With Halloween fast approaching, many are beginning to dust off their costumes and trade face masks for face paints. But as a business owner, you should be thinking about how you are going to put the ‘treat’ in ‘trick or treat’ and avoid being ghosted by your clients this Halloween.
Luckily for you, we have 5 tricks to help keep your B2B clients sweet.
Say ‘hallo’ to client feedback
Are your conversion and retention figures a living nightmare? Is your customer experience somewhat of a horror story? If the answer is yes, you need to unearth the root of the problem. But that’s easier said than done… or is it?
Sometimes, the solution is easier than you might think. And thanks to customer feedback, a lot of the time the answer is waiting right in front of you. The best insight will come straight from the horse’s mouth, so go ahead and ask your clients what they think. Don’t be fearful of negative feedback; embrace it and use it to improve and optimise your performance. As Bill Gates once said: “Your Most Unhappy Customers Are Your Greatest Source Of Learning”.
Don’t be creepy
If a stranger asked you a lot of personal questions, you’d find it slightly creepy, right? That doesn’t change in a B2B environment.
A surefire way to scare off prospective clients before you’ve even spoken to them is by requesting too much information. Keep your enquiry forms short and sweet by keeping mandatory fields to a minimum. By all means, offer additional fields for those who may prefer to provide more detail from the get-go, but don’t make them essential. Equally, you need to also be wary when it comes to the frequency of your communication: too many updates and you risk coming across as desperate and irritating, too few and it may seem you are uninterested. It’s all about striking the right balance and understanding what your client wants.
Bring your employee experience to life
To create a customer experience that makes your B2B clients want to join, and more importantly, stay with your company, you need to have a powerful team on your side. If your employees are lifeless, you can’t expect your clients to stick around. You need to go the extra mile for your staff and create a positive working environment: if you do, they are more than likely to replicate this treatment for your clients.
Some examples of things you can do to improve your employee experience include:
- Team building days
- Offer a clean and safe working environment
- Provide plenty of personal development opportunities
- Obtain regular feedback which can be used to improve your employee experience
- Encourage open communication
Remember: happy employees equal happy clients.
Don’t be afraid to pick ‘n’ mix
If you offer a selection of sweets to trick-or-treaters, nine times out of ten the liquorice will be left behind. But there’s always an exception. The same goes for your B2B clients. Everyone has different tastes, what is loved by one client may be the idea of hell for another. For this reason, it’s always worth taking the time to personalise your customer experience. Now, this doesn’t mean you have to roll out the red carpet for every client, but rather you take the time to understand their needs and preferences and make small changes to reflect this. Again, it all goes back to communication.
Avoid any nasty surprises
Whilst some people are thrill seekers who love to live life on the edge, most – especially in a B2B environment – prefer to sit back and relax, knowing that they are in reliable hands. In B2B, purchase decisions are based mainly on risk mitigation, so you need to reassure your clients that they can trust and rely on you to deliver an outstanding service that will enable them to meet their goals. This means being open and honest with them. Map out their journey and let them know exactly what to expect. Don’t be afraid to talk about the possibility of additional costs; it’s far better that they are aware of this from the start than when they are locked into a contract. It’s all about managing expectations. Of course, don’t undersell your services, but equally, never over-promise – it may help you to win the business, but it will only cause frustrations further down the line.
So there we have 5 tips to help your B2B business to attract and retain clients. Whilst we have only scratched the surface and these steps will take time to implement, if you are looking to focus on one key area to begin with, make it communication. It really is the key to success. If you want to discuss how this can benefit your business, get in touch with Boss Digital today.
