Category Archives: referrals

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How to Add Sales to Each Stage of the Customer Journey

How to Add Sales to Each Stage of the Customer Journey written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

When you think of your business’s sales strategy, you may be tempted to think of it as only relating to the actual transaction where a customer pays for the good or service you offer.

However, businesses today can’t think of their relationship with their customers as a linear one. Instead, people have the opportunity to interact with your brand in a wide variety of ways: on your website, in-person, over the phone, via email, in Google search, or on social media. And they go through different phases, from just coming to know of your product to (hopefully, eventually) being a return customer who refers others to your business. The sum of all these interactions with your brand is what we call the customer journey.

Because this journey is not a straight road, your sales team can play a role in each phase of the journey. As you think about building an hourglass that addresses marketing needs for prospects and customers at each phase, you should also consider how your sales team fits into the hourglass model. Whether someone is hearing about your brand for the first time or is making their 50th purchase, your sales team has something to offer them.

We’ll take a look at the stages a customer goes through on their journey of interacting with a brand, and how sales can play a role in each phase.

Getting to Know You

When someone is just encountering a brand for the first time, you have a tremendous opportunity but also a great responsibility. They know nothing about your business, so it’s up to you to create a cohesive image that quickly, easily, and clearly communicates who you are, what you do, and why you do it better than anyone else in the game.

These early stages of brand discovery—the know and like phases of the hourglass—are often thought of as the territory of the marketing team. Creating advertising campaigns, compelling calls to action, and social media profiles fall under their purview, but sales has a role to play even this early on in the customer journey.

Outbound marketing efforts may well include your sales team. If you undertake telemarketing or cold calling, have a booth at a trade show, or have a giveaway of branded items at a community event, these are opportunities for your sales team to be the first point of contact with prospects.

While outbound marketing techniques have become less popular in recent years, if it’s done correctly, it can help you to create positive associations with your brand in the minds of prospects. The key here is in making sure that you have a sales team that’s comfortable with having a conversation that touches on the important differentiators for your brand, but at the same time doesn’t feel scripted. With the right sales team in place, it’s possible to create positive personal connections with prospects immediately, and that really allows you to stand out from your competition that’s relying solely on inbound techniques.

Coming to Trust You

A recent survey from Wantedness.com found that, in the U.S., 79 percent of consumers said they would only do business with brands that show they understand and care about “me.”

The trust and try areas of the hourglass are where there’s the greatest crossover between your marketing and sales teams, and so they should be working in tandem to create that highly personalized approach. In order to be most effective, they need to have access to each other’s information: sales needs to share their CRM data, while marketing should provide a window into their analytics.

While some prospects will react well to personalized email campaigns and targeted paid advertising on Facebook, all managed by the marketing team, others will need a bit more hand-holding from someone in sales.

Having a call to action button on your website that makes it easy for prospects to request a demo and get in touch with a member of your sales team can help funnel those prospects that need a little extra attention to the appropriate salesperson. Additionally, creating a shared inbox for your marketing and sales teams will allow your marketing folks to easily hand off prospects that would like more, detailed information to the sales team.

The Moment of Truth: The Purchase

This is what the sales team has been waiting for. After playing a role in introducing prospects to the brand and being responsive to their questions in the trust and try phases, the prospect is finally ready to convert.

Of course, the buying phase of the customer journey where the sales team plays the most obvious role. It’s also a point that some business owners take for granted. Just because someone has become a customer does not mean they can now be forgotten.

As Joey Coleman and I discussed in a podcast episode, creating a standout customer experience is an important part of taking people from one-time customer to repeat client. The sales team needs to make sure that the first time someone buys from you, they have an optimized experience. That means automated updates on their purchase, an easy way to get in touch if there’s an issue, and a proactive approach from you.

If your sales team is able to provide a stellar experience for a customer’s first time buying from your company, they’re a lot more likely to come back again. The trick here, of course, is that the stellar experience needs to be repeated on each subsequent interaction. Your sales team can never take a customer for granted, because if they do, that customer will eventually drift away to a competitor.

Part of the trick here is to establish crystal clear processes for your sales team’s interactions with customers. Make sure you have a customer service platform in place to ensure that any issues are being addressed in a timely manner and that efforts are not being duplicated (which wastes your team’s time and frustrates and confuses your customer). Consider a platform like ZenDesk, which allows you to track customer support requests across channels.

Building a Referral Engine

The final stage of the hourglass gives your customers the opportunity to generate new leads for you. When you empower your sales team to effectively generate referrals, you can build an engine that fuels your business growth for years to come.

Encourage your sales team to be proactive about gathering referrals. If they have a positive interaction with a customer, have a formalized process in place for getting a written review from that person.

Customers will also be more likely to refer you if you remain top of mind. Your sales team should be using a customer data platform to track interactions with customers. If you haven’t spoken to one in a while, have your sales team reach out. A personalized email or phone call might not only bring them back to make another purchase themselves, it will also position you to be the business they recommend later in the week when their friend happens to ask if they know a company that does exactly what you do.

If you think of your sales team as a group that only springs into action the moment someone wants to make a purchase, you’re missing out on the enormous potential that they have to support your business throughout the customer journey. When deployed correctly, your sales team can be by your customers’ sides each step of the way, which only serves to strengthen their relationship with your brand and makes them more likely to establish long-term connections with your business.

