Starbucks, Cici’s Pizza and Chick-fil-A all have one thing in common that make them the best at what they do. No, it’s not making the most delicious coffee, pizza, or chicken. It’s that they make sure to say, “Hello, welcome to (company name)” the second anyone enters the door. All three acknowledge you and make you feel important the moment you set foot into their establishments.
Money is not easy to come by. We ALL work really hard for it, no matter how much we have. We continually spend money in the places that make us feel good about spending it. I’m more apt to be a repeat customer in an establishment with mediocre products but excellent service, more than I am the opposite.
We like being treated well when we spend our money. We’ve all seen great businesses come and go. Yet, that diner up the street that has Charlene at the front door greeting every person who walks in, has crappy food, but excellent service and has, through no coincidence, been open for four decades. Meanwhile, the best steakhouse in town just closed shop.
Service Makes or Breaks a Business
We all pay so much and work so hard to get each customer. The key to running a profitable and sustainable business is to turn that one-time customer into a repeat customer. If you treat them like the gold they are, they will continue to pay their gold for your services. If you treat them like sh!t, they won’t give you sh!t for repeat business. OR referrals!
Ask any great business consultant how to increase profits easily and they will tell you to find a way to repeat sales to the already existing customer database. The cost of acquiring a new client vs. selling a complementary service to an existing one is the difference between staying in business or going out. If you’re constantly working to get new people to buy your stuff, you’re constantly paying for traffic. It cuts into your margins like a hot knife through butter.
The other sales equation that service helps out with is getting referrals. Maybe you sell a service like real estate or mortgages. People generally only need your help once every 5-10 years, so they can’t repeat that often. They can tell all their friends about you and send them to you. It’s new business you get for free, due to your superior service delivery.
Referrals won’t happen without great service. Just like repeat customers won’t happen if you treat them wrong. These days, so many businesses treat prospects like they don’t need them. It doesn’t take long for word of mouth to spread and people to decide they don’t need the business.
Negative service gets more attention than positive service. Very few people love a place so much that they will go on Yelp and review it. Yet, that same person, once upset, will create a Yelp account just to warn others of how bad things were for them.
Fight 10 Times Harder for Good Service Publicity Than Bad Service Publicity
It all stems from our reptilian fight or flight mechanism. When we get bad service, it’s in our DNA to warn others in our circles of the danger. When we receive good service, we take it as what we are supposed to get, and we may never mention it to anybody we know.
Some of the best service-delivering businesses offer discounts to repeat customers. You’ve seen punch cards, coupons and Starbucks does that deal where you can bring your receipt back later that day for a discounted second daily visit. The more you can get the same person to repeat business with you, the more each customer is worth to you. That’s why Starbucks welcomes everyone that comes in, even when you don’t buy a drink.
The question now is: Do you provide Grade A service to every single person who comes in to your establishment? Even with my business that I operate 100 percent online, I treat every prospect and customer like gold, giving them all sorts of great service. Greeting them by video, following up and rewarding them via email and so on. Even though clients may not walk into your office and you may not speak to them, you can still give them superior service with the right systems in place.
The keys to running and maintaining a super successful business are service, upsells and referrals. Those three things all fuel each other and create a synergy that propels a business into perpetual momentum. To put it simply, service sells. The better the service, the more the clientele will spend.
We Love Being Treated Well for Spending Money
We work so hard for it; we deserve the best when we’re buying. Maybe it’s time for you to take inventory and see where you can step up your service game. How could you increase the customer experience? How can you make them want to come back and pay you as often as possible? How could you convert them into raving fans who send referrals on a regular basis? Figure those things out, implement them and watch profits increase dramatically.
If you’re ready to invest in your personal success and you’d like to find out about the programs we have developed especially for you, simply head over to www.HardcoreCloser.com/tribe and we’ll have a sales conversation about your future.
