Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:08]
A
Imagine two businesses that do the exact same work, same quality, same price, same results. But one of them is easy to talk to, easy to trust, easy to work with, and the other one, well, they just feel like work. Which one are you going to call back? Today's episode is about something nobody puts on a balance sheet, but it might just be the most valuable asset. Your business has likability. And I'm not talking about being charming or having a great personality or little sales tricks. I'm talking about real, honest trustworthiness, creating relevance, creating likability. It has the quiet power to grow a business, keep customers loyal, and in the end, increase the value of your business for the day you're going to sell it. So one day I'm in a client's home, and I had just bought this piece of equipment that was going to be better than the piece of equipment that I had. Now, what I replaced is called your carpet cleaning wand. And what it is is it's a lightweight piece of equipment that rinses the carpet fibers clean and extracts that rinse water all at the same time. Easy to use, easy to maneuver, lightweight. But I got sold on this piece of equipment that was supposed to be much better. It had rotating jets and rotating vacuum slots and a brush, and. And I thought, okay, this thing, in theory, looks like it'll do a great job and maybe do the job better and faster, because as a business owner, you're always looking for something that will do the job better and faster. And so I thought maybe this piece of equipment could do that. So I go to this client's home, and she has this big, beautiful house. And I carry this thing upstairs, and when I do, I realize that it is big and clunky and heavy. So I finished cleaning the upstairs, and my client is watching me from the kitchen carry this big, heavy, clunky piece of equipment down her nice hardwood floor stairs. And she's got all hardwoods on the downstairs level. And she looks up at me and she says, I think that piece of equipment is dripping. Well, I couldn't quite hear what she said, so for some reason, I thought she said, is that piece of equipment used for stripping, like stripping and waxing tile floors? And so I just responded, I said, no. And she's looking at it, and she can see that it's dripping. And she looks at me and says, yes, it is. And I said, no, it looks like it, but it's not. So she finally says it a third time. And at that point, I said, wait a minute. What did you Say, and she said, you, piece of equipment is dripping. And so I told her what I thought. She said, we had a big laugh about the whole situation. And, you know, that was that. But I thought, oh, that could have gone really wrong. Because here's this client that I've never been in her home before and were laughing about something when I really said something that was pretty offensive. And I'm doing something that's not permanently damaging her hardwood floor, but it makes most people really nervous if you're dripping something on their hardwood floor. But instead, she gave me the benefit of the doubt. We had a big laugh about it, and that was that. So it was from that moment that I realized the value of likability. And in business, we call likeability having great rapport with your clients, but there is real value in building that rapport. So I was about five years into the business when all the pieces of this formula for building rapport started to come together. There was a guy, we'll just call him Charlie, and he was the facilities manager for this massive facility. I don't even remember what they did, but it had 20,000 square feet of carpet. And he calls us out to give him an estimate on it. And so I give him the estimate. And of course, at this point, I'm aware of what it takes to build rapport with people and how to create this likability. So as he's going over everything with me, we're having a conversation and this conversation that we're having about everything, and he's showing me what he wants done, and I'm asking him questions, and he's asking me questions. It sounds like a conversation to him, but in my head, it is a strategy for building rapport. I'm having a intentional conversation and bringing up things that are designed to build rapport with him, but on his end, it just sounds like a normal conversation. And so we get the job and we clean this massive facility, and he's real happy. He calls a few months later and he says, hey, I've got some more areas that I want you guys to clean. Can you come back out and take a look at everything? I said, sure. So I go back out there and I notice some of the areas that we cleaned. It looks like some of the spots came back. So I asked him about it. I said, hey, these look like spots that have returned. You know, you can call us and we're going to come back out and take care of it. And so Charlie says, oh, you know, I don't want to bother you. I Knew you guys are busy, and I knew you'd be able to take care of it the next time you're out here. Well, that let me know a couple things. One, he really cares about me and my time and that it's valuable. And by saying that we take care of it the next time, he already decided he's going to use this again. And what made him decide that was obviously not the quality of the work, because the spots had come back. Now you can do the best job in the world, and spots will still come back. That's why we guarantee the work, because we know sometimes that happens, and we want to make sure people feel comfortable calling us. In fact, he felt so comfortable calling calling us that he didn't call us. He just called us to come do more work. So having that conversation with him, that intentional conversation where I am asking him questions and I am responding to his questions in a certain way, I know that I am using what. And I call it a formula, but it's just I know that there are certain things that I have to talk about to build rapport with this person, and they're all based on trust. And so I'll call it a formula. That almost sounds