So I need to go over a topic that I rarely see anyone speak in depth about: Negotiating the Deal! There are some folks who briefly touch the topic, but I’d like to go a little further into it. Because if you cannot do it well or successfully, then you really aren’t going to have a great career in selling. Without pushing the customer away, the entire purpose of professional negotiations is to reach an agreement that benefits the salesperson and the customer in a win-win situation. It is NOT about you getting the upper hand. At the same time, it is NOT giving the customer everything they want just to make the sale. There must be some balance, or one of you will walk away from the table feeling salty and ripped off. And that always leads to bitter feelings and almost never a repeat sale. And if you have been in the sales business or business management for ANY length of time, then you know that repeat business is the goal. Repeat business is what will give you a great and successful career in sales.

These 10 suggestions, can help you exit negotiations as a winner:

#1: Start negotiations expecting to offer your highest price and conditions.

Always begin the negotiations with your highest price and conditions, as this is the place to start at. Then you can always come back a little, so that the customer feels that they got something from the deal. You really don’t want them to feel like you got the better end, as that will often lead to them getting another bid / offer. NEVER let it get that far, where they want to leave the table. This is a Lose / Lose!

#2: Don’t assume you have to match every customer concession.

The customer will always have their own demands, or what they want out of the deal. Expect it! Count on that and be prepared beforehand to give them much of what they want. If you can. Draw up a list of the things that you are willing to give them before the meeting. That way you can easily give them away if need be.

#3: Don’t give a concession without getting something in return.

So when you give a concession to the customer, always ask for something in return. Let them see that if you give them something, they must give something. This way, it really does become a give and take, and most importantly, it allows your customer to feel like your peer or equal. As well as feeling like they have power here, like you are both working TOGETHER. Because ultimately, they have the ultimate power. They can always get up and leave the meeting. Then you are done! Most salespeople will have this “superior” attitude. Like they are doing the customer a favor by just speaking with them. NOBODY responds positively to that.

#4: Make concessions in limited amounts.

Don’t give away the moon when giving concessions. Have a handful that you are willing to give up, and then stick to your guns. If you have too many, then you run the risk of appearing that your whole product is worthless. They may think “Jeez, if this guy has ALL this to give away, then what is he NOT telling me?” And again, if you get to this place, then you will be done! Because you have sown distrust, whether you wanted to or not.

#5: Don’t make your willingness to concede well known.

Some salespeople are like puppies. They are just so excited to be here and be alive in the room!!! And that is really a great place to be with a client. Just don’t go overboard and inadvertently give the impression that you will give anything away, just as long as they become your customer. Because the customer will smell that and go for your jugular. Their primary concern is the welfare of their business, not yours. If you give them the chance, then they will gladly take it. And then you are back to what I was saying earlier. There will be bitterness and feeling ripped off. Only this time, it will be you feeling this.

#6: Make sure the buyer understands how much your concession is worth.

When you give your customer a concession, make sure that they know how much that is worth to you and what you are giving up. That way, when you ask them for a concession, they will be more open to giving equally.

#7: Don’t jump at an offer of “Let’s split the difference.”

Sometimes this means that the customer has done a little more research than you, because this usually means that they come out a little better than you by “Splitting the Difference”. Be careful of this ploy, as it usually means something else.

#8: Handle the outrageous offer carefully.

This is a difficult challenge for you. You don’t want to come right out and ask “WTF? Are you insane?” And then at the same time, you don’t want to give up either. You have to come up with a response that will completely diffuse this situation as well as let them know that you are not to be trifled with. A simple technique that I have used is to just say this: “Gosh, I am really sorry, but there is absolutely no way I can give you that. My boss will NEVER approve that”. And then I will go on and ask the bomb. “Is this a deal breaker?” If they say yes, then you have to call their bluff. Then I will stand up and say “Thank you so much for your time”, and then prepare to leave. If they let you go, then they weren’t really serious about buying from you. But most times, they just want to see how far they can push you, how much they can get from you. And you must be willing to walk, you must be able to show them that they will not be able to take advantage of you. If it works out that they ask you to stay, then you will have won.

#9: Understand all the conditions before you start making concessions.

This is important that you know exactly what each concession means… how it will affect you and your bottom line. Make sure that it benefits you before you agree to it.

#10: Get a commitment to buy before you make a concession.

