MBA1448 Guest Teacher: Kim Speed – How to turn your clients into your greatest sales team

Let me tell you about Intuit QuickBooks. When I was starting out my business, I remember sitting at my desk late at night, not working on my business, but cleaning up numbers, tracking and reconciling payments and wondering how this became my life. But once I automated the admin side of things, of my finances, those nights had disappeared and I felt a whole lot better. Outdo it with Intuit QuickBooks. QuickBooks is the trusted end to end solution that businesses rely on for getting paid, managing finances, paying employees, finding new customers and more. QuickBooks provides a team of AI agents and trusted experts. So doing it yourself no longer means doing it alone. Their payment agent gets you paid faster. Their customer agent finds leads, follows up and secures more sales, and the accounting agent automates and categorizes transactions. Get your critical business jobs done with QuickBooks on the Intuit platform. Ready to save on new tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more.

PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel.

Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster.

And with a premium suite of monitors.

And accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals.

Hey O. Welcome to the $100 MBA show. Cause business is out there. Let's go out and get it every day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zedhome. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. And today's episode is a guest teacher episode. On our guest teacher episode today we have Kim Speed. And today Kim Speed will be teaching you how to turn your clients into your greatest sales team. A happy customer is one of the best assets you have in your business because recommendations, social proof, word of mouth. This is the most powerful sales technique ever. If I look back and think about most of the restaurants I've been to or purposely actually, you know, looked for and made a reservation and went to, it's off a recommendation, whether that's from a friend or a family member or a review online or a Google search and I hit their site and there's rave reviews. Most people don't just stumble upon your website, your business and say hey, I'll give this a try. They need some sort of recommendation. And this is where your happy customers come into play, turning them into your sales team. And that's what Kim Speed, today's guest teacher is going to be Teaching you today how to make that happen practically. I'll also share at the end of the episode how we implement this technique in our own business. So you have a solid example as well, from my experience. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Today's guest teacher, Kim Speed is a brand visibility expert. She's a speaker trainer and she also received an Award in 2019 for most influential business woman in brand development. She's also an Amazon best selling authority of her book Branding on a Shoestring. Today, she's here to teach you how to capitalize on your happy customers. Customers that received your product or service, got what they wanted and are thrilled about it. How to utilize that experience for your business to make it a marketing engine. Now, the thing is that happy customers often keep that happiness, that great experience to themselves. You have to go out and ask for them to share it. But how do you do that? Well, that's why Kim Speed is here today to teach you how so you can utilize those stories that those case studies, those testimonials to sell more of your products and services. I'll be back to wrap up the episode and give examples from our own business. But for now, I'll pass it on to Kim Speed to teach today's guest teacher lesson. Take it away, Kim.

