Experiencing Pain

Experiencing pain is hard. No one likes it. The pain you go through while running a business is mostly of the emotional variety. It is a place you would not go willingly. Yet, having experienced the pain of a situation, you find that you can live through it. Even more, you usually can learn from it. Take the pain of losing out on a big sale. It hurts, it may affect your bottom line negatively, but you can also learn from it. Next time you will be more prepared, know what warning signs to look for, and have a more tailored sales pitch.

Anticipating Pain

Anticipating pain is something else. I think it can be more depilating to a business. Here is what I mean. If you go into a big sales pitch, you may expect to fail. It has happened before, after all. You become adverse to the possibility of failure, so you take measures. Rather than learn from the past pain, you do what you can to avoid it. You may just convince yourself that you will fail and give it little effort. Even worse, you may not try.

Avoiding Pain

In business, as in life, you tend to want to avoid painful things. If I hurt my knee, I start to limp and hop so I don’t put any weight on it. This is fine, because eventually I know the pain will go away and I can get back to walking normally. But in business, it is possible to start limping and never stop. Something could cause pain one time and you could avoid it forever. You allow the anticipation of pain to limit your possibilities.

Take a situation where a small business owner hires an employee to do a job that she has always done in the past. Great news, the business is moving forward! But wait, the employee doesn’t pan out. In fact, the new employee does a horrible job. It is a nightmare. Eventually, the owner lets him go. She vows never to make the same mistake again and takes the job back over herself. Now the business can’t grow like it could if she would just find the right person to fill the job. But her anticipation of pain will keep her from trying to fill that role again anytime soon.

In that example, the owner had a chance to learn from the pain she experienced. But she didn’t. Whenever you experience pain in your business, try to diagnose it. What really happened to cause it? Avoiding it in the future will not be helpful in any way to your business. The business owner in the example should have looked at her hiring process, the systems she had in place to help the hire do the job, etc.

Going through painful experiences in your business is no piece of cake. However, if you do not face the pain head on, you could seriously derail the potential of your business. The good news is this. You can learn from past experiences. When you anticipate pain, it is usually worse in your mind than it will be in reality. In fact, the more you confront it, the easier it will get.

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.

photo credit: hectorir

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.

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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