At some point, which is up to you, you need to ask this question: “Okay, great. We have agreed on this, and this and this. If I give you this final concession, will you authorize this agreement and we can move forward?” If they say they need to think about it some more, ask them why? Sincerely ask them why. Because if you have been negotiating for the last hour or two, and they are still hesitant to sign, then they are either playing with you, or they have a legitimate objection. But when the negotiation process if nearly done, you want to be able to walk out with the signed agreement in your hand.

In conclusion…You need to walk the razor’s edge of giving the customer enough to make them happy, and at the same time make enough money on the sale so your company can grow and you can go home and feed your wife and kids. Or your dog or cat… Well, you get the picture. Among the most important small business ideas that you can add to your arsenal, learning how to negotiate successfully will greatly enhance your career.

The experts are telling us that in today’s economic environment if you want to keep and build your customer base then you need to learn to add value. Value is your differentiator, value is what will make you standout from your competition. So what does that mean to “really” add value? Isn’t it enough that you deliver a high quality product or service to the prospects and customers who want it, why do you have to add value?

Because in today’s economy what you sell, your product or service has become a commodity. Think about it, from the customer’s point of view, in this day and age of the internet and global competition, it not the product your customers are buying it is the service. In other words the extra added value they believe they are getting. So no, it is not enough to just to deliver a high quality product or service.

What these experts really mean when they say we need to add value is that you need to more proactive, more tuned in, and more action oriented when it comes to creating the customer experience. You need to create the opportunities to provide the kinds of things that make your customers say wow, makes them tell their friends about you and best of all keeps them coming back.  You need to add value in a way  that makes them emotionally connect to your company, and do things that make them realize (without you telling them) that you are different from your competitors.

Adding value is more art than science and to do it well you need to do it consistently and seamlessly for your customers. Let’s take a look at an example, a missed opportunity to add customer value. Last week, I received a letter from the attorney I use for our legal services. The letter was asking my husband and I to contact their office to set up an appointment if we had any questions or concerns about our estate. The letter also asked that if we preferred to be contacted by email to simply call the office.

Well, that sounds like a pretty good letter right? I mean they were proactively reaching out to their client base to make a connection. They were offering to help if we had questions, and even went so far as to ask how we would prefer to communicate in email, call or in person. Well, let’s look a little closer, while they technically did everything right, they missed the opportunity to really add value.

Here is the rest of the story. I have been clients there for over three years, and I always communicate through email. I made it clear right from the start, with any of our service providers, that the best way to communicate with us is through email or via cell phone. Part of adding value is being easy to do business with, and understanding (and remembering) how your customers communicate is a big part of that.

As I did have questions, I went on to email the office to schedule our appointment asking for a Friday about three to four weeks out. The response that I received via phone call was that our attorney was not available on that date, and I was given some Tuesday and Thursday mornings she had time to meet with us. Now again, I have been clients for three years, and each time I schedule appointments I have to remind them that I see clients each day Monday through Thursdays 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. And I can only meet after hours or on Fridays.

Lastly, my attorney’s assistant let me know that I needed to grab one of those dates she offered as soon as possible, as my attorney is very busy and she could not guarantee the availability of those dates.

I trust that my attorney, by sending this letter and having her assistant calls me, wanted us to feel valued and engaged as clients. But, at the close of this letter I felt more emotionally disconnected than I had before I received it. Why? It is clear to me they do not really listen to what I say. The very fact that I got a letter asking me if I would prefer to communicate in email, after I have already told them I do. The very fact that I have shared my schedule with them over and over, yet they still try to schedule me on Tuesday and Thursday, and lastly the reference to how busy my attorney’s schedule is made it sound as if they are doing me a favor in setting this appointment. I mean I am paying for it, shouldn’t accommodating my schedule be more important?

So what could our attorney and her assistant have done to “really’ add customer value, and what can you do to use value to stand out from your competition. First, make a commitment to get to know your customers and listen to them. Take notes, make lists of what is important to them and what they need to feel important. Two, remember! If you asked a question about how they want to be serviced, then remember it. While asking questions is part of adding value, listening and following-thru as it relates to their needs is what completes the process. And third, be proactive. Offering ideas, strategies and ways to improve your clients experience before they ask is what really makes you standout from your competition and makes your clients go WOW.

Again, in this economy competition is fierce, the consumer is far more selective, and the available cash to spend on services is limited. Do yourself, your business, and most importantly your customer a favor, and listen to them, acknowledge their needs, respect their time, and remember the details and unique aspects of your relationship with them. Your return on investment will be well worth your time.

