Is Your Company Easy to do Business With?

Your products or services are often perceived by the market as being similar to those available from your competitors. As a result, being easy to do business with can set you apart, making customer lead generation easier, and making a big impact on your bottom line. It also enhances your brand equity, since every point of interaction is a branding exercise.

There’s a great deal of talk these days about building a company’s “brand,” but in reality, brand equity is simply an investment in ensuring that your prospects and customers have a positive experience each time they interact with your company or its products and services. The little things, such as promptly responding to inquiries, make a big difference.

As a B2B marketer, your job is to guide your company in providing the best possible customer experience at all points of contact. So, take a hard look at your company from your prospects’ and customers’ points of view. These questions will help you identify which areas need improvement:

• Are you losing customers and business due to time zone differences?

For example, if your company is located in the west, what happens when a prospect or customer calls from Boston or Miami at 8 a.m. EST to request information or pricing, or to place an order? Odds are that no one is answering the phone, costing you a fortune in lost business—especially if your competitors pick up the phone when the same customer tries them. Customer lead generation can suffer.

• When calling your company’s 800 number, do callers reach a “live” person or are they immediately shunted to voice mail?

• On your Web site, do you keep prospects and customers at arm’s length by making them submit a “Contact Us” form, or can they click on a representative’s name and dash off an e-mail? How easy is it to find your company’s phone number or a local contact?

• When people request information whether it be online or via your 800 number or by response card, how long does it take for your company to send out the requested information? With customer lead generation, send the information right away.

• How easy is it to request information online? Do all your Web forms work? Do you force prospects to fill out long forms before they’re “allowed” to view collateral?

Do you send enough information to assist the prospect in moving forward with a buying decision, or do you restrict your sales information because you don’t want it to be seen by competitors or because it is too expensive to mail to all those inquirers?

The bottom line: make it easy for people to do business with you. Not only will you increase brand equity and customer lead generation, you’ll also decrease the likelihood of prospects finding another company that has invested in these small, but important, areas.

BY M.H. “MAC” MCINTOSH

M.H. “Mac” McIntosh is a business-to-business marketing consultant and publisher of Sales Lead Report®, a newsletter focusing on sales leads. In addition, McIntosh teaches University-level courses in sales, marketing, direct marketing and telemarketing and conducts seminars and workshops for leading corporations and associations around the world. He can be reached at (800) 944-5553, mcintosh@sales-lead-experts.com or visit www.sales-lead-experts.com.