Are your people losing you business?

MAle hand picking up antique phone

You know how to speak to prospects and customers, how to build relationships, provide the information they need and show that you can meet their needs.

But what about your people?

Who in your business, whether on the phone or by email, could potentially speak to a customer? If you don’t know or haven’t checked that they speak to prospects and customers as you would then you may be losing business without knowing.

Here are a couple of examples to illustrate my point.

Two different small businesses have lost business recently…mine. In both cases I walked away because of a frustrating experience with someone who worked there.

One was a graphic design and print outfit who created something that wasn’t particularly good. I asked for some changes via email and the designer (not the owner or manager) replied using exclamation marks.

Using exclamation marks is the equivalent of shouting which killed any relationship building and I found another to do the work. I have now used this second company for a number of jobs and spent thousands of pounds which could have gone to the first company.

The other business that l walked away from was an IT company whom I asked a series of questions by email with regards to the hosting of a new web site. I specifically asked that they answer my questions because they came from my web developer and with these specific answers we could decide the best way to host this site and whether to use them or not.

This email went to the business owner who immediately passed it to an engineer to respond. The engineer said I could have whatever I wanted, threw a load of jargon at me and gave a monthly hosting price. He didn’t answer a single question directly and gave me nothing that I could do a comparison with. It was quite an easy solution to not go with them.

Whoever can answer the phone with an outside line, receive and send emails, network or even bump into someone who might be interested in your products or services can potentially lose you business without you ever knowing. And what if it’s a new prospect that could have turned out to be one of your best customers?

Make sure your people can talk to prospects and customers, can extol your vision and the benefits your company offers just as well as you can. Provide training if necessary.

No only will it help you keep your current customers happy but might just win you new customers and lucrative new contracts to boot.

 

Image: michaeljayfoto