Condensed from a Pipeliner SalesChat Interview with Joel Capperella 
Interview by John Golden

Joel Capperella is a leading marketing consultant with 20 years of strategic marketing execution in enterprise software, SaaS and technical professional services. Joel specializes in guiding his clients to obtain bigger pipelines, increased brand and product awareness, faster revenue and empowered transformation. Joel has worked with companies of all sizes, from juggernauts like SAP and Oracle, to small startups with new injections of cash. He is also a contributing writer to Huffington Post, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, HRO Today, and ERE.

Recently Joel was our special guest on Pipeliner SalesChats, and gave us some amazing insight into the right way to bring about customer advocacy.

Q: What would be your explanation of customer advocacy, and why is  it important?

A: When we think of customer advocacy, we oftentimes mistakenly think of it as something that serves us. We want to gain that level of relationship with our customers so, quite candidly, we could use them in the next deal to offer us a testimonial, or get on the phone with one of our prospects.

This self-serving approach usually results in a not-great ability to serve the customer and decreases our ability to tap into our most important customers, help them partner with us and extend our ability to sell our solutions. It needs to be customer-oriented and focused.

Q: If you’re really going to look at being customer-centric from a non-self-serving viewpoint, what are some of the things you’ve got to do?

A: Somewhere along the way I think we’ve lost the concept of being more prescriptive to our customers—in other words trying to understand their business even better than they understand it themselves. They’ve got one set of challenges within their context; we’ve got the good fortune of seeing it across multiple businesses. We see these challenges in different scenarios.  

I think to achieve this level of service-oriented customer advocacy, we have to make it our business to understand those challenges across all of our customers, across the entire industry, in a way that we could identify something that benefited customer A that’s also going to equally benefit customer Z, maybe in a bit of a different nuanced way. That’s our job—to  serve them in a way that’s going to let them tap into the information that’s going to help them do their jobs better.

Q: If you were going to start a customer advocacy campaign right now, how would you recommend going about it?

A: Getting back to the idea of placing their needs central, there are things we can do to begin to create a natural engagement.

For instance, every company that’s been in business for a year or 2 has at least 1 case study. I tell customers to dive into those existing case studies—look beyond the 2-page summary that actually got published. What’s the story behind it? What was behind the metrics? Who were the individual professionals on the customer side that benefited from that good? And what about the customer’s customer—how did they benefit?

You could take that 2-page piece and extend the life of it infinitely by creating additional blog posts, presentations, infographics. Video is so easy these days—get them on Google Hangouts, Skype or Facebook Live and ask them about the nuances behind the metrics.

That’s just 1 single case study. Let’s say you have 5—you could literally jack up your customer advocacy for the entire year based on just those 5.

Q: At Pipeliner we created a model called Network Selling, which is a win-win for both the buyer and seller, so that the buyer becomes the advocate and network multiplier. From your experience, how can salespeople get into that mindset of making it a win-win and almost an enjoyable experience?

A: I learned one of the best lessons of my career working with a life insurance salesman. The best life insurance salespeople have incredible networks. When they close 1 policy, they know there’s 5-10 more sales there, right in that same relationship. Nobody can talk about life insurance easily, so these salespeople serve their clients by helping them talk about what they’ve just done.

They also provide little favors, like if they’re moving they introduce them to their realtor.

Sometimes we forget about those things. The man or woman we’re selling to has a career and career aspirations. Connect with the prospect to help them advance and drive their career forward. Help them be a better manager or leader. It might not be related to our product or service at all, but it helps empower that network relationship. It helps embed us into a place of service.

Q: The period right after the purchase is a time you can really win advocates. What are your thoughts on that?

A: I thoroughly agree. I’ve worked for some really big ERP players. Back in the 00’s we could roll up a bus of 20 professionals to take down a deal—we had an expert on everything. The model doesn’t support that any longer, but the complexity hasn’t gone away. So the salesperson really has a greater burden on their shoulders.

I’ve seen that the best salespeople care intimately about the successful implementation of what they’ve just sold—they don’t just cash their commission check and move onto the next deal. They’re almost a quarterback of serving needs, and being the one “where the buck stops.”

Q: Could you give us some examples of where you’ve seen great customer advocacy programs and what they look like?

A: I have a software company I’m doing business with right now, and they’ve taken on the concept of the advisory panel. They’ve made the advisory panel customer-driven, and the panel brings up the topics they want to discuss.

What’s interesting is that the customers participate not because they are compensated or get preferential treatment—they’re not and they don’t. They feel they’re collaborative partners in what they’re trying to accomplish with the solution.

