Mark Blomeley

I was just reading a book today and came across a very important reminder of customer service, and it really brought to me perspective to what I am doing in my business and how to treat customers.  It also really made me think about how big companies treat customers and that has a lot to do about their reputation.

I have always prescribed to the notion that the customer is always right, I know it has been recently argued by some people that this isn’t right, but to me you really just need to have that mindset in business no matter what. More than anything it’s not so much about the telling the employees of the company that the customer is always right; it’s engraining a culture of doing this.

Within this book there was an interesting story about the author buying a round the world first class ticket and in one leg of the journey the lady at the first class lounge wouldn’t let him in because the leg that was coming up only had a business class option and therefore wasn’t technically flying first class.

Think about that, a guy that has bought a $20,000 ticket with the one airline, doing multiple legs with that one airline in first class and just because one leg of that journey wasn’t first class (because they didn’t have a first class section) he wasn’t allowed into the lounge. I know, I know, who cares about the poor rich man! But that’s not the point; the company should be doing anything possible to please this guy, it’s purely a case of a poorly engrained culture within the company as well as a black and white thinking employee.

On the flip side, there is also a story about a clothing store that had a really well engrained culture of saying yes to customers, to the point that they rewarded employees who had the best stories of delivering above and beyond customer service. One day a lady came in to the clothing store, to return some defective tires (that’s right defective tires!), of course the company didn’t sell tire because they were a clothing store. The shop attendant told the customer this but the lady insisted she bought the tires there. So the shop attendant gave the customer a full refund on the tires they don’t stock! A couple of days later the lady realised the error of her ways, apologised for the company and went to the media with her story. They got mountains of publicity!

This is an example of incredible customer service, although it might seem stupid initially to give the customer a refund on products they don’t sell, the end result was enormous exposure for this business. Although you might not get massive exposure for everything you do in your business, the point is that developing that sort of culture is going to produce extremely happy customers and a can do attitude amongst your staff.

What company do you want yours to be? The Airline or the Clothing Store?

Check out my 7 step sales system if you want some more tips on the sales process.

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If you’re anything like I was, then social media is something that you’re interested in investigating or using as a traffic source for your internet marketing. If that is the case you’ve probably done a bit of research into “how to” use this media, and you’re probably even coming across plenty of people who are attempting to utilise this media.

One aspect that is not addressed or studied by many people is the art of pre-selling, particularly in terms of social media. Instead a majority of people are over-selling, in other words, they are just coming smack bang at you with their message, their opportunity, product or service and if you’re anything like me then you’re over it big time!

Facebook groups are becoming nothing more than a chain of posts for different opportunities, programs and products and status updates are becoming nothing more than a way to scream your message. I’m not saying to never do this but more than anything you have to earn the right to do this and do it strategically.

The way you really grab someone’s attention isn’t by spamming your message out there it is in the pre-sell. As you’ve heard me say previously, (in fact I’m getting tired of saying it, LOL), is that people do business with people they know, like and trust. Pre-selling is setting up a process to enable your prospects to get to know you and to see you as the expert to go to and therefore purchase from.

It’s very important that you’re spending your time on pre-selling and not selling in social media. In other words you should not be promoting your business but you should be building relationships and within those relationships your primary goal should be to help people, not to prospect them.

It is easy to see how people go wrong, the problem is that people get in social media and simply go like a bull at a gate and sell, sell, sell. The issue there is that your not gaining credibility in fact you are actually gaining a bad reputation. Social media is about not only having a good presence but having the right reputation, because ultimately the better you build the reputation the more valuable you will be.

The science to social media is quite simple, talk to people, ask people questions and provide answers to problems that you find people are encountering. Your presence, value and results won’t be instantaneous; however your growth will be exponential. What do I mean? I mean that you can get some but very limited initial success from overselling on social media, however at the expense of your credibility.

If you concentrate on actually helping people and spending the time to provide value to your followers, you won’t have massive initial success, however the more value you provide and the more valuable you become your success won’t be double, it will increase exponentially.

Social media is really about investing time now, in building your reputation, value and one on one relationships so that you gain more and more credibility, so that the time you spend in the future is a lot less because everything you then do on social media gets exposure and is therefore worth more to you financially.

I have perhaps simplified this quite a bit and try to address quite a few concepts here but I hope that you understand there theme here. I’m more than happy to discuss and assist you more with this. If you want to chat about it feel free to leave a message on my blog. Additionally feel free to check out my 7 step sales system, which goes into this process in more detail.

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I’ve actually been reading an interesting book that I’ve had for a while but never actually read because of its weird title, i.e. The Piano on the Beach. I’ll be upfront and honest; I find it very difficult to relate or prescribe to some of the fluffy, overly sentimental and somewhat tacky images that the home business and leaders industry put together, and the front cover of this book is no exception. However the perspective that the author comes from in this book definitely resinates with me and a majority of people who have gone to university.

One of the themes that I wanted to discuss today is that of action or inaction for that matter. I particularly feel that this relates to business, sales and prospecting in general, as these are the activities that business owners tend to either avoid or not spend enough time on. I was actually just discussing this with a few people on facebook just this week so I thought this was quite timely.

In a way this post is a little bit related to my previous post ‘What to Learn for Internet Marketing Beginners’, however this is more general about inaction or action for that matter. Tony Robbins often says that we make decisions out of avoiding pain or out of pleasure, and within this book this is one area that is discussed.  If you really think about this, it is very true, just spend some time reflecting on your decisions and you will generally see that there is a pain avoidance factor or to experience pleasure associated with your decisions.

When you reflect upon your decisions in relation to making phone calls to prospects, following up leads etc, these are always, ALWAYS related to fear. That is of course if you are 100% happy with you income, situation etc, which very few people actually are. Generally the success of your business is always related to your ability to pick up that 300kg hand set, because no matter what business is about relationships. Let’s face it; the only thing that makes the handset that heavy is your imagination and everything that comes flooding through your mind prior to picking it up.

My belief is that while you may be able to make some phone calls, the fact is you precondition yourself to a certain amount of exposure to Fear. What do I mean by that? I mean that you realise that you need to pick up the phone to make a certain income that you are comfortable with, however at some point you believe that you have had too much exposure to fear so you stop calling or avoid picking up the phone.

What does this mean? This means that you are cheating yourself out of making it your best every month/week/day in terms of achieving sales. The best sales people in the world aren’t the ones with the slickest presentation or the most sales education, they are the people who overcome their fears, overcome their comfort zone and continue to push through and ultimately make more calls and receive more no’s than anyone. Ultimately you can go to as many seminars as you like or get as much education but nothing is going to be better to prepare for making sales than actually going out and trying to make them.

So always keep your goals in mind and then go like the wind to taking action and overcoming your fears. Don’t avoid your fears, overcome them and push through your comfort zone.

Suck at Sales? Make sure you check out the 7 Step Sales System for Explosive Growth on the top right of the page.

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