Hey. Welcome back. We are still talking about the five best practices to make your business get more reviews and become more referable. In the last two pod casts, first we covered the, ‘ask how they heard about you’, so that you could better understand your customers’ research journey to finding you and figuring out which of your marketing is connecting with them, and being the most effective, as well as enabling you to build rapport quickly. If they have interacted with a past customer of yours. Then lastly, determining and setting the stage that. if they have looked at or were reviewing any of the reviews online, that you can set the stage, thank those people in front of them for taking that time so that they, in their mind, when they get to the end figure, “Hey, you know what? This business gets people reviewing them often. I would like to take the time and energy to review them, because they’ve been so great for me.” The second best practice was making sure that we’re checking in with them regularly so that we don’t have any surprises at the end that create costly fixes, as well as just making sure that we’re in tune with them throughout the buying journey so that we can answer any questions, resolve any issues that they have, before we get to the end.

Today, we’re talking about the third best practice which gets you beyond what your sales force and staff will be doing. Those other two would most likely be handled by your staff, if you have any employees. They’re the ones that are going to ask the customer how they heard about you. Just sort of build that rapport. They’re going to be the ones checking in with them regularly, because as our business grows, as an owner, we become less, and less, in contact with the customer, further removed. As a result, most of that customer experience is put on the shoulders of our employees. We, as owners, also need to make sure that we are still in that loop and that we’re getting the feedback directly.

The third best practice is really to have the owner ask for that feedback after the purchase. Most customers think that, “Hey. Once I’ve made the purchase, the business doesn’t care about me. I’m just a number on their business book.” We want to continue to build that relationship with them well beyond the purchase, because we want them to come back. It’s seven times cheaper to market to an existing customer than it is to a new one. Even if they’re not going to get a roof until 15 years from now, we want to make sure that we’re maintaining that relationship so that when they come due for that next big purchase, that they’re going to do it with us. Letting them know that the owner is going to be asking for their feedback is huge. Sets you apart so much as a business. Making sure that your staff lets the customer know that, “Hey. Our owner from time to time reaches out an asks our customers for feedback, personally. He/she would love your feedback. If you wouldn’t mind providing it, we’d really appreciate it.”

Then, you as the business owner, should just … Something as simple as shooting an email. You could write them a handwritten note. There’s a variety of different things you can do out there. The idea is that you, as the business owner, need to be asking yourself, personally, to the customer. You can’t have a generic survey that’s sent out from an automated system doing it for them. If it comes as a newsletter, or something like that, it’s not going to be effective. You could use a system that creates a personalized email, in which case that’ll look like it’s coming from you. That would be much more effective, and probably save you a lot of time. Either way, you as the business owner, need to be asking for the feedback. They need to understand that you’re the business and you care about it. Stay tuned. We’re going to talk about the fourth best practice, here, coming up in the next episode.