The same could be said for services. One of my professional services clients profiles the different freelance professionals that they place and that they use in their projects. They raise and elevate them to an all-star status. Each month they’re actually profiling a different professional and a different skillset, on a different job, on a different project.

It’s a good story to tell for talent, because they need more of that to be able to do these different jobs. But it’s also a portfolio of expertise they can then offer their clients: “We’ve done a job like yours, and here’s the story.” So it serves both ends.

Q: With all your experience in working with and talking about customer advocacy with people, what is the biggest mistake you see people make?

A: I think without a doubt the biggest mistake is simply not asking for the referral. Any good salesperson knows that you’ve got to ask for the business, even ask for the close. You should likewise ask for the referral.

Another big part of it is setting expectations, and doing it early in the customer relationship. “We’re going to do this for you, you’re going to love it. It’s going to have a big impact to your business and your careers, and we’re going to want you to talk about it.” You could even make it part of your contractual language.  

Q: What would be the #2 biggest mistake that you see?

A: Video is so easy today. Every salesperson has a video device they’re carrying with them. We should set the expectation with our sales force that every time you have a great conversation with a customer and you’re face to face, ask them to take a selfie video with them. It might seem silly and you might be uncomfortable with it at first. But once you get in the habit of doing it, all of a sudden you have all these video testimonials.

Q: How can people get in contact with you and find out more about customer advocacy?

A: You can find me at joelcap.com. My email is joel@joelcapperella.com, and I’d be happy to chat with anyone further.

Customer Advocacy is greatly enabled by Pipeliner CRM.

As a sales leader, you live and die by your results. No doubt, you experience intense frustration when members of your team don’t seem to get it. Equally frustrating are the salespeople that are so focused on their numbers they turn customers and prospects off. What is the key to building a team that is focused on results in a way that customers and prospects appreciate and you are able to consistently meet your sales objectives?

#1: Focus on the customer’s results

This is really why we are in business. The purpose of business is to create value for customers first, and shareholders second (as a consequence of consistently creating customer value).

As you track opportunities in your pipeline, be sure that everyone on the team understands the outcome that the customer wants. While this sounds obvious, in the heat of battle, it is often lost. Salespeople often look at their pipeline as an indication of how much money they will make, rather than a reflection of the obligations to achieve customer outcomes. And it’s not just salespeople; sales managers can be just as bad. I can remember, early in my career, working for one sales manager that loved the fact that I consistently exceeded my numbers. What he couldn’t stand was my focus on ensuring our implementation projects were successful. When I communicated customer problems to him, his response was, “Adrian, it’s not your problem. You need to stay focused on selling.” Actually, it was my problem. First, win-win means we win “after” our customers win, not before. That means our customers problems are our problems. Second, it was my reputation. Salespeople live by making promises. If our word cannot be trusted, our promises are not worth anything and it won’t matter how flashy what we sell is, no one will buy.

#2: Real results are delivered over time

This is the fundamental difference between selling a transaction and selling a solution. Transactions happen at a moment in time. Solutions happen over time. By focusing on customer outcomes, your sales team is positioned to better understand where your customer needs to be in the long term. By understanding long-term goals, your team will better identify opportunities to partner with your customers over time. With a longer-term focus, both supplier and customer can work together more cooperatively in order to achieve the customer’s expected outcomes. Salespeople who focus on short-term, transactional selling may initially appear successful, but, in today’s demanding environment, their success will be short-lived.

This is a matter of delayed gratification. Anyone can spot the short-term transaction. It’s the mature sales professional, that can dig deeper and probe further in order to understand the bigger picture and the higher, more strategic priorities.

#3: Use metrics

Metrics enable you to clearly demonstrate to your customer that you are making a difference. Metrics should show your ability to increase sales, profit or productivity, or decrease cost and/or waste. By taking baseline metrics at the beginning of the project and then holding quarterly business reviews, you will be able to maintain customer excitement in your work together and demonstrate that you really mean business. You’re not just there to make money. You’re there to make a difference!

It is the passionate commitment and unrelenting focus on achieving customer results that is the key to every successful business today. As the world gets more complex, as competition increases and as customers become more demanding, those sales teams that have made it part of their DNA to focus on customer results and measure their success by their customers’ success will consistently rise to the top.

Evaluate your team’s focus on customer results by taking this quick assessment: Let’s talk about strategic account management.

