Tips For Making Your New Potential Customers Feel At Ease
We all know that creating a strong online presence is a great way to find new customers and grow your business. However, along with new customer inquires comes the need to focus on putting their main concerns and fears of hiring a new contractor at ease. After all, they don't know you from Adam!
Many customers are hesitant to trust home improvement contractors due to some negative publicity in the news and due to the actions of a few untrustworthy con-men. So, here's some simple advice I've gathered from some of our most successful partners on how to ease customer's fears and thus be able to get the most out of your leads.
First, don't give them any reason to not trust you right off the bat! It almost goes without saying that first impressions go a long way. Our partners tell us that showing up time and responding to their customer's emails and calls in a timely manner goes a long way in developing trust.
Secondly, many customers fear that their contractor will constantly try to up sell them and that their contractor won't be focused upon what the customer really wants. Our partners tell us that when they listen to the customer carefully, and ask the right questions in your initial meetings, they will have a much better chance to get the job. Later, after they have begun work and trust has been established, opportunities to up sell present themselves naturally.
Fianlly, most customers are concerned about the price of their job getting out of hand. Many of our partners say one of the most important things they have learned through their years of experience is to never avoid talking about money before you get started! Most future problems can be avoided if you know how much they are looking to spend from the get go. A customer is much more likely to hire a contractor who has asked them about hteir budget, and politely explained their options before wanting to jump into the work. Also, if you set a reasonable budget with your customer upfront, explaining the various costs, the customer will be less likely to hassle you about price as the job progresses and can't complain upon completion if you come in at your budget. This makes for a better experience for both you and your customer.
If you have any other tips on how to close your leads by putting customer fears at ease during your initial conversations and meetings, please leave a comment!
2 Comments:
Hi,
One thing I learned is to set expectations at the beginning of every meeting. Often times in a sales cycle there will be multiple meetings that take place. Sometime at the beginning of the meeting you should state what you and your potential customer hope to accomplish in that particular meeting. For example: "thanks for coming in John. Today I really want to get a chance to understand what your situation is, what your goals are going forward, and then at the end of the meeting I hope that you and I can decide if we're a good fit." So a statement like that (tweaked to your personality or personal communication style) sets the expectations of what you hope to accomplish and also sets the stage for a decision to be made at the end of the meeting. It puts you and the potential customer on the same page from the get go and lets them know that you really want to help. It puts structure to the meeting so that you and your customer are both working towards an end goal, in this case to determine whether or not your services would add value to their life/business.
Elliott
10:33 AM
Elliott, thanks for your comment. That's great advice and I agree with you that it will help give the meeting structure. I also feel that the extra touch of being genuinely concerned with their goals and their overall situation will go a long way in developing trust as well. Then all you have to worry about is closing the sale!
11:41 AM
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