Customers Are Your Best Salesman

Know Exactly What This Includes!

I did a previous post on how to attract customers.  It has a lot of continued readership.  The title seems to attract a lot of visitors.  That gives me the indication that this subject is driving a lot of business owners to seek out more information on how to attract more customers.

There are a lot of reasons why customers go where they go to purchase what they purchase.  When we become one of those places where they go, it gets fun.  Business can and should be fun.  I have worked for many models that were not fun.  Good business is hard to do in those environments.  It is also difficult to grow one of those models.  Somehow a business model that carries an atmosphere of being no fun is a business model that does not generally produce great results.  Being fun to participate in winning is one of the silent keys to making sure your model wins for a longer period of time.  That does not mean that making your business fun to do will guarantee better financial success.  It will not.  Being fun to do is not the key driving force to producing great financial success.  It helps, but it ain't the key reason.

Customers, however, like to hang out in a business model that is more fun to experience.  They do not want the fun to interfere with how quickly they need to get their problems solved, but they do enjoy it when that happens and it always seems fun to have that kind of good service completed efficiently.  I was standing in a business model yesterday that had one of their routine customers approach me.  This model just recently had to make a serious management change.  It was the kind of management change that nobody enjoys performing.  This customer expressed an interesting opinion about the change.  He defined how he liked the manager that was being removed.  He also felt that the rest of the staff in this operation was a group of really good people.  He expressed how he understood that sometimes certain things had to be done to maintain proper order in an organization.  He said he respected that tough set of responsibilities.  He thought if there was any good time to make that kind of tough move, this was that time.  He said he felt comfortable with doing his business with any of the other staff members because they always seem to make his experience a fun thing to do.  He said that is one of the main reasons why he comes to do business in this place.  It has become one of his pleasures when he needs something they offer.  Think about those most valuable comments.  Would customers say things like that about your staff?

Customers are your best salesman.  They will tell others why they should select your model to do their business.  They will network your business model to people you do not normally reach.  This is especially true about web-based business models.  I have done a lot of business with websites I would never have found if it were not for the word of mouth selling someone shared with me about the qualities they liked from the site they described.  I originally went to those website business models because someone I trusted referred those sites to me.  It is that simple.  I continue to use some of those sites because I also like them myself.  I also refer them to others.  I have also become one of their silent salesman.  Customers are your best salesman.  If they are not happy with your business model, they will not be as apt to refer your model to others they know.  The customer who pulled me to the side yesterday to express how happy he has been with the business model that had to make a serious management change is one of those who passes the good word around.  He is one of those who has become a good salesman for the business he uses.

Connecting well with the customer you see is a vital piece to how well they will share what you do for your customers.  Other customers like to know who does this kind of respectful business.  They will give your model a try if someone else tells them about how good you are.  That is how you reach the people you may never get to reach.  That is how growth quietly occurs.  That is how you insulate yourself away from the negative cycles of a tough economy.  That is exactly how you break volume and growth records.  You operate well with the way you treat your consumer base.  They will become your best salesman.  When your customers become part of your army to market what you do, look out competition.  Your competitors will not enjoy knowing how well you attract those additional people to frequent your model.  It will irritate your competition.  They will begin to "bash" what you do well.  Your customers will recognize this kind of play and draw closer to those things your model does very well.  If you have those important things down pat, you will reinforce the good characteristics of your "consumer attractions and abilities" to the ones who like what you do and they now become strong supporters in the world of networking that becomes your new secret army.  Consumers are your best salesman.

Don't Cheat Your Customers Out Of Having Fun!

Developing quality relationships with your customer base is a hard thing to manage.  It takes a lot of time working this kind of consumer likeness.  Your staff will be adding time of value to each customer they serve.  Customers like being heard.  Customers like being coddled.  Customers like being spoiled.  This takes a lot of staff time to perform that stuff well.  I have seen a lot of business leaders get frustrated with their staff for taking this kind of time with their routine customers.  Some business leaders are thin with employees due to the tight economy and a lot of important work needs to be done.  When a staff member begins to spend too much time chatting with one of the customers, the leader gets nervous about what is not being done and as a result they tend to apply pressure to move things along.  This kind of action can become one of those negative reinforcement moves.  It can cramp up the needed atmosphere for producing great consumer salesman.  I prefer to take the time and work that customer into a better pattern for an improved relationship.  I know that customer will enjoy the experience more if I take the time to make better things happen.  I might have to listen to that customer more deeply as they describe how well their grandson did at last weeks football game.  It matters to them more deeply than any staff member or owner might ever know.  Get in tune with how well that customer wants to be recognized.  Customers are your best salesman.  Give them a complete chance to go sell who you are and what you do.