like it's something that you can just do and trick people into liking you, which is not true. It's not a gimmick. It's something that you have to do with integrity. But you can have a lot of integrity, and you can do great work and not have this conversation. And. And you're not going to build the likability that you could build, or it will just take longer to build it. Here's the thing that's really easy to miss, especially, you know, when you've got a lot of work that you're trying to get done and maybe you're running a little bit behind. You can miss that step where you're trying to build report if you don't see the value of it. And if you don't see the value of it, you'll skip it every time. But here's the thing you got to remember. Customers don't just buy results. They buy relationships and likeability. It's not magic. I say there's a formula for it, but it actually takes some skill to do it. But once you get skilled at it, it's a very natural conversation that you're having with people. So the first thing that you have to do is assume that people have questions about who you are, because they do. When someone first meets you, they know nothing about you. They have Questions about you, but they're too polite to ask them. They've got questions like, can I trust this guy? Will he do what he's promising to do? Am I going to regret this? Is this going to be a hassle? What if I run into a problem? Is he going to take care of it? Is he going to try to rip me off? Is he going to do a good job? Right, so. And they've got all kinds of questions, and basically those questions center around trust. Hey, friends, it's Dave. And I want to give something back to you, my listeners, as my way of saying thanks for supporting this show and thanks for supporting your local business community that we all care a whole lot about. So right now I'm offering a free online business readiness assessment. And what that is is it's an online assessment. It's a series of questions that you can do online that help you see exactly how sellable your business would be if you needed to exit today. Now, you might selling your business might be years away for you right now, but getting it ready to sell provides some immediate benefits. It becomes more profitable, it runs smoother with less stress. It gives you, the owner, more freedom. And as a bonus, when the time comes, it can be worth hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of dollars more. So I'm offering this now because I want to thank you, my listeners, but I can't promise it's always going to be free or that I'll always have the time to review it personally with you. So while it's available, click on the link in the show notes, take the assessment and see where you stand, and then start building a business that gives you freedom now and a bigger payday now and later. All right, back to the show. Your job is to figure out the questions that your clients have but are too polite to ask and then answer them before they ever have to ask them. So part of how we answer these questions that people have that they're too polite to ask is I owned a carpet cleaning company. And so when we went into someone's home and we had them show us around of everything that they're wanting done, when they got to an area where they, you could tell that they had concerns about it, we would say things like, okay, I'll pay extra attention to that area and I'll come get you when I'm done. I want to make sure you're real happy with that. Now right there. That's communicating. I care about what I'm doing. I want to do a good job. I want you to Be happy with the work I do. So you're answering that question. Can I trust you to do a good job? Another question that they have is, are you going to rip me off? And so let's say they. We get to an area and they say, oh, my pet has had a few accidents here, and, you know, I'm not sure if I got it all up. Well, we would say, okay, well, I've got something that I can check and see if any of it has gotten below the surface of the carpet. And if we use this tool now, the tool itself is unbiased. It's going to tell us whether there's something underneath the surface of the carpet or not. And that's going to cost extra money. And if it's not there, the tool tells us that. So if at that moment the tool doesn't go off in that area, we say, well, it's not a subsurface problem, so there's nothing extra that we're going to need to do, but we'll pay extra attention to this area. That way they know that we could have made up something to charge them extra money, but we didn't. So we're not going to rip them off that we're answering that question for them. So we find ways to answer that question. Are you going to rip me off where they don't ever have to ask it? The next thing that you have to do, though, is you have to do exactly what you say you're going to do. Now, this sounds basic, but reliability is not as common as you think it is. So just by doing what you say you're going to do, by showing up on time, by calling before you come to let them know you're on your way, little things like that build that trust. And so doing what you say you're gonna do is an important part. Being reliable creates trust. It creates an emotional safety, and that builds loyalty in customers. That's what they're looking for. Not because your work is perfect, but because they know they can trust you. So when we said, hey, I'm going to pay extra attention to this area. I'll come get you when I'm done, I want to make sure you're real happy. Well, we go get them and let them take a look at it. And by doing that, we're doing what we said we're going to do, we came and got them, they took a look at it, they felt real happy. Or if they didn't feel happy, they'd say, you know what? It still looks like this. Or that. And we said, well, you know what? Why don't you just stay right here? I want you to, you know, see that I've given this everything that, that I can, and this is the best it's going to be. But either way, we're building that trust, and that creates the likability that's building the