Posts Tagged ‘good chance’
Use the Right Words to Talk to Customers
The words you choose to communicate your message matter. You need to pick the right words for your intended audience. You may have heard that you need to dumb down your language for a universal audience. Well maybe, but that is not what I am talking about here. It doesn’t matter if you speak like a Harvard professor or a first-grader, if you use words that your intended audience doesn’t relate to, you’re sunk.
Don’t Cuss at Church
Imagine you have a chance to give your message in front of a church audience. You go ahead and get up there and give your normal speech, which just happens to be laced with expletives and graphic imagery. How well do you think you will get your message across? Not very.
Adapt to Your Audience
You need to adapt what you say to your audience. In the case of your business, your audience is your ideal customer. Lets say that you sell technological solutions to small businesses. There is a pretty good chance that this set of customers, small business owners, is not all that well-versed in techno-speak. If you try to speak to them in your own language, the one you use when conversing with fellow geeks, you simply won’t make any sense to them. You need to change your words, use stories and examples, and perhaps talk real slow.
Its Your Fault
If you ever find yourself loosing patience with a customer for not keeping up or not understanding what you are saying, take a deep breath and consider that it may be you who is at fault. If you don’t take the time to change your words so that the customer can better understand you, then you should not expect them to be able to keep up.
Useless Information
There is a pervasive problem of businesses using their own key words and jargon in their marketing and sales pitches. Here’s a classic example, and forgive me if I get the technical terminology wrong. If you are selling a computer, you are likely to talk about the memory in technical terms. You might say that a computer has 3 gigs of memory. In the sales pitch, this will just roll off your tongue and you will think nothing of it. You know what it means. Its part of your every day speech. However, your customer doesn’t have a clue what it means. When you say it and move on, a customer who doesn’t understand is forced to file it the drawer in their mind which is labeled “useless information.”
If you recognize that what you are saying isn’t understandable to your customer, you can change the way you say it. Instead of talking about gigs, you can tell the family-man looking to buy a computer how many pictures and videos he could store on it. Likewise, you could tell the business-woman how many documents and Power Points she could store. Change your words so that they make sense to customers.
Learn to Relate
You want to be able to relate to your customers. You can be the most affable person in the world, but if you use words that don’t make sense, you will never achieve this. Instead, get to know your ideal customer and learn how they talk, what they think about on a daily basis, and what they are likely to understand.
I read a great article the other day called I Don’t Talk to Clients About Social Media Anymore, by Edward Boches. In this article, Edward talks about how people don’t relate to the terms that we relate to. Instead of talking about Twitter, social networking, and blogging, all terms that can scare away the uninitiated, he suggests talking about things that businesses already understand and then relating them to social media.
Make Them Comfortable
That is a great way to still get your point across. Just change your terminology and find ways to relate what you are saying with what your customers already know. People don’t tread far from their comfort zone. Your job as a small business is to find a way to make them comfortable buying from you. Using the right words can make all of the difference.
Have a Small Business Question? Ask me and I will answer it here – email me with your question now.
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Bradford Shimp is the publisher of All Biz Answers. He is also the co-creator of Idea Anglers, a place to see your ideas come to life through collaboration. Follow on Twitter @bradfordshimp. Let Bradford help you with your business – visit BroadRiverCreative.com
Help Customers Spread Your Story
The best marketing that can ever take place for your business is when one friend recommends your business to another friend. That close bond of trust between two friends cannot be replicated on a large scale. Yet, you can tap into the power of that trust by using the referral.
You do this by helping spread the real stories that real people tell about your business. You can also play a big part in encouraging those stories to be told.
You have doubtless seen ads where real customers tell their stories. Even if you doubt just how real these customer are, there is a good chance that you trust what they are saying a little more because of the perception that they are real. You don’t know the people in the ad, but you can relate to them because they are real.
Why do you have an easier time relating to what a customer is saying about a product than to whatever is coming directly from the company’s marketing department? Here’s why. A marketing department often thinks from inside the company. A real person thinks about how the product or service betters his or her life. In other words, a real person thinks like you or me.
What does all of this mean for your business? Well, for starters, whenever you get the chance, shut up and let happy customers do the talking for you. They will have a very easy time connecting with other potential customers, because they have been in the exact same place. In this way, a customer can often do a better job communicating your message than you can. They speak from a place of trust and focus on the points that are going to matter most to their friends. Often, they will tell friends about you after they hear their friends complain about something or mention a need. They have a relationship and out of that they can provide a recommendation that would be worth gold if it could actually be bought.
Good referrals can’t be bought, by the way. They must be earned. I don’t mind if you offer a reward for referrals, I just don’t think its that useful. If you want consistent referrals, you need to build consistent communication with your customers. You can ask for referrals at the end of a sale if you want. But the fact of life is that people make suggestions through daily interactions. Your customer may not know anyone who needs your product today, but they may have a conversation a year from now where a referral will make perfect sense. Your job is to keep your message fresh in that customer’s mind, even if the sale happened a year ago. You do this by providing useful information via blogs, newsletters, webinars, and more.
Keeping the conversation going is probably the best way to ensure that your story is being spread. You put your effort on keeping the story alive in the minds of your customers and fans. They do the job of spreading the story, one to one.
Since asking for referrals one time is not the most effective thing (you will basically get a list of cold leads), use the capital of trust that you build up during the sale to ask for something else instead. I like to get a few things from the customer. Of those things, a testimonial is an important component. Ask your customers for testimonials that you can use in your marketing. And if you get a great testimonial, take it further by asking to sit down with the customer, record an interview and make a case study out of that relationship.
And there is one more thing that you can ask for at the end of the sale that will help spread your story. Ask your happy customers to post online reviews. Sites like Yelp, Google Maps, and Angie’s List can drive referrals and make it possible for customers to post comments and reviews about your company.
This is a better use of the after the sale ask, because that review or testimonial will be viewed by people who are considering your service. That is the magic of letting customers spread your story. Whether they do it one to many with online reviews and testimonials, or if they are doing one to one referrals, real customers can communicate with real customers and get your message across better than you could ever hope to.
Recommended Reading
I am constantly on the prowl for good business books. Right now, I am reading Crush It, by Gary Vaynerchuk. I love Gary’s take on passion and business. This book will give you a kick in the butt to get up and get moving as you pursue your passions and your business.
If you are interested in Crush It, you can get it through Amazon by clicking here or by visiting your local bookstore.
Have a Small Business Question? Ask me and I will answer it here – email me with your question now.
Get Unique Content Weekly with The All Biz Answers Insider Newsletter
–
Bradford Shimp is the publisher of All Biz Answers. He is also the co-creator of Idea Anglers, a place to see your ideas come to life through collaboration. Follow on Twitter @bradfordshimp. Let Bradford help you with your business – visit BroadRiverCreative.com
