BizVision: Articles to help you win

Here's a growing selection of incisive article and tips to help you grow your business and improve performance. For even greater help than these short articles, look through the great selection of books, CDs and DVDs in Malcolm's "success shop". Click on the Shop button to the left.

As new articles are added regularly and others removed, please visit this page frequently to gain new and fresh performance support.

06 Jun 2006	5 tips for earning customer loyalty
06 Jun 2006	Testimonials reduce risk
06 Jun 2006	A 6 pack for cold meetings

06 Jun 2006 - 5 tips for earning customer loyalty

loyal customers are your goal but you have to BREED loyalty. Here's 5 tips

5 Tips for Earning Customer Loyalty

By Malcolm Gallagher, bizvisionplus.com

1. You have to believe!

Client service is not just a mission statement, it's a philosophy to be lived. What makes this statement more than a cliché in your company's case will be the hands-on behaviour that "puts money where the mouth is."

Take the subject of integrity, for example. Companies that are successful in this area take an obsessive, almost neurotic approach to any potential conflict of interest. There can never appear to be a conflict of interest. And never try to work "both sides of the street".

2. Watch your appearance.

A somewhat old-fashioned, yet reassuring attitude comes from your appearance. If in doubt, the default mode is always business attire. It's a respectful attitude no longer evident in the behaviour and practices of many of today's leading firms.

3. Treat them the same as ...

It always comes back to mutual dignity and respect. Customers expect nothing more than common courtesy in your transactions. This demands viewing the experience through their eyes.

As simple as this admonition may seem, it is now more the exception than the rule. Employees no longer have the time, motivation or training to practice the time-old art of forging empathy with the customer.

The same should hold true on the internal front. Addressing the issue of "internal customer" loyalty may require doing a lot of listening . . . visiting your employees . . . encouraging them to contact you or your staff with questions or concerns.

4. The customer is always right

These words seem have been spoken by managers for many, many years, and they are just as relevant today. If you go that extra mile, customers will reward you with their loyalty.

5. It's all about relationship.

Customers want to feel loved. And in most environments, the front-line worker defines the relationship.

The late Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay

Cosmetics said, "Our front-line people are the company. We empower them to make decisions, including giving refunds. It's nothing more than common sense. If customer loyalty develops from a rewarding and satisfying "touch" between buyer and seller, better make sure that the company touch person has been properly motivated, trained and incentivised".

When it's all said and done . . .

loyalty's just another word for nothing left to prove.

Visit www.bizvisionplus.com for more articles, freebies and some great business performance improving products

06 Jun 2006 - Testimonials reduce risk

Your customer worries about the risk of dealing with you. Here are 5 de-risk tactics.

Testimonials reduce risk

By Malcolm Gallagher, bizvisionplus.com

To-day’s business person has one word continually to the forefront – the word is ‘risk’. And it’s this word that can be holding back your sales. Can they risk dealing with you? Can you be trusted? Are you reliable? These are the emotional questions that they need answering.

A good solution is to brush up on your usage of good quality testimonials. Testimonials give potential customers the security of seeing others who have dealt with you. Your prospects are more likely to believe these third parties before you!

So what ‘secrets’ are there to using testimonials?

Make sure your testimonials are SPECIFIC with hard and proven facts. For example a printer may use testimonials like “saved up 26% on our normal costs and delivered the work 4 days early” or a software company may have the quote “cut our production times by 8% saving us £20,000 a month”. Try to give hard-edged, hard facts.
Get permission to use the testimonials and also try and get photographs of your delighted customers using your product or service. Potential customers have empathy with others they see in a photograph.
Try and ‘localise your testimonials. If you work in differing geographical areas or differing sectors try and use testimonials that appear to be local and hopefully your potential customer may recognise or closely identify with the person giving the testimonial
Be judicious about handing out phone numbers of people giving testimonials. You could quickly lose an advocate if they have to spend time taking calls from those following up. However it can be very powerful if you get PERMISSION from the person giving the testimonial to take a call from a prospect at a certain and appointed time.
A great way to dramatise a testimonial is, when you are sitting with a prospect, to pick up the phone and call the person who will give the testimonial (usually by prior arrangement) and then hand the phone to your prospect.

Visit www.bizvisionplus.com for more articles, freebies and some great business performance improving products

06 Jun 2006 - A 6 pack for cold meetings

Getting the conversation going in a cold meeting can be hard. Here are 6 approaches

A 6 pack for cold meetings

By Malcolm Gallagher, Bizvisionplus.com

Attending a cold meeting, (where you don’t know those attending) can be a bit daunting no matter your experience. Try the 6 pack approach I use. These are 6 things that you can comment on or use to get the conversation going. They take a little bit of time in advance preparation but just imagine the contribution you can make if you have something to say about each one of the six.

Something that is relevant to their industry or sector
Something about his organisation that he or she might not know- I often ask an outside contact to make a comment about the organisation I am meeting and give them that as genuine feed-back.
Ideas where what you are offering could give their business extra leverage, competitive advantage or a difference
Examples of similar businesses or organisations that are gaining a benefit from you and how they are achieving it. Use this as both risk reduction and pulling the trigger of greed!
Something that your own company as done for itself from which they could learn and gain
Something of the moment or topical in which your customers in a similar type of business are concerned about.

I research using the web and our extensive business library here at BizVision. I jot down notes for each of the six, visualise the meeting and how I will use them and take a few moments in the car before I go into the meeting to remind myself of them. Often I’ll have them as a hidden crib sheet in the meeting.

I’m reducing the amount of time taken in the preparation by using a tactic I call ‘six pack object’. Objects are those items that may be common to a number of meetings so I can use them in one meeting and again in another.

I’m enjoying some great results from this approach because, if you look carefully at the 6 pack approach, you’ll see it is focused on their gain whilst giving you the platform to bridge any status or awareness gap.

Visit www.bizvisionplus.com for more articles, freebies and some great business performance improving products