Hey everyone, it's Kim Speed here and I am so excited to be joining you here today to teach you how to turn your clients into your greatest sales team. So let's get right into it. Every business has one goal and that goal is to make sales. Obviously, we're not in business to give our products or services away. We're in business to make money. Did you know the number one reason that someone buys from us has nothing to do with price or even how well the product or service performs. The number one reason that someone buys from us has everything to do with trust. If we can gain the trust of your customers and also deliver on the promise that you make to them, you can turn those people into a high converting sales team. And that sales team works for free. Who wouldn't want that? To do this, you must build your brand credibility through proof. The majority of people will check out your business either online or through friends and colleagues before they purchase anything from you. Think about the last time you went to a new restaurant. If you're anything like me, you you'll do one of a couple of things before making a reservation. You'll search online to see if there are reviews. You'll ask people if they've ever tried the place out and then you'll probably check out their website and get the information that they provide you. If it feels right, you'll give it a try. When we try a new product or need to make a purchase, we look to our community to validate what we want to buy. Now, with the ease of the Internet, we are able to access the information that other people say about a brand, their products and services, both positively and negatively with ease. That is why it's so important to not only make sure you deliver on the promise you make to your customers, but to follow up after a purchase and get feedback on the experience they've had with your business. This can be easily done through customer surveys. You can send these out electronically or as I prefer to, to do, you can book time with your client after a project is completed to do a post project review together. What I like to do is to actually spend some time in person with my client. In an era when we spend less and less time interacting in person because of technology, showing your client that they are important enough to actually come and meet with them face to face makes them feel special. If that's not possible though, due to location or time constraints, then you can also take advantage of technology and try a video meeting. If your business has too many transactions and too many customers to do this with every purchaser, then you can use the online survey method. When using this version of a survey, you may also want to provide a small token of appreciation just to incent someone to fill out the information for you. It can be as small as a discount on their next purchase and this information is just as valuable. These meetings are so important in so many ways. They provide an insight into your clients and customers that you would not otherwise have the opportunity to hear. You'll find out what their challenges are and what they liked or disliked about your services and your processes. If you ask the right questions, you can also turn these into client testimonials. It can be hard to get your clients to do testimonials even when you know they have had great success and love your brand. You probably ask and they say of course, no problem. Then days and weeks might go by and you have to remind them. You may get some that will fill it out and you may not. Many times, you know, it's just that they're too busy and sometimes it's even that they're just. They're just not sure what to write or they're just not good at writing. So it's important to have these testimonials because they give your business the credibility it needs from real people. Testimonials help your prospects build trust in you when they're looking to make a purchase. So how do you get all of this from a survey? First, set the stage. Let the customers know how much you value their opinion and want to know what they thought of your service or your product. And let them know how important it is that you hear what they have to say so you continue so you can continue to make improvements to your business that will better service them. Customers will happily share this information with you when they feel appreciated. It makes them want to help you and it makes your relationship even stronger with them. It's also important to ask the right questions. So start by asking what's their biggest challenge with their business, with their life? Then ask them about what they find frustrating about this industry or this marketplace and what concerns this brings up for them. Ask them a question that gets them talking about what problems and issues that have been causing them pain. Let them go on as much as they want and you'll be amazed at the information you get that will be beneficial for you in the future. Then the last question, the most important question is to ask what value they received from your work that you have done together or from the product that you have provided. Did this help to resolve any of their challenges? This question is where you're going to get the juicy nuggets that you can then turn into testimonials. After the meeting, go back through your notes and take out the best statements about what they liked or loved about your business. Write it out, send it back to them inside a note of thanks for their time. Highlight the statement that they made during your interview and ask for their permission to use this as a testimonial. They will usually say yes or they may even edit it so it's even better. This gets them off the hook for thinking about what to write. It takes no extra time. It's done for them and you get a glowing review that you can use on your website or your social media. If you think that they would be willing, you can even ask them to provide an online review and they just have to copy and paste the statement that you've provided for them and then give them the link to where you'd like the review to be. Remember this, a customer who feels appreciated and cared for will be a great referring partner. They will be happy to share with other people about your business. They become your loyal raving fans and your best sales team. Alright guys, that's it for this lesson. I'm Kim Speed and if you would like to learn more about ways to build a brand that gets you more of the right clients and learn to make your business more profitable without wasting your time or money, you can visit Branding on a shoestring book.com where you will be able to get a free copy of my best selling book Branding on a Shoestring how to recreate your small business identity and increase sales results in 83 days or less. You can also check out my website purplemooncreative.com where there are more tips and information that I share. So thank you for joining me today. And back to you OMAR Fidelity Active.

ETFs have the flexibility to shift and transform as markets do the same. So instead of just riding an index, they can seek to outperform it by adapting to market conditions and pursuing new opportunities as they emerge. And while you get the potential outperformance of an actively managed fund, you can still buy and sell it on your terms. Just like any other ETF. Markets can change in real time. Make sure your ETF can too. Learn more at fidelity.com ActiveETFs before investing in any exchange traded fund, you should consider its investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Contact Fidelity for a prospectus, an offering circular, or if available, a summary prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully. While active ETFs offer the potential to outperform an index, these products may more significantly trail an index as compared with passive ETFs. ETFs are subject to market fluctuation and the risks of their underlying investments. ETFs are subject to management fees and other expenses. Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC Member nyse SIPC.

