I was recently astonished by my experience at my new dentist. I was referred to the practice by a friend who raved about it.
- They had a creative and updated website that invited me to make inquiries electronically.
- They were responsive to my online request for an appointment.
- They were thorough and friendly.
- The bills were easy to understand.
- They did all the legwork to make sure my insurance would cover as much of the work as possible.
- The dentist remembered key details about me and my family when I came back for more work three weeks later.
I thought to myself, “This place is SO great! Everyone should be coming here for their dental work.”
And then I really got to thinking about why they were so great. Then, I got sort of sad. Because the truth is, this dental practice did nothing more than what ANY successful business should be doing. So why was I so blown away by a company doing all of the things that should be just par for the course?
The sad truth is, it’s because it’s pretty rare today for a company to behave like this. Our expectations have been spectacularly lowered lately, haven’t they? We now routinely expect to be kept waiting. We expect to be treated coolly or as if we are an interruption of someone’s work and not as a welcome friend. And we expect to have to fight over bills and insurance claims.
So now I want you to turn this concept inward and look at your own company’s practices and ask yourself, “How do we rate on these issues?”
If the answer is not A+, maybe it’s time to make some changes so that your customers feel that “WOW!” feeling every time they interact with you. It will go a long way toward getting you more referral business and building the kind of loyalty that is a MUST today. I’d love to hear your results and thoughts.
COMMUNICATION—How does your website look? How responsive are you? Are you employing any kind of social media to communicate or push valuable and relevant content out to your customers and prospects?
COURTESY—If a job is late, how do you convey that information? How well do you focus on solving problems and keeping clients thrilled? How do you treat visitors? Who greets them? What is your waiting area like?
THOROUGHNESS—How accurate are your estimates and invoices? How detail oriented are your CSRs, estimators and production staff? What is your Quality Control like?
HUMAN CAPITAL—How well are your sales people trained? How well do they know your products and services? And what about the soft skills? How are they at rapport building? Do your customers like them? How well do your salespeople understand your customers’ businesses and challenges? What is it like to be a customer of your business?
So I’m curious. How did you rate? What changes need to be made? How will you make them? Share you answers by posting a Comment below.
Blogger, author, consultant, coach and all around evangelist for the graphic arts industry, Kelly sold digital printing for 15 years so she understands the challenges, frustrations and pitfalls of building a successful sales practice. Her mission is to help printers of all sizes sell more stuff. Kelly's areas of focus include sales and marketing coaching, enabling clients to find engagement strategies that work for them and mentoring the next generation of sales superstars.
Kelly graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in Political Science and, among other notable accomplishments, co-founded the Windy City Rollers, a professional women's roller derby league. She is also the mother of two sets of twins under the age of ten, so she fears nothing.