So you have closed that sale… Congratulations are in order!!! So you may be asking yourself, now what do I do? Is that it? Is there more? Well this is a tricky question, because it really depends on what your ultimate goals are and what type of product you are selling. If the product is a one-time sale, or if you think it is only a one-time sale, you may be inclined to say thank you and move on to the next prospect. But in my experience, this is a mistake and it could prove very costly to you in the long run. But if the product you have just sold is something that is more than just a single component to your company’s catalog, then you have a lot more work to do. You now have an enormous potential to make many more sales. But, and this is a big BUT, the first most important threshold has been crossed. You have earned the customer’s trust enough so that they have made that first purchase.

In order to continue to make sales, you have to continue to keep that customer’s trust. How do I do this, you may ask? Well it is pretty simple really. You have to continue to build on the relationship you have started with the customer. And even if the product is just the one, you should keep building on that relationship because you never know about the future. Here is a personal example: I began my sales career back in 1990 in the water conservation industry. I made many sales to many different people in the same industry of water conservation. I was at this company for three years before I moved on to another company in the energy industry. So here is what I am trying to say. Many of the customers that I sold to at my first company, I was able to bring over to my new company and re-sell them. Given that the product I now sell is something that they buy each month, some of the clients that I moved have now been with me for 20 years! 20 years! Think about that for a minute. These clients that have been with me for that long I now consider friends. We are now at that point… where when we speak on the phone, we rarely even discuss business. It’s now mostly how’s the wife and the kids and things like that.

Here is the secret to this long term success, they became my friends, or more importantly, I treated them as if they were my friends. From the very beginning because
when they gave me their trust and chose to work with me at my company, they became people that were now my friends. They could have chosen another company or another salesman to work with, but they chose me, because they trusted me and what I was saying to them. They believed that I was being honest and straightforward with them, and that I wasn’t just looking at them as a paycheck.

So in conclusion, it is my opinion that when you make it more of a personal issue with your prospects, when you treat them as if they were your friends, you will be more successful. In this world today where you are being assaulted constantly by scamsters and shysters all trying to get you to sign on the dotted line, or even worse to steal your identity, a little trust can go a long way.

All companies know that information improves marketing campaigns, but what’s more important is the data collected as it improves customer experience. Every marketer will sell you the “content is king,” but without data, your efforts are wasted on content that will be irrelevant.

Data gives companies an understanding of the customers mind and how they think, this improves your customers overall experience. Aside from that, data also helps companies prepare their campaigns and how much budget is needed to fund each.

Many companies use data analysis to identify patterns, trends and other company insights to better understand their target customers. To make it simpler for you to know what to do with data once you collected it, refer below.

5 Effective Ways to turn Customer Data into Actionable Insight That Improves Customer Experience:

#1: Be personal

To ensure your customers really enjoy their experience with your company, then the way you market as well as the way you set your customer care campaigns, must create a sense of friendship and understanding with your customers. When you email your customers, it’s important to use first names and your email personal; in that way your emails are guaranteed to be opened. New customers who receive personalized email offers targeted to suit their individual experience are more likely to continue using your products and endorse your business to others.

#2: Don’t be weird

There is a fine line between relevance and being weird, so make sure your content is personal and good. You can collect a ton of data from your customers, but it’s extremely difficult to work out which data is truly valuable and the ones that aren’t important. Customer name, age and location collected from previous purchases are what most companies use. But to obtain data that is anything more personal, it’s recommended you hire a data specialist.

#3: Acquire the tunnel vision

For customer experience marketing to work, businesses must develop the “tunnel vision” to help them gain more knowledge about their customers. Once businesses learn why their customers chose a certain product from their product range, how they use it or if they’re encountering issues, then they not only have a personalized conversation with their customers to build relationship, but they can obtain more valuable information to help them convert more prospects.

#4: Never ignore unstructured data

Data like email, social media and recorded phone calls cannot be captured in a structured database. But these unstructured data (80%) are very valuable. Not every business owner wants to sit on unstructured data information, but it is this information that helps you learn how your customers think and what they really care about. Not only that but it also gives you insights on new patterns and trends that you can use to create more new opportunities to satisfy your customers.

#5: Scoop out small data

Nowadays it’s all about big data, but there is still so much value in small data. Small data refers to the individualized, personal small bits of data information buried in unstructured data and direct personal feedback from customers. Data collected from customer surveys and interviews can reveal deep knowledge about how and why customers use your product, what could be improved and how it benefits them. This information, when applied properly, can increase one on one customer experience.

Conclusion:

The more data you obtain the more you learn and understand customer patterns and trends. As you’ve read above, data comes in so many different forms mainly structured and unstructured. But if you can put all these big and small insights together, you can have a clearer picture of your customers’ way of thinking and how you can dramatically boost their customer experience.