rapport. Third, you've got to be ridiculously easy to do business with. Customers should never feel like they have to chase you. They're bothering you. They have to do a bunch of extra work in order to give you money. Remove anything that causes friction. Make everything as simple as it can be. Respect their time. Because when you make it easy to do business with you, people don't shop around. They stay once the job is done, and they're real happy with everything. This is where you have to remain easy to do business with. There's a lot of ways that you can be easy to do business with, but one of the ways that you can undo some of the good rapport that you've just built. I see a lot of companies make this mistake. They charge a 3 or 5% fee when you use a credit card. When you do that, you're telling the customer, I'm going to charge you more if I have to be easy to do business with. Or you can go do the work and write me a check or pay me cash. You're undoing some of that likability. So my answer is just raise Your price by 3%. It covers the fees, and nobody feels nickeled and dimed. I was so serious about being ridiculously easy to do business with that it took me a while to find the right phone that had the clearest tone. So that on the other end, when people called our office, they couldn't hear any of the noise in the shop, and they could hear my voice or whoever answered the phone, they could hear their voice really clear. Why? Because if not, you're making that person work to do business with you. They have to work to hear you. They have to work to understand you. And it may be a subtle thing, but you're creating an experience where they're having to work to do business with you. Don't do that. The fourth thing is communicate more than what you think is necessary. We had a saying in our business. All problems are communication problems. If the customer isn't happy about something, it's not because you didn't do a good job. It's because you didn't do a good job communicating. Whether that's communicating in a way that sets their expectations. Or communicating why things didn't turn out as good as you'd hoped. Or communicating. Hey, I'm sorry I'm late, but I'm on my way. Whatever it is, the problem is almost always a communication problem. The antidote to poor communication is simple over communication. Now, that sounds crazy, but I'm not talking about being annoying or being salesy, Just being really clear and really proactive in your communication and creating these moments where you're reassuring the client that you're in control and you're going to do a great job. When people always know what's happening next, they're able to relax and that's creating a great experience. And customers that feel like they can relax with you, they're going to be loyal. Because customers don't want to always be trying to find somebody new. So once they found someone that communicates clearly and makes them feel at ease and that they have built this rapport and built this trust with, they don't want to put the work in to find somebody else. Why would they? All of this sounds great, but none of it works if you don't have the integrity to back it up. You can't fake this formula. If likability becomes this gimmick, this thing that you try to do to get more sales, people sense it immediately. You're doing the opposite. All right? You're creating mistrust. It has to be rooted in honesty and thinking through what this client is needing, what they're experiencing. Pay attention. The next time you have someone in your home to do work, go ahead and pay attention to the things you feel, to the questions that are in your mind, and then use that towards building rapport with your clients. But it has to be real. You have to back it up. You have to do great work. You have to do what you say you're going to do. You have to be honest in your communication. It's a matter of making that client feel really well taken care of. Right? It's not a tactic. That's your goal, and that ends up becoming your reputation. So here's what I've learned. After decades of working with clients and now helping other business owners build businesses that they can eventually sell. People don't stay loyal to you because you're perfect, because you get perfect results every time. They're loyal because they like you, because they built a relationship with you and they trust you. Likability, it doesn't ever show up on your profit and loss statement, but it is the main thing that drives the value of your business. It shows up everywhere. It shows up in your repeat business. It shows up in the referrals. It shows up when people give you the benefit of the doubt when something didn't turn out the way they'd hope. It shows up in long term business value. So here's a question I want to leave you do your customers talk more about the results that you get or do they talk about how much they like you, how great your technicians are? Only one of those answers means you're building something really special. They're talking about you or your technicians or your employees, and they're talking about how great you are, what they loved about how you worked and what you did for them. Then you're building something really special. If that's not happening, well, it's never too late to get started. But if they're talking more about your work or the low price that you give, that's an indication you're not building the kind of rapport that creates loyalty and that creates raving fans. But I encourage you to use this formula to create Go ahead and get started figuring out what's that conversation you need to have with clients before you start the work that makes them look forward to you being in their home doing the work that makes them look forward to working with you. Thanks for listening to another episode of Locally Owned. I hope you found this really useful. And if you have any questions, my email and my calendar link are in the show notes. Just go ahead and shoot me an email or set up a time and we can talk. I'd love to help you be the most likable company in your area.