We had been talking late last month about several simple techniques for marketing your business opportunity. In prior blogs we discussed how to present your business values to your customers, how your opportunity will help your customers and don't give the customer too much information up front. Tonight we are going to briefly discuss how to answer customer complaints regarding your competition and how to show empathy towards your customers when they have problems or complaints.
When you are in business for yourself, you will most likely have competitors out there offering similar, if not the same products and services that you do. The key is to differentiate yourself from your competition so that customers will be more willing to come to you rather than to your competition. The problem you will most likely encounter (and this will be encountered some time down the road as you remain in business) is dealing with customers complaining to you about your competitor. The temptation will be great to jump on that bandwagon and help "bash" your competition, but that is not really what the customer wants, or needs to hear. Keep in mind, if you goad the customer into complaining about your competition, you really don't know if it is a temporary complaint with the customer, or something that will keep the customer away for the remainder of their business.
We will all annoy customers at some time or another. No matter how good you are in your business dealings, you will some day do something to irritate customers. It is not in your best interest to help the customer complain. Let the complaining customer talk out their irritation, take notes if appropriate and then focus on not doing what your competition did that aggravated your customer. Do the opposite of what you competition did and you will earn the respect of the customer base, more so than joining in on the complaint game.
As the customer is complaining about whatever annoyed them, be sure to understand what the problem your customer is describing. The key is to not just know the problem, but to understand what might be an underlying problem or concern. As a responsible business owner, you need to listen with compassion to your customer and then possibly restate to the customer what you believe the problem to be. Do not be judgmental, your customer is looking to you to solve the problem, not judge what they did or did not do. Your customer will appreciate the time you took to understand the problem and if you were able to read further into what is going on to see if you can assist in resolving the particular issue. Customers will be more willing to come to you for solutions to their problems if they know you are not going to judge them, and if they know that you are really listening to their concerns. This building of trust will be talked about by the customer to their friends and associates and will garner you more qualified business than any advertising campaign ever would.
Tomorrow we will discuss credibility and how to ask open ended questions that do not end in negative "No's".
If you are looking for business opportunities, we have several different opportunities on our website. If you are not sure what you are looking for in a business opportunity, please e-mail us with your questions and we will do what we can to help steer you in the direction you wish to go.
Until tomorrow...
No comments:
Post a Comment