How Word of Mouth Messages are Delivered and How You Can Influence Those Messages

Decoding Word of Mouth Messages

Today’s lesson will talk about how word of mouth messages are delivered and how you can influence those messages.

There are essentially 3 methods of word of mouth:

• Expert to Expert
• Expert to Peer
• Peer to Peer

When experts are talking about your products or service you will usually receive an amazing rush of sales and new customers, so obviously this is one of the best things that can happen. You can also help to facilitate this by offering free products to experts for them to review.

Expert opinion can also bring about new ideas that help to fuel new products, services and operating systems within your company. If you take the time to change or develop the opinions of even a small group of experts, you will have the opportunity to help your market explode.

There is a standard word of mouth delivery system that, in most cases, takes a few years. But, you can speed this up into only a few weeks. The standard system is:

• First impressions from an expert
• Organized trial of your products or services
• Pooling peer experiences

It’s important to know exactly who is advocating for your products and service. Take the time to find out who they are and reward them. While, you may already have a customer service system for filing complaints, do you have one for compiling praise? Most likely not. If you take the time to show these people appreciation, they will help take your products and services to the top.

Some of the ways you can show them appreciation are:

• Invite them to a customer appreciation dinner
• Offer to video tape their testimonials
• Ask to interview them for feedback to improve with
• Offer them a premier customer membership
• Ask them to join a referral incentive program

There are lots of things you can offer your biggest fans to help spread the word about your products and services.

Conventional media has been around forever and while it can still be effective, it’s lost a little of its luster over the last few years. There are a few reasons for this:

• Expensive and doesn’t necessarily return results
• Boring, lacking something fresh and new
• Too short of a time slot to offer enough information

While these are all true, there are ways you can make conventional media work for you. For the information to be effective it needs to be presented in the right sequence, come from the right sources, be relevant to the target customer, be credible and be delivered at the right time in the medium.

We’re going to switch gears a little and talk about the two phases of the product adoption cycle. Traditional media is great for taking you through the information stage where you can offer the information you need to your potential customers, but it’s not so great for measuring the results of those efforts.

Without these results you can’t fine tune your marketing and therefore can easily miss the boat and lose potential customers and waste a whole lot of money. Once a consumer has the information they need, they’ll go through a verification process as they analyze whether or not the purchase was a good one. They generally get their information through:

• Direct experience with the product
• Interaction with peers using the same product
• Experts’ experience
• Scientific journals and other resources
• Independent reviews and opinions
• You can accelerate this process by:
• Providing your own demo’s and free trials
• Offer them indirect experience through the experience of others
• Offer a good true story that can be passed around

Once you have the ability and are able to work through these concepts, you will be able to target your customers much better. If you need help with any of this along the way, try our FREE test drive to gain access to an experienced business coach and consultant.

Check it out at www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com/guidedtour

To Your Success,

Nancy Baki at Best Entrepreneur Solutions

www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com

5 Big Mistakes You Can Do That Will Kill a Deal With a Big Fish Client – Part 2

5 Killer Mistakes – Part 2

In the last post we covered the first two of the 5 biggest mistakes you can make in dealing with big fish clients. Today we’ll cover the third and fourth ones: Taking on More Than You Can Handle.

When you take on too much, your business can’t keep up and therefore you can easily lose control of everything and find yourself barely functioning. You want your business to be successful, no doubt, but you need to have a plan for how you will handle the growth. Your clients expect great customer service and highly quality products/services, they don’t know or care about your behind the scenes operations to get those things done.

• Look for these signs that you are taking on more than you can handle:
• Clients’ needs aren’t being met.
• Employee morale is low, clients are upset and you’re in a panic.
• You have to react in emergency mode to save accounts.
• Your current clients are suffering from trying to keep up with new business.
• Profits are going down.
• You are just trying to pick up the pieces of your business.
• Your clients/customers leave.
• Resources are being reallocated.

There a trick called the Mock Fish Plan. This plan can help you react positively when you are facing some or all of these things and help you get your business back on track. This plan will:

• Help increase sales in a short period of time.
• Alter your products/services for the better.
• Fulfill promises you made to your clients.

There are six steps to this plan:

1. Bring in your best team and have them all help to meet the fish needs.
2. Review your operational system.
3. Anticipate future problems better.
4. Communicate better.
5. Include costs in your quotes.
6. Always have a back-up plan.

All Your Eggs in One Basket

You can allow your company to become dependent on any one fish. Eventually or for certain periods there is going to be a slowing down period with your fish. In order to stay in the game you need to diversify.

If you’ve ever mishandled a fish, you could drive away potential fish as well. In order to keep balance and prepare for a strong future, there are a few things you can do.

• These things include:
• Stay in the loop and try to know what’s going on inside your fish company.
• Constantly reinvent yourself and stay at the top of your industry.
• Stay exclusive.
• Try to secure multi-year commitments and contracts.
• Spread your contracts out.
• Price your products/services correctly.

You also need to work to reduce your dependency on your fish. This can generally be measures in sales or profits. Take a look back at the process we’ve used thus far to snag more fish to keep this all in balance.

These are the ways you can help avoid the killer mistakes that can make you lose it all. If you need help with any of these tips or tricks, try our FREE test drive to get the help you need fast.

