Today we are talking about “Why Your Customers HATE You!”
What we’re talking about today is why your customers don’t trust you. If they don’t trust you, you’re never going to make the big money. I love in his book, The Speed of Trust, Stephen Covey talks about how Warren Buffett can do a deal in a fraction of the time other people do because when Warren Buffet says he’s going to pay this amount of money on this given day, these are the terms, and you can bet your life on it.
He has over 60 years of credibility. And speed saves money. Trust saves money, which makes you more money.
See, my customers trust me. Because of that, customers that used to pay me $2k now give me $200k for not much more of my time. Why? They trust. They know that I’m going to do everything I say I’m going to do. In this day and age, a lot of smoke and mirrors and a lot of online stuff where you don’t know who to trust, you have to be careful. I’m going to share with you how you can develop better trust with your customers.
You Don’t Have Clear Expectations
Don’t give foggy expectations. Foggy expectations is when you tell me something and I’ still not quite sure what you told me.
I was speaking with somebody the other day, and I’m like, Tell me what your company does and why I should hire you, and they told it to me. I had no idea what came out of this person’s mouth. I said, Please, can you dumb this down for a 12-year-old?
I’m not a rocket scientist. I don’t want foggy expectations. I want clear expectations, and so do your customers. So one reason why your customers don’t trust you is that you have very foggy expectations. I like expectations that can be laid out in bullet points.
Lack of Clear Communication
Anther reason why your customers don’t trust you is there’s bad communication through the entire process.
I placed an order today from a company and I got a text right away telling me when it was coming and I’m fairly confident if it’s going to be late they’re going to tell me. When it gets delivered, they’re going to tell me.
So your customers don’t trust you because you’re not communicating well with them and there are so many ways to communicate with customers. Communicate with your customer, even if it’s bad news. For instance, when costs have gone up considerably on construction material, and I have to tell a customer, we’re up 7.5% right now on your job because of that. I’ll give them a chance to get out of the deal, if they want to get out, but I tell them that I don’t think costs are goint to change and if they do, I update them.
You Don’t Deliver What You Promised
What did you promise your customers? What was the expectation? Did you give defined deadlines?
I’ll be working with clients and they’ll be talking to me about money and they think somebody could do it for less. I always tell them, Did you honestly think our company was going to be less expensive? We get that because they know we’re not inexpensive. But I go, Listen, have them put in their contract when they’re going to start and when they’re going to finish. I bet they don’t do it. Ofcourse they’re not going to do that, we’re going to do it.
So that’s one of the ways that we build trust with our customers. And we tell them if this date shifts, you’re going to know why it happened and you’re going to be updated. That’s that clear communication we talked about earlier. So you set clear expectations, you communicate timely and accurately, and then you deliver what you promised.
Business is fairly simple. The third pillar in business is fulfillment. Do you give what you promise?
I remember the Ball shoe line. The three brothers and the Father set up the shoe that was going to be like $450, and they had a ton of pre-orders. They couldn’t deliver on any of it. They pre-sold all these shoes, but couldn’t deliver any of them. Some of you want to do an online business. My question is can you deliver what you’re promising in the time frame that you’re promising it? If you don’t customers are not going to trust you.
Disorganized Billing
I have a contractor that we work with, that every time they give us a bill, I have to sit down and reverse engineer the thing, because I know that it’s not accurate, and they’re getting close to losing our business.
And once it happens once my antenna goes up, but when it happens twice, I start thinking you crooked. And I think if you have just disorganized billing, a customer needs to look and say, I agree to buy this and pay this, so have your billing more accurate. Billing should be 100% accurate.
This is what it boils down to, tell me what I told you and how you understand it. This is a little secret that I’ve used with my customers because I always tell a client of mine, you win all coin tosses. I don’t want to argue with you because I hold my communication skills to a higher standard. I’ll ask a client, tell me what I told you and how you understood it. And there are times when they tell me what I said and I did say it that way, now that I’m hearing it. Periodically do that exercise. It will help you a lot in just becoming better by eliminating foggy expectations and bad communication.