Shipping Billing Admin Payroll Marketing. You're managing all the things, so why waste time sending important documents the old fashioned way? Mail and ship when you want how you want with stamps.com print postage on demand 247 and schedule pickups from your office or home sign save up to 90% with automated rate shopping. That's why over 1 million small businesses trust stamps.com go to stamps.com and use code podcast to try stamps.com risk free for 60 days.

What a solid laser lesson by Kim Spi today. What she explained today is actually exactly what we do in our business. We actually go into our customer service tool like Intercom or Zendesk and look at all our customers that are happy with our service, with our product. They've given us a positive review after they've contacted customer service and we reach out to them Asking them, hey, can you help us learn a little bit more about your experience at Webinar Ninja? And if they're happy with your business and your brand, they'll most likely reply with a yes. And from there, we send them a few questions for them to answer. This is a whole lot easier than for us to tell them, hey, can you write us a fancy testimonial? They answer five to seven questions and then after that we say, hey, can we share these answers as a case study, as a testimonial on our website? And the vast majority say, yeah, sure, that sounds great. Plus, they kind of get a shout out too on our site about what they do in their business. And our content writer, Connor puts together a really nice testimonial based on the words and the information they gave when answering those questions. He then presents that to them and say, hey, this is what we're going to present. Does this look good to you? And they approve. They're like, yep, that looks exactly like what I would love to write, but you did it for me. And we're good to go, ready to post it on the site. This is really, really important because no one buys without social proof. You need something on your website to say, you're not the only one. You know, the business owner is not the only one that says, hey, this product is good. This service will be worth your money. Getting your clients and your customers to speak on your behalf is a whole lot more powerful and needed to close the sale to convince them to give you a shot. Now we take it another step further. We actually, after we publish our testimonial and share it and make it a case study, we share it on social on all our platforms. We may even share it in our newsletter for those who aren't customers yet. But then we reach back to those people who gave us that great testimonial about a few weeks in maybe four or five weeks, and we asked them, hey, do you mind sharing what you shared with me? But on Capterra, Capterra is a review site that reviews other software. And since they've gone through the trouble to do this for us already, we even say, hey, give us an honest review. And just for your efforts, we're going to give you a $10 Starbucks gift card. Doesn't matter if you give us a five star review or a one star review, you still get the card. The great thing is that these are happy customers and most of them will give a four or five star review. So you're good to go. And that is chump change for what you're getting a great testimonial on an independent site that people visit when they're researching and comparing you to other actual options in your marketplace. This has worked so well for us that we actually rank one of the top webinar softwares in our category on Capterra, which is incredible because we are in a market with some huge, huge companies worth hundreds of millions, even billions. So I highly recommend making sure you reach out to these happy customers. They are happy to help you out. They are satisfied with your service, your product. Don't feel like you're being a burden. You don't get what you don't ask for. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you love what you hear, leave us an iTunes rating and review. And don't forget to hit subscribe. It costs nothing to hit subscribe. By hitting subscribe, you get the next episode automatically downloaded to your device so you don't miss a beat. You also get access to all our archive episodes. Over 1400 business lessons. So hit subscribe right now on whatever you use to listen to. Podcasts, Apple Podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, Radio, Overcast. We're on them all. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. If you are a brand new business, a brand new service, and you don't have testimonials yet on your website, get them. Okay? You can ask somebody to give you a testimonial that you've helped in a mastermind group in a forum. Give somebody a massive discount to your product or service in exchange for them sharing their experience with a testimonial. You need about three or four on your website, so it's not that many. You got to make the effort to make sure you have them on your site. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

Of With Venmo Stash A tag on one hand and ordering a ride in the other means you're stacking cash back with Venmo Stash. Get up to 5% cash back when you pick a bundle of your favorite brands. Earn more cash when you do more with Stash. Venmo Stash terms exclusions apply. Max 100 cash back per month. See terms of Venmo Me Stash Terms.