Why Do You Spend Money To Lose Clients?

When it comes to growing your business everything matters.

EVERYTHING.

E-VER-Y-THING!

This includes how you and your staff answer the phone.

Yeah, I know. Crazy.

I mean, with bots and artificial intelligence and virtual assistants and phone trees and marketing automation, who actually calls anymore, huh?

The reality is we live in a crowded, noisy, over-connected world.

Whereas in the past, the salesperson was the keeper of the information, now we’re the ones who reassure our prospects that they are making the right decision.

We’re giving our prospects the confidence to move forward.

We’re helping them sort, sift, and separate their options (while we’re sorting, sifting, and separating our prospects…but that’s a topic for another post on prospecting.)

Business success is really simple when you understand that your ideal prospects do not buy from  you for one of only two reasons:

1. They don’t know who you are.

2. They do know who you are.

I’ll address effective marketing techniques elsewhere.

Let’s focus on #2.

Sidebar: Barbara Khozam is a customer service expert, and she lays out how to grow your sales with great customer service during her interview with me on The Sales Podcast.

Nothing is worse than spending money on advertising, PPC, SEO, direct mail, etc. to generate interest in a lead only to scare that person away forever because your staff has the phone skills, manners and etiquette of Archie Bunker going off on Democrats.

Not only will that prospect NOT do business with you, but they will also tell 7-35 other people how rude or indifferent your staff was when they called, which means you lose all of their business as well as any repeat business they may normally do with you.

Spending money to have people not do business with you is a sure way to go out of business sooner rather than later.

You must script the entire prospect/client/user experience from the first exposure of your business to your prospect to the 10th time they buy from you.

Assuming you have advertising and marketing in place, you can get 10% to 300% more business from your current efforts by scripting, measuring, and adjusting the phone answering process your people follow. This includes:

1. How many rings before they answer.

2. Having a live human being actually answer the phone.

3. The first words that exit their lips.

4. The enthusiasm (or concern) with which they utter those words.

5. The speed at which they utter those words.

6. The clarity with which they utter those words.

7. How they conclude those opening words.

   1. With a statement. “This is the Search Engine Ninja.”

   2. With a question. “This is the Search Engine Ninja. Are you calling about local, regional or national search engine optimization assistance today?”

8. The pay scale and motivation of the person answering the phone. (One of my clients entrusted a $10,000 sale to a receptionist making $22,000 a year. Sales when up 467% when she was given a list of disqualifying questions and then turned the caller over to the Director once she had a qualified prospect on the line.)

Cliches exist because they are based on truth and experience.

How good is your first impression marketing?

Have you ever tested your assumptions?

When was the last time you hired a secret shopper to confirm your assumptions?

When was the last time you had a professional sales and marketing educator work with you to confirm you and your staff are exquisite in this area?

See what I mean when I say everything matters?

Market like you mean it.Now go sell something.