First Impressions Make or Break Deals

Print buyers and prospects are watching you. How do you know if your house is in order? Are you prepared to court new business? Let’s start with the basics.

1) Phone systems and plain ol’ etiquette.

Think of your customer’s experience when calling you. Today, I called a customer and heard “Hello.” That was it! I asked if I had the right place because it didn’t sound like the $5 million printer I’ve learned to know and love.

I made the mistake of googling the company in a rush and on the top of search was its plant phone number. Darn iPhone app!

I got the prepress operator—who was nice, but not a good first impression—and not the number that should be at the top of your SEO goals! You may want to ask yourself the following questions and check the following:

• How does my phone tree navigation work when prompting callers?
• Do I have my people trained on how to answer the phone properly?
• Is it easy to connect with someone when customers call us?
• How many incoming phone lines do I have and are they all operating properly?

Call and check out your competitor’s first impression. The best example of phone etiquette for a large business is Cox. This Fortune 500 company is amazing. Whenever I call for service, the company makes it easy for me to business with this cable provider and shows it cares. I am sure others have had horrible experiences with Cox and posted to www.yelp.com, but for 20 years now the company has treated me right.

I think it is amazing how well Cox makes me feel unique and special with such a large customer base and diverse product line. Just last week I had a problem with my home phone going dead and company sent someone out, fix it, followed up, and went above and beyond. Pretty cool, and it “wowed” me again.