We all realise that references about our work are very important, but many companies neglect this. If we do care about references and want to display them on our website, it is important to do so in a skilful manner. I would like to describe here how to increase the credibility of opinions about our company in the eyes of potential customers.
I will start with the weakest opinions that companies post on their websites or online forums. I will illustrate this with an example:
Level 1 – “A very reliable company, they performed the service quickly and professionally” Marcin
Level 2 – “A very reliable company, they performed the service quickly and professionally” Marcin Nowak from Sanok
Level 3 – “A very reliable company, they performed the service quickly and professionally” Marcin Nowak from Sanok, ABC company
Level 4 – “A very reliable company, they performed the service quickly and professionally” Marcin Nowak from Sanok ABC company – we also attach scanned references with the company stamp
Level 5 – “Video references” – imagine references in the form of a short interview, during which representatives of your company and your client discuss the completed project
As you can see, not all references are equal…
I would like to share with you a solution that will allow you to collect references, increase sales in your company and monitor the percentage of satisfied customers at the same time:
The procedure is simple, and its genius lies in the consistency of its application.
It usually looks like this:
- We perform a service
- We issue an invoice
- We wait for payment
Perhaps the customer will recommend us or come back to us someday
But what if it looked like this:
- We provide a service
- We issue an invoice
- we await payment
- we thank them for paying the invoice by sending them a text message saying “thank you for the transfer :)” – I got this idea from Urszula Bartkowska from Muzyk, a fantastic sales trainer.
Can you see the difference? We trust that the customer can. Our behaviour after receiving payment is crucial for customer relations and, consequently, for increasing turnover in our companies. So here’s another great idea for you to try out in your company:
- We call the customer after, say, two weeks and ask if they need any help, perhaps something minor has come up in the meantime that needs to be corrected, and the customer did not have time to report it because it was a minor issue.
- We ask if they know anyone who might need a similar service and could recommend us. If so, we have the best possible recommendation🙂 because what could be better in sales than calling a potential customer and saying, “Hello, this is …………. I’m calling from the company …………. I got your number from my friend …………. I provided him with the service …………. and he told me that you also need ………….etc.😉 “
- Please provide written references
At our agency, we have noticed that many customers are not familiar with our entire range of services. Someone contacted us about service x, but we did not make sure that they were aware of the full range of our capabilities. What can we do? We can call the customer to ask if everything is okay, if they consider our company to be recommendable, and if there is an area for cooperation, would they still like to work with us. If they say yes, we ask if we can send them information about our other services that they might find useful. This could be a PDF or a simple email. Let’s not overwhelm the customer with information; we should only outline the potential areas for cooperation. Respect your customers’ time. Ask when they will have time to review this information. It is important to know when you can call and ask which areas of the offer they are interested in.
Finally, some advice for business owners, sales managers and customer service managers.
You probably want to provide your customers with the highest level of service. I would like to show you how to monitor the percentage of satisfied customers in a simple way.
All you need to do is agree with each salesperson that they MUST obtain written references from every customer. If they fail to do so, they must explain why. If the customer is satisfied, there will be no problem obtaining the reference. If, on the other hand, something went wrong, we will know what we need to improve. There is another advantage to this solution. Do you think that after introducing such a rule in the company, salespeople will feel that they have to work harder? 🙂