How to Make Your Business More Referable

How to Make Your Business More Referable written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

“How can I make my business more referable?” I get asked this question all the time but the question people should be asking is “who do people refer?” Having the answer to that question will better prepare you to take advantage of this powerful marketing tactic.

Having been in this business for decades, I’ve come to the conclusion that people make referral decisions the same way they make purchasing decisions. They decide something is the right price and fits their needs (which is the logical part), and then, they determine they will have more life, impress their friends, boost their confidence, and so on (the emotional part).

Here’s the thing – emotion typically comes first.

In order to increase your odds of getting referred, you need to tap into this emotion/logic formula. People have to believe you can help them and that you will deliver what is promised (logic), but, they must also feel good about helping you, trust that their referral will be treated well, and genuinely like the experience they have with your business (emotion.) The businesses that get the most referrals solve their customer’s problems while also providing a fun or unique experience.

If you are not getting referrals naturally, take a deep look at the previously mentioned formula and how it applies to your customers.

Now, let’s say you run a more serious business, like a law practice, that doesn’t typically have anything fun about it. In this situation, I’d think of ways that your business can make a genuine emotional connection with your clients and make that one of core elements of your business.

I have a lot of opinions on this topic, so below are a few tips I’d recommend implementing to boost the odds of your business getting referrals.

Tips to make your business more referable

Create a referral engine

No, this is not a shameless plug for my book. Creating a referral engine is absolutely essential if you want to bring in consistent referrals for your business. The key to getting more referrals from your existing clients is to create and focus on a referral process that you operate on a consistent basis. Once the process is in place, it will be easier for your customers to refer your business.

I usually suggest that every business build multiple referral programs and offers in each of the following four types.

Direct referrals

With a direct referral program, you simply state to your existing clients an offer for the act of creating a referral that turns into a client. “Refer a friend to our marketing firm and we’ll give you a free website review” is an example of how to use this approach. It’s motivating and describes what the business does.

Implied referrals

This type of referral is terribly underutilized. In an implied referral program you want to do things that make it very obvious you are doing work for someone, without necessarily asking for a referral. This sets up a situation where a friend or neighbor might simply ask you to refer the person running an implied referral program.

Tangible referrals

With a tangible referral, you put something in the hands of your customer that has real value and that they can give to a referral source. The thing we like about this tactic is that you can run it three or four times a year as a low cost, low exposure way to keep referrals top of mind.

Community referrals

There are so many community organizations that need and deserve your support. When you partner with a non-profit player and support their mission, events, and needs you can also offer promotional support by running the occasional promotion that benefits your partner. “When you buy this week or sign a contract this week, 10% of the proceeds go to benefit our community partner” is an example of how this would work.

You can build one program and then simply keep adding to it until you have referrals coming from numerous sources while promoting how referable your business is.

Show your personality and rock the customer experience

People don’t generally remember businesses, they remember other people. Having a personality is essential for getting referrals. When you can develop personal connections with your business, you give them a reason to remember and recommend you to others. Make their experience with your business one that they will never forget.

Target your influential customers and related businesses

Seek referrals first from your most influential customers. Note, these people may not actually be your best customers, but they are the people whose opinions carry the most weight with others.

I’m a huge advocate for building up a strategic partner network for your business, and it’s important to use these partners to boost your referrals. These businesses should provide complementary services to your own.

Build relationships

Building off the importance of strategic partnerships, it’s imperative that you focus on your relationships in an effort to boost referrals. This takes time, but it’s a must because many of your most influential customers won’t provide referrals until you gain their trust.

Offer incentives

Incentives can be tricky. For example, I wouldn’t recommend money offerings alone for referrals as they are poor motivators. Don’t be afraid to test offers to find out what works best. Sometimes trial and error gets you to the best solutions.

I personally believe is far better to work on making your business more likable before you offer any kind of incentive for referrals, but incentives are good to keep in the back of your mind when needed.

Make it easy for people to refer you

Make the ask. What do you have to lose? When you go in for the ask, be sure to do it at the right moment, and that moment is when your customer is likely to be happiest of all, and that is the moment right after they buy something. Use a post-purchase survey online or encourage your customer to write a review. The more you can do to get someone to recommend your business right after purchase, the more referrals you can generate.

Be sure to create tools, education, and follow-up systems as well to rock the referral marketing world.

What makes things catch on?

In Jonah Berger’s book, Contagious: Why Things Catch On, he explains there are six essential factors that make things catch on. These include:

Social currency: We share things that make us look good or help us compare favorably to others.
Triggers: Ideas that are easy to remember spread. Viral ideas attach themselves to top-of-the-mind stories, occurrences or environments.
Emotion: Emotions move us in irrational ways. This means that when we care, we share.
Public: People tend to follow others, but only when they can see what those others are doing.
Practical: Humans love giving out advice and tips, but especially if they offer practical value.
Stories: People do not just share information, they tell stories.

Take a look at the factors above and see how you may be able to apply them to your business (you don’t need to address all of them to be effective, but strive for at least a few.

Wha have you implemented in your business to increase referrals?