Need A Sales Team? Look At Your Current Customers

Are you looking to build a sales team? A sales team that can sing your praises and talk from the heart about all of the great things you do and offer?

You already have this sales team. It’s your current customers, clients and patients.

When it comes to selling, referrals are the Holy Grail. It’s much easier to make a sale when a customer recommends you to a friend or colleague.

Ultimately, you want to turn your best customers into your “volunteer sales force”.

Here’s 5 tips to do that:

Identify Your Best Customers

Find out which of your existing customers are likely to join your “volunteer sales force.” Use email, your website, blog, newsletter, and other customer touch points to ask the following question:

On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our company or product?

Any customer who responds with a “9” or “10” is a candidate to become your brand advocate – someone who will help you sell your product or service to other people.

Build a list of these customers as you’ll use it in the future steps.

Make It Easy For Your Best Customers To Post Reviews

Once you’ve identified your best brand advocates, invite them to write reviews of your company or product/service on sites that post customer reviews (ex: Yelp, Amazon, Google) and provide them with links to the appropriate pages on those review sites.

In my coffee and smoothie business, I send an email the day after their event asking them to rate our service. Those who leave rave reviews, I have a special followup package they get with a little “thank you” gift, a letter asking them to refer others, and a supply of business cards and catering brochures. It works. I get many calls saying “_______ referred me to you.”

Plan on about 20% of customers who answered “9” or “10” will write reviews.

Customer reviews accomplish two things. First, they make your product or service more attractive to new buyers, because buyers are more influenced by the opinions of their peers than your advertising and marketing. Remember, it’s not what you say about yourself . . . it’s about what others say about you that matters. Second, when existing customer make a public commitment to your product/service, they are more likely to follow through on the next three steps.

Encourage Your Best Customers To Write Testimonials

Reviews talk about the product/service and how well it works. Testimonials are personal stories about how the product “changed the world” for that person or company. Testimonials are much more useful than reviews as sales tools because stories tend to stick in people’s minds.

In my coffee and smoothie business, I get testimonials from people who share what the experience was like, how helpful the staff was, or how amazing the drinks were. Someone who has never used our services before can relate to those stories and envision what doing business with us would be like.

When you get a testimonial, post it on your website. However, testimonials are even more powerful as a sales tool when customers post them on their Facebook pages, especially if they’re willing to include a link to your website.

Invite Your Best Customers To Answer Questions From Prospects

Prospects often have questions before they buy. Though your sales team can probably answer those questions, those answers will be taken more seriously when they’re provided by one of your existing customers. There are two ways to make this happen.

You could put a banner or link on your website reading: “Got A Question? Ask A Customer!” When a prospects clicks that banner/link, your brand advocate network gets notified (who’ve given their permission for you to do this, of course) so that whoever is available can answer the question.

Give Your Best Customers Promotional Offers To Share

Once you’ve developed your volunteer sales force, you can get them to share your special offers with friends and colleagues in the same way they share cute kitty videos and interesting news articles, using whatever social networking platform they prefer.

Such offers can range from special discounts and coupons (for B2C) to white papers and invitations to webinars (for B2B). The trick here is to make the offers easy to share and have an easy way to give your advocates a heads-up that the offers are available.

Interestingly, such shareable offers are more effective when customers don’t receive any compensation for sharing them. Turns out that giving existing customers special gifts or discounts makes their recommendations less likely to be heeded.

What success have you had in getting your customers, clients, and patients to become your volunteer sales force? Share below.

About Stacey Riska

Stacey Riska, aka “Small Business Stacey” is a serial entrepreneur who is passionate about saving small business and rebuilding Main Street. She helps small and local business owners become a #SmallBizMarketingWiz by teaching them marketing strategies that get MORE: MORE leads, MORE customers/clients, MORE sales, and MORE money. Stacey is the founder of Small Biz Marketing Specialist, THE go-to place for marketing tips, techniques and strategies that get results. Stacey is also the creator of the Daily Deals for Massive Profits Training Program, an online video training program that teaches small and local business owners how to use daily deal sites like Groupon to skyrocket their business growth and get massive profits. In this program she teaches from experience, as it was the key strategy that transformed her coffee and smoothie business from being $500K in debt to a 7-figure profitable business. When not saving the small business world, she enjoys sipping red wine, eating chocolate (who doesn’t!) and spending time with her amazing husband.