Your client can tell you everything you need to know. There’s a statement! It’s true, clients know everything about you or, if they don’t, it’s their opinion that counts and you need to tell them more.
But, you need to be talking to them and that’s a very scary prospect. I understand.
Most of us really don’t want to speak to customers. We don’t like to ask people what they think of us.
But it’s very important because clients are the ones that provide the money; they employ your people. Without clients you have no business, simple as that.
[player]
You might say without a product, you have no business but you still need a client. They are needed to pay the bills. Get talking to them. It’s their opinion.
The way to talk is to survey them. I’ve mentioned surveys before. Top companies survey their customers continuously. When you survey, you don’t need to talk to all of them at once. You can speak to small sectors of your client base.
You can pick up a phone. You can ask them directly. You can ask them at the end of a call.
You just need to ask them questions, but those questions need to be very relevant.
You may be thinking, “How many questions? How do I do it? What methods?”
A common one in the survey trade is the Net Promoter Score; a single question that can do a lot.
You ask them this simple question,
“How likely are you to recommend my company or my service to a friend or a colleague?”
It’s as simple as that.
To answer, they get a choice of 0 to 10, with 0 meaning “Not at all” and 10 meaning “Absolutely”.
For anyone that scores you up to 6, you want to be contact them and you want to ask them “What went wrong?” because you want to repair what they think of you.
Anyone that would score a 7 or 8, gets sent a follow-up email that says, “Thank you very much for filling in my survey, you scored a 7 or an 8. What would we need to have done better to score a 9 or a 10?”
For those that score you a 9 or a 10, you want to be speaking to them too because they think you’re wonderful.
What you need to be asking these potential Preachers is, “Okay, you’re very likely to recommend us, have you ever done so? If not, what would I need to do to help you recommend us to your friends or colleagues?” You can come up with a system.
To get that question out there, you can use simple tools. I said before about Google Forms.
If you have a Gmail account or Google account (if you do AdWords, you have a Google account), it comes with Google Docs and so does Google Apps. One of the aspects of Google Docs is Google Forms.
Also, you can use SurveyMonkey. The good thing with SurveyMonkey is they’ll have free templates such as the Net Promoter Score. By the way, SurveyMonkey is also free to use at the lower level.
There are other ones such as Wufoo. And, sometimes when you visited a website, have you ever seen where just in the bottom right corner, a little black pop-up would say, one or two questions such as “What could we have done today to make your experience better?”
That generally comes from a system called Qualaroo.
But the most important thing is you ask the questions and you make it easy. Do it by email, don’t expect someone to scribble on a form and fill in an envelope. Record that information, record it accurately and make the most of the information.
If you’re going to get bad feedback, it means you are doing something wrong and it’s no good covering your ears or eyes pretending it’s not there, because people are thinking that.
But by talking to the customers, by surveying them, you can find out how to repair what they think of you.
Think about it. Have you ever been in a restaurant and at the end they give you the bill and then squiggle on the receipt saying, if you go on to this website, fill in a survey, you’ll get a free blah, blah, blah or you’ll enter to win iPad or something?
That’s a survey.
Don’t forget to try and reward people, this is good lead generation. This is a sales and marketing, promotional tool. This is not just asking questions, so be prepared to give them some kind of discount or a reward.
It’s a way to contact them and contact is a good thing, so use any excuse.
Look up good examples. Remember to use the Internet and good old Google. Google “Best customer surveys”, “Best examples of survey questions”, “How many questions should I ask for my restaurant or takeaway?”
You can ask them right to the point of sale. If you have a shop, a store and they’ve just paid, you can ask them right there with, “Can I ask you one question, blah, blah, blah, blah?”
Record the answer.
Weekend Challenge
That is going to be my Weekend Challenge to you. I want you to take out a piece of paper. Do you remember when we talked about paper as it’s much better than drafting it into electronic format, write it down?
Write down three survey questions, three things that you think would teach you something that you don’t know or that you want to confirm, then go look at SurveyMonkey, look at Google Forms and decide which one you want to use.
Get a free account, set up your form and then get ready to send because, come Monday, you’re going to send that out to your customers and you’re going to find out some great information.
Let me know how you get on. By the way, if you don’t have a website to send them back to, have a look at .
Rainmaker sponsors podcasts. It’s a great platform, the easiest way to create your website. We use it at Marketing For Owners.
Now get a piece of paper out, get cracking. And have yourself a great weekend.