Can they do what they say they can do?

Last week I attended a conference in which a company said they could help sales people know more about potential clients before they made the call. But the speaker was unsure of his own proposal. They’d developed it to help their own sales people but were unsure as to whether it would help other companies.

They’d missed a step in the sales process of course. They should have thrown their online tool open to sales people with real data, and then asked for feedback as a part of the planning process before they made the presentation to company bosses.

The company bosses themselves were quite critical of the plan, even when offered it for three months for free.

If the presenter had been able to present market research showing that sales people loved it and thought it made them more successful they would have had more chance of convincing the bosses.

Of course the research could have been done in many ways, on the internet or on the phone for example, but it should have been done.

Third party evidence is extremely important to any potential client, as otherwise risk is increased hugely and finding strategies to reduce this can be expensive.

It’s the same with any business to business sales presentation. The client will want to see evidence that the supplier can do what he says. The absolute top of the list of things which may convince are testimonials and reviews.

Certainly if the supplier has been rated on https://gibli.com they should show this to the potential client along with all the company evidence.

Do your suppliers make your business successful?

Do your suppliers make your business successful?

Ink cartridges be dammed

Some years ago I became grumpy about the about of money we were spending on ink cartridges for our printers. So initially we swapped to refills which worked for a while. However refills could get blocked, they were cheaper but not much and they tended to result in low quality prints.

Then someone told me about the Continuink system (http://www.continuink.co.uk ). These are super-sized cartridges which take the place of the normal cartridges but only need filling once or twice a year.

They helped me to get a special printer which fitted their large cartridges, taught me to install and fill and then allowed me to order new ink when I needed it.

The only downside is that when you are filling the cartridges it I difficult to see how full the cartridges are and you may overfill and spray ink about.

Therefore you will need to find a large cardboard box and cut one side off. Then use it to surround the cartridges and ink to reduce the risk of staining the walls, floor or yourself.

Continuink is now being rated on https://gibli.com so hopefully they will make a bit more money and won’t disappear when I most need them.

Recruit for attitude, train for skills

I’ve now heard this statement from two influential people in business. The first is the founder of the Metro Bank in the UK and USA who says knowing how to exceed customers’ expectations is more important than anything else. The second is Michael Josephson, an influential ethics trainer in the USA who replaces the work attitude with ethics but means somewhat similar things.

Whether we are thinking about your employees, your customer’s employees or your own business as a whole ethics and attitude are crucial to business success.

For example how do you respond to customer complaints or to a complaint against a member of staff? This will allow your customers to know more about your attitude and ethics. If you do everything you can to resolve the issue; even to the point of moving or dismissing underperforming staff; your client will come to respect your attitude and ethics. If you make excuses or ignore the problem they may decide to end the agreement and find another supplier.

Finding suppliers with the right attitude and ethics is a wonderful discovery for a customer. It reduces their risk and even though suppliers can change in the long term it means they can guarantee part of their business.

If you can capitalize on this you can keep this positive momentum going. Asking them to review you on https://gibli.com where businesses can review their suppliers will do this. Reviews and ratings on this service are anonymous which means that your clients will be happy to do this without getting into trouble with their boss or their legal department.

Customer risk reduction strategies

You may have been asked to sign legal agreements by customers. These can be difficult and long-winded documents to read, but they are all about making sure that you as a supplier keep your side of the bargain.

They have parts which detail what will happen if the agreement comes to an end. These include options for the customer to cancel the agreement if you don’t do the job properly. They may even have a section which restricts your ability to manage your own staff. If you have key people who deal with the client, they may demand that these people may be dismissed, or that they go and work for them or go and work for a competitor if the client doesn’t think you’re doing a good enough job.

Some of these sections may make you want to scream, but they are there for a reason. Some suppliers don’t do a good job and the client is desperately trying to avoid this happening again. If you aim for excellence and try to exceed your client’s expectations you should have no troubles. But if you let the client down they will be within their legal rights in termination the arrangement and making your key staff go and work for a competitor.

If you do a good job, agree their legal requirements and amaze the client, they should be happy to help you stay in business. This means that even if their agreement includes a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) you may be able to get them to recommend you anonymously. They can do this on https://gibli.com where businesses can review their suppliers. Reviews and ratings on this service are anonymous which means that your clients will be happy to do this without getting into trouble with their legal departments or their bosses.

Testimonial terror

A couple of years ago I needed to get a market researcher to do a customer satisfaction survey amongst our clients. We wanted to know what they thought of our services and if they had any bright ideas about what we could improve and what we could do to make more cash.

One of our clients recommended someone who had set his market research business up after working for a large competitor.

He came to see us and gave a great presentation and promised to do telephone interviews with anonymized clients and report back in detail what customer said.

We have him the engagement fee and waited for the work to take place.

After a couple of weeks I rang him to find out how far he’d got. “I’m still refining the questions,” he told me.

Time went by. He was then trying to isolate the right clients. Then he had a family problem, then his car broke down and then his business was in trouble.

You guessed it, we lost our fee and no work was ever done.

We needed more testimonials and some ratings of his company. But we couldn’t find any IMPARTIAL source.

I wish https://gibli.com had existed in those days.

Order and disorder on the net

I’m trying to decide to change my habits and do something new. But which do I choose. I have a choice of two, but there may be others I don’t know about.

They are made by different companies of course and the first I’ve been using for years, but the second is new and heavily hyped. But it the new one as good as they say, or is it just advertising.

The old one I have for nothing at the moment as I paid for it years ago, but the new one will be extra. I use it for business to business selling and have to get it right. But I can’t find any reliable guide to tell me which is better.

On Google there are 15 million results for the older product, but 6.3 million or the newer one, but that doesn’t tell me anything useful.

There are ratings on the web which give the old one about 3/5 and the new one 4.5/5, but I don’t know if they were using it for business or something completely different.

If I could get them both reviewed by business people on https://gibli.com I would be very happy.

Look your customer in the face

For businesses; buying supplies is full of dangers. Firstly there is cronyism, as buying from friends is fraught with dangers. They may do a bad job or overcharge and expect to continue as a preferred supplier because of the friendship.

Secondly there is risk of making decisions too quickly. A good supplier is a great asset and will continue to work with the business for many years. A bad supplier or a supplier which goes bad can be a real problem, particularly if it lets customers down in some way. Also a bad supplier may difficult to replace, as the businesses systems will have grown to match what the supplier does.

Thirdly there is the poor supplier selected after a recommendation. A good supplier should be recommended by at least three clients. A single recommendation or testimonial may be from a friend or relative and could cost the business both money and effort.

All of this means that companies you may like to sell to may take a while to make decisions. They are trying to avoid making mistakes of course, but you’ll have to go out of your way to help them with this.

One way to do this is to ask your existing customer to rate you on https://gibli.com as then you’ll have your own scorecards demonstrating your business’s capability to potential customers.

We love our business

We love our business and because we work so hard so do our customers.

They pay us well for what we do and sometimes help us to find new clients.

One way they can do this is by reviewing us on gibli.com

Prove your business competence by getting reviews and testimonials.

If your business is as good as mine you’ll be able to prove it to new customers by getting reviews and testimonials.

We get ours on gibli.com and regularly ask customers to review us there.