The time I invest in the chit chats we have will be turned in multiples as the new customers begin to arrive.  I could never calculate how much it means to the growth my models enjoy, but I know it is one of the key reasons why many business models do much better during tough times.  It is the relationships you have with the customers that come in which builds up the return for the ones who share how good you are.  Customers are your best salesman.  Give them more time to perfect why they sell who you are.  Do not always worry about how inefficient customers can make your staff become.  I know customers are very used to doing business with the machinery we make them use in the experiences they face with the purchasing they do.  I know customers will interact well with the machinery approach to efficient business models.  I know that works well in most cases.  However, give me that same successful and efficient system and allow me the right to insert some added great customer interactions with my selling staff and I will show my bottom line a future growing business concern.  Customers will begin to flock to the one who adds quality relationships to the picture of efficient success.  It is that added touch that will determine how hard your competition will need to work to get back what they lost in traffic flows.  I vote for improved relationships.  I consider it a great time investment.  My staff knows this truth.  They learn to perform it well.

If your business model has some bad designs in how it functions you can be assured that some customer ill-will may damage your ability to expect them to become good salesman on the street.  You may need to clean up how your business model functions poorly.  Get better at how well and consistent you develop a good working machine.  Your business model needs to operate cleanly.  It needs to be functioning on all cylinders in a great way.  Once that is achieved, make sure you have the strong ability to add personality to the relationships your staff develops with the customers your model attracts.  Also make sure new customers are welcomed in the very same way.  That new customer may be there because someone referred them.  The one who referred them wants to be "right' about how they suggested your model to their friend.  Make sure your staff understands how important it is to complete that loop.  Nobody may actually describe how they were referred, but trust me, it happens a lot more than an owner and their staff ever knows.  It is your business responsibility to make sure your model and your staff understand this potential.  Customers, even the brand new ones, are your best salesman.  Give them plenty of reasons why they will tell others how well you did.  They will share this truth to others if they feel strongly that they will easily be "right" in their descriptions of referral.

If your model has the habit of giving some customers a little riff about how they fail to respect your staff and operations, trust me, others will soon know how bad your business model performs.  It is very difficult to break volume records with this kind of reputation.  We all know this truth.  Sometimes we get outside of ourselves and forget to practice it.  We especially forget to practice it when a customer forces us to treat them tougher because they did not act exactly the way a good customer acts.  We get so personally offended that we tend to get huffy and change the way we treat who they are.  People, where is your tolerance?  Do not get personal with the issues your customers stir up.  Go find a taller problem.  This kind of thing is not worth producing a more negative future result.  I have never 86'd a customer in my life.  Many deserved it, but never have I done that move.  Learn how to kill them with kindness.  They will naturally never come back.  Those kinds of customers do not understand that kind of treatment.  They will naturally and quietly disappear.  Quit using your upper hand to remove them.  It is stinking thinking.  Never lower yourself to that level of play.  Remain above it, especially in the heat of battle.  It is easy to do the right things when all is well.  It is not so easy to perform friendly things when the battle is coming on in full head of steam.  Be at your best when the steam is the hottest.  Grow up and be more mature.  Some customers act crappy.  Who cares?  Be nice anyway and move on.  Quit going to battle with foolish junk.

Instead, I consider a tough customer to be a cool challenge.  Somewhere down that rotten path I enjoy seeing their money get deposited into my accounts.  Success on this battle front is one of the best and most quiet victories you can ever enjoy.  I have a lifetime of little victories like this quietly resting in my memory banks.  I am looking for a few more.  I tell my staff's, throw me the tough ones.  I will even give them a cheek to chew on.  In the meantime, I will be quietly running my flashlight around inside their head to see where an opening will pop up to allow me the opportunity to transfer some of their money into my account.  Don't kick 'em out.  Some of my best customer salesman were at one time the worst nightmare as a nasty customer we feared.  They will emotionally protect how well your business model performs.  They make some of the best sidewalk salesman.

Make sure you get this one down consistently..."customers are your best salesman."

Until next time...