With today’s technology we can get in contact with a great deal of potential customers online. But the one problem most businesses experience is the conversion of the actual customers. And this is because they fail at engaging with them. In the past businesses could sound a sales pitch through radio and simply wait for the return from their advertisement. But that’s not the case nowadays as people have basically grown tired of being sold to. What they expect from businesses is trust before they throw forward their hard-earned cash.

If you don’t want to fail the first and most important process of engaging with a potential customer online, you need to continuously provide them with useful and valuable information and in a personal manner that will BUILD TRUST.

Below you will find 7 effective ways to engaging with customers online.

#1: Create Communities or Groups for Your Customers

You can build an online community to interact and engage with your customer and that can be done through forums. This was and is still the best and effective technique used where you can engage with your customer and this is also where your customers engage with each other. Most businesses are connecting with their customers through social media which is the next most popular technique. You can find your potential customer any day on their preferred social media account of choice. So instead of getting them to interact with you on your forum, simply find them on;

• Google plus Communities
• Facebook Groups
• LinkedIn Groups

That’s just to name a few as there are many social media groups, communities and networking sites that allow businesses to create a platform for this purpose.

#2: Host Webinars and Google Hangouts

The next most effective way to engage with your customers is through;

• Webinars
• Google Hangouts

This innovative method gives you the opportunity to engage with a large number of targeted audiences or your actual potential customers. This method also gives you the chance to a more personal interaction with them. Customers always love live visual connection with the business they’re associated with because it gives them the opportunity to get their questions answered immediately – and that’s what customers really want.

Additional Tip: You can also at the end of the webinar or hangout, get your customers to send in more comments/questions through your support email or get them to further engage with you or your support team through Facebook and Twitter. This allows for more engagement and continuous interaction with customers.

#3: Allow Your Customers to Be Your Co-Creators

Are you working on a new project? Well another great way to engage with your customers is to allow them to work together with you as your co-creators. This is where your customer feels that they’re important to you and your business. They will feel proud that their input has helped made your project better. This is not advisable in all situations but is necessary in terms of building a strong relationship.

Additional Tip: Reward your key participants by awarding them a certain prize for the most participation or you can just give them recognition for their valuable input.

#4: Celebrate With Your Customers

When your business reaches a certain milestone in your journey; like reaching your first 1,000 registered users, be sure to celebrate your success with your customers and make them feel proud that they were the heroes who made this possible.

Fans are passionate about a certain sports team they follow because they actually feel involved in the sport when they cheer for their team to win. So by praising the winning team they include themselves in the praise by saying “we won the game”. You need to cause your customers to develop this mentality – make them feel part of your success and sing them praises for being the force that drives your business success.

#5: Offer Your Customers Exclusive Contents

Member’s only (content) access is another great way of engaging with your customers online at the same time making them feel special that they are part of an exclusive group. It doesn’t need to be a charged access but a simple registration process to gain access to the content that’s provided only for them. This content would not be available to the public unless they opt-in as registered members.

Additional Tip: Offer special discounts for registered members and also create them a member’s only forum where they can discuss certain topics and engage with each other and you or your team.

#6: Solve a Problem Together With Your Customers

If the stats in your business support data base is very high on a certain issue, it maybe technical, a good way to tackle this issue better is to ask for user interaction and input and solve the problem together in a group. This is very effective and creates a stronger bond where everyone feels more like a team.

#7: Offer Ways to Interact with Your Customers

Every blog has a space below for visitors to leave their thoughts and comments. There are many good plugins to integrate with your blog so you give your readers a chance to engage with you and other readers or they might just want to thank you for the valuable information they have just learnt from your article. Be sure to always respond to your visitors or readers’ comments, thanking them for participating. If a reader leaves a question always reply as it may seem bad if you leave their questions unanswered.

Additional Tip: Include social profiles on your site like;

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Disqus
• Google Plus

This method gives your visitors and readers multiple ways than one of engaging with you.

Conclusion:

Today’s technology has given businesses many effective ways to build trust and loyalty with customers online – also allows them to interact and continuously engage with customers on everyday basis. Capitalize on these free tools and resources for your initial contact with your potential customer and a continuous engagement online. If you aren’t utilizing these effective ways and methods then you have to start today – don’t matter if your business is small or just a start-up, if you implement these 7 ways you will see growth in your business a lot sooner. Let’s hear it if you know more effective ways of engaging with your customers online.