BUSINESSADVICE
Winning business
How to make the most of opportunities that come your way
» IT’S A PERENNIAL STRUGGLE TO
grow a business and here Benjamin Dyer
of Powered Now looks at the key attribute
for winning new business. With the current
pandemic and likely difficulties to come, this
is even more important than usual.
It’s easy to think that the currency of
business is money. But it isn’t. It’s trust.
The number of huge scammy businesses in
the world is relatively small. Usually if a large
business starts behaving badly, it is because
they have gone astray. That’s more likely than
that they were always bad. Bad companies
don’t usually get big in the first place.
The truth is that most businesses grow
large because they found a way of delivering
a decent product at a reasonable price. And
their customers came to trust them as a result.
Because once customers trust a business, the
whole process of selling becomes easier. People
buy Nike trainers because, among other
reasons, they know that it’s unlikely they will
fall apart after a couple of weeks. That’s trust.
I recently commissioned some major work
on my garden. I only went to one company for
the quote and I accepted it without quibbling.
Why? Because I had used them several times
before and experienced good work from this
company. They had even saved me money
when I needed it. They had also helped to fix
problems that resulted from others work.
As a result, I trust them. That meant that
their sales process was much easier. It means
that they are almost certainly going to get
more wins. Plus, they get a higher margin than
they would if they were always in competition.
They have grown from three people when I
met them to 37 today. That’s pretty good.
The trust factor also applies to the installer
that I use. I came to trust them after they
sorted out a problem that had stumped other
gas engineers.
EXISTING CUSTOMERS
With customers you already have, keeping
and growing trust is crucial. It’s not just that
they will use you, they will recommend you to
friends too.
When we had a Ford Galaxy, we had it
maintained by the local main dealer. We had an
intermittent fault and took it in to be fixed. He
couldn’t find anything wrong. A few months
later we tried again with the same result.
Finally, on the third occasion they managed to
reproduce and fix the problem. What did they
do? They didn’t charge us because we had the
hassle of bringing the Galaxy in three times.
This meant that we came to totally trust
them. We not only continued to use them, we
also bought a couple of cars off them too. All as
a result of trust.
Here’s the application to your installation
business. Going the second mile, sometimes
being prepared to admit when you made a
mistake, if appropriate doing some work for
free – all these have the potential to provide
more paydays further down the line. Once
they trust you, they will never want to use the
competition.
However, you should remember that
trust can be lost overnight. It just takes one
unfortunate incident with a customer.
NEW CUSTOMERS
It stands to reason that the most
important thing to do with new prospects is
to establish the same level of trust. But this
can be hard, and you need to deploy every
possible means to achieve it.
There’s a saying that you never get a
second chance to make a first impression and
it’s true.
This means that you have to put yourself
into your customers shoes when you first
meet them. You must consciously think
about what the most sensitive and shy
person wants from you, then act accordingly.
That’s unless you are naturally empathetic
and always know what level to pitch your
friendliness.
BUILDING TRUST IN
YOUR QUOTATION
After arranging at least one site visit,
meeting the customer and impressing them
with your expertise and credibility, you finally
get to actually produce a quote.
This can be a pain. But one of several
key points is that you need to get it to the
prospect quickly. You have made a great first
impression, but as each day ticks by and your
quote doesn’t arrive, it eats into the trust bank
that you have established.
What you don’t want is for all your hard
work to fail, just because the customer has
already gone with a competitor who was
quicker off the mark. So, my advice is, if
you’re going to produce the quote at all,
do it straight away. Marcelle Stoughton of
74 » SEP 2020 » CLEARVIEW-UK.COM