Sales Appointment Tips – Distinguish Feedback from Exploitation

Most of the time, businesses are always called to serve customers. Happy customers mean more sales. It’s also important to actually improve a customer’s experience even before the buying decision, especially in B2B industries. That’s why getting feedback is important. It helps construct the experience.

On the other hand, there can be a dark side to this. Rare as this could be, there are moments when a sales appointment only occurs after your business has been nothing short of exploited.

First off, it’s important to define what counts as exploitation. In simplest terms, it’s a bad investment. Exploitation occurs when you’ve put so much effort and given away so much of your business but not realizing an appropriate return. You are losing more money than you’re capable of getting out of prospect because you haven’t even set the appointment.

Knowing that, what’s the difference between getting feedback that improves your marketing and caving in to a form of exploitation?

• Understand the real worth of your business – Your business is valuable. It took a lot of resources and labor to put the final product together. It’s this cost that will determine how much you’re willing to get out of it by marketing it to potential customers. If your customers end up paying less than what it’s worth, you’re giving them a deal that’s far too good for your company’s own good.

• Compared feedback with other customers – Some sources of feedback could be more legitimate than others. For example, there is now a looming threat of extortion because sites could be able to register a .sucks domain sometime soon. One way to defend your business is to diversify sources of feedback so as to compare and contrast. Is only one segment of your target market less receptive to a product or service than the rest? Why is that?

• Check your facts internally – By default, you already have all the facts because you’ve already carefully gauged to total value of your business. If a customer complains in a way that’s just not in line with how your product or your service works, you’ve got a suspect on your hands. It’s important that, even prior to a sales appointment, you both understand what you’re getting into.

Feedback is meant to improve your business and therefore increase the value your business delivers to customers. All in all, it’s meant to produce a win-win situation and anything less runs the risk of looking like exploitation.

Sales Appointment Tips – Distinguish Feedback from Exploitation