsay.adams@trainingedgeasia.com

Nourish Your Relationship With Trust

TRUST is an integral part of the sales process.

Once your customers trust you, they will remember you and refer you to friends, family and colleagues.

“Go to this person, you can trust him”, is one of the most valuable endorsements someone can give you.

As trust becomes harder to earn, it becomes more important. And salesmen who can build trust are the business saviours in this new financial environment.

The best way to build trust is to demonstrate it — and in the current economic climate, it has become harder to do that.

You feel the right thing to do by your business is to be wary. Your default becomes “don’t trust”. And it’s this attitude that starves the sales relationship — depriving it of the nourishment of trust that it needs to grow.

Demonstrating trust — or the lack of it — sometimes takes just the tiniest thing, and sometimes involves very little actual risk. Here are two examples from my own experience.

In a café after a very satisfactory lunch, I went to the counter to pay and noticed an open bowl of mints. Now, this would normally be seen as a friendly gesture by the management. The difference this time was that in the bowl of mints was a piece of cardboard with a handwritten message: Free Mints — Take ONE only.

Now, I’m no handwriting expert, but the word “one” seemed to be written in a very aggressive way. Needless to say, I didn’t take one. I wondered what might happen if I dared to take two. Would I be accosted as I left the premises with a demand that I hand it over?

The clear message patrons took away was that the owners didn’t trust us. And if they didn’t trust me with their mints, I wasn’t inclined to want to continue the business relationship with them, and I made a mental note never to go back.

Just a few weeks ago, I wanted to purchase a piece of specialised computer equipment. I discovered one supplier who explained that he didn’t usually stock the model I wanted, but could show me another one.

When I visited and explained the usage, he agreed that the model I’d asked for was the right one for me.

It would have to be ordered in and would take three to four days. I asked how much deposit he required to confirm the order and he said, “Nothing. I trust you. Just pay for it when you pick it up.”

I was with a business colleague and we were both shocked at this. Neither of us could remember a recent occasion when someone whom we had met 10 minutes earlier would take such a risk.

We spoke about him to many people over the next few days. Four days later he called to say it had arrived and when I picked it up I also purchased a whole lot of consumables without even comparing prices — because I trusted him! I will now support and recommend him whenever possible.

Now, when you think about it, what was his real risk? He may have been left holding this item he didn’t usually stock — which he would have to sell to someone else or trade back to the distributor for credit or alternative stock.

Either way, his chances of an actual loss were minimal. So, a small risk he took left a lasting impression and created a loyal advocate of his products. This equals a great outcome!

I am not suggesting that you take unnecessary risks, but the alternative is to lose the ability to trust.

As Samuel Johnson said in the 18th century: “It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.”

While it didn’t take much risk to build trust, it took something as tiny as a mint to destroy it.

Take the effort to build trust, take the initiative to demonstrate it, and you will take the lead in customer loyalty and sales performance.

Article Contributed by Kevin Ryan, an international speaker , workshop leader and author with Training Edge International. He is a business communication expert specialising in the areas of employee and client engagement, sales, humour intelligence and presentation skills.
Email : kevin.ryan@trainingedgeasia.com
Website : www.trainingedgeasia.com