Neutral Is Not Good Enough:
How to Recognize and Save a Declining Customer Relationship
C. What can we do better?
Most prospects we call on will not buy from us. Therefore, it’s imperative that we take care of our current customers.
D. Would you recommend us?
Here are some cold, hard numbers. A full 20 percent of your current customer base is thinking about leaving you. Yep. They’re looking around to see if they can either get a better deal or be treated better. If your customer has a bad experience, they will not tell you about it 96 percent of the time. They just won’t do business with you again. And maybe the most dismal figure yet is that 100 percent of your customer list — that is ALL your customers — are being targeted by the competition. That means they are ripe to be stolen from you. Now that you know the figures, it’s imperative to ask yourself this: Does my business have a plan for customer care? Does my business have a plan for when things go badly with customers? What if your top three customers left you today — what would you do? Start with an easy plan. Something I teach in my book “Dialing Strangers” is called the 3 Buy 9. Call three of your current customers every morning before 9 a.m. The script is quite simple:
E. Who do you know that we should know?
At any time during this phone call, if the response is “okay,” “fine,” or “good,” you need to stop your line of questioning and pay attention. A “good” experience is really a neutral experience. “Okay,” “fine,” and “good” are just other ways of saying things are mediocre. Not bad or great, just neutral . And neutral is the beginning of the end of that customer relationship. Your customer relationship is already deteriorating, and it needs intensive care. We provide a service for many of our clients who truly want to know where they stand with their customers. It gives powerful insight that just cannot be captured in a simplistic emailed questionnaire. We call it Customer Intelligence Reporting™. Conversations with your actual customers will provide either a testimonial if they’re happy, or a path for improvement if they’re not pleased with your product or service. Bad news is not like wine — it does not get better with time. So find out what your neutral customers truly think about you before you lose them.
A. Thank you for your business.
B. What do you like best about working with us?
Tester- MONIALS Katy Wooderson, Marketing Director Hayden Homes
“These client recordings are awesome — hearing them is so great. Thanks Dave!”
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