Check it out at www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com/guidedtour

Next time we’ll talk about the last of the killer mistakes and how to combat it from hitting your business hard.

To Your Success,

Nancy Baki at Best Entrepreneur Solutions

www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com

5 Big Mistakes You Can Do That Will Kill a Deal With a Big Fish Client – Part 1

5 Killer Mistakes – Part 1

There are 5 big mistakes you can do that will kill a deal with a big fish. They are:

1. Not meeting the client’s expectations
2. Mishandling a client crisis
3. Taking on more than you can handle
4. Putting all your eggs in one basket
5. Up cash creek without a paddle

Any one or combination of these can not only kill the partnership, but have the ability to take down your company as well. We’re going to take a bit of time to talk about each one of these, in this lesson we’ll cover the first two.

Not Meeting Client’s Expectations

It’s essential you give your client’s exactly what you promised during the negotiation portion of your relationship. If an event does happen where there is no way to meet the client’s expectations, not only do you have to find a way to fix the situation, but you also have to find out where it all went wrong.

A couple of things could have contributed to this problem:

1. Bad salesmanship. This could mean the salesperson was trying too hard to seal the deal and didn’t listen to the client’s needs.
2. Lack of communication. This breakdown occurs between the salesperson and your operations department.

In order to avoid these mistakes, you need to put a clear plan of action into place that all of your sales staff needs to follow:

• Think before you speak.
• Give yourself a break.
• Perfect your process.
• Pre-format over-deliverables.
• Stay hands-on throughout the entire process.
• Define success.

Mishandling a Client Crisis

Crisis’ will happen, but how you respond and fix them will define your company and interaction with your clients’. You need to respond quickly and effectively. This will help you gain even more trust and confidence from your client.

Some simple tips can help you deal with any client crisis:

• Take responsibility and apologize no matter who is at fault.
• Act swiftly and effectively.
• Step in and take control of the situation.
• Never point fingers or place blame.
• Stay in constant communication with your client.
• Stay calm throughout the situation.
• Keep your eye on the ball.

Now, that you know the top two mistakes you can make to kill a big fish deal, you’ll know better how to avoid making these mistakes in the first place and know how to put a plan of action into place in case of a crisis.

If you need help with any of this, try our FREE test drive to get all the help you could ever need.

Check it out at www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com/guidedtour

Next time we’ll talk about the 3^rd and 4^th killer mistake you can make in working with big fish clients.

To Your Success,

Nancy Baki at Best Entrepreneur Solutions

www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com

Always Show Appreciation to Your Loyal Customers

Always Keep Up the Momentum

In the last post we talked about negotiating with your big fish and how to nurture and build on the relationships you are creating. Today we’ll talk about the power your fish has and how to utilize that for your benefit.

One of the most important aspects of this is to keep your cheerleader cheering. This refers to the ally you created in the company and who needs to stay loyal to you for you to continue a profitable partnership with your fish. You can keep your champion going by offering or doing a number of things to show appreciation. Some of these things are:

• Share the limelight.
• Help them thank their company with new products and services.
• Emotionally connect them to your company.
• Know when to leave them alone.
• Keep your “family” happy.
• Stay on the front lines.

Now that you have some ideas of how to build solid relationships, you need to seek out people to build these relationships with. These alliances will help you get bigger clients that stay with you forever. You can often get in the door by offering them something in exchange for something they need:

1. Power
2. Information
3. Better work experience

These are all great ways to feed your alliance. You need to go into a relationship considering the things a big fish can offer you besides money. These can include:

• The opportunity for your business to expand
• The opportunity to learn from the experience and find ways to grow
• The opportunity to improve your processes, systems and other means of doing business

These are some of the best ways to keep your alliances going strong and your partnerships fresh and content.

If you need help with any of these tactics, try our FREE test drive for great tools and resources that can help you every step of the way.

Check it out at www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com/guidedtour

To Your Success,

Nancy Baki at Best Entrepreneur Solutions

www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com

Are You Part of the 1%?

Are You In The 1% ?

The Rule of 1% is simply defined as adding to your customer service one percent at a time. Before you can do this you must have your consistency perfected or it will never work. This one percent may seem small, but if you approach the vision for your company with baby steps, you will find a huge increase over a solid chunk of time. It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.

Avoid doing too much at one or you’ll set yourself up for failure. Think of the confidence you and your employees will have when you improve one percent each week. By the end of a year, you’ll have improved more than 50%!

While, rules and standards are necessary for growth, always be flexible with your best customers. Most retailers only allow a set number of items into a dressing room to reduce the risk of shoplifting, but it generally restricts the large percentage of people who are not stealing from you. Flexibility is the key to what you deliver to your customers and consistency is the key to how you deliver it.

The bottom line is customers rely on you to deliver what you promise. If you spend too much on bulky advertising that promises more than you can deliver, even your best intentions will unravel quickly and you will fail.

Focus on your vision and baby steps to turn your satisfied customers into Raving Fans.

I hope you’ve learned a lot out good customer service and how it’s essential to your overall success. If you need help with any of the steps we’ve gone through over the last four lessons try our FREE test drive and get access to some of the best resources, tools and coaches available.

Check it out at www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com/guidedtour

In upcoming posts we’re going to explore strategies of bagging the big clients and keeping them.

To Your Success,
Nancy Baki at Best Entrepreneur Solutions

www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com