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A single trick to win more customers without doing more work

Three things prospects care about

For service companies, when prospects are evaluating you, there are three things they all care about.

Do you understand the core problem?

When you get on that first phone call or have the first meeting to talk about the business, one of the most important things you likely are already doing is making sure a prospect knows that you’re listening.

As you ask the right questions, you demonstrate your understanding. As you share your insights into their challenges, you highlight that you understand their core problem.

Do you have the right experience?

Another thing you’re likely doing, in those early “sales” meetings, is making sure you’re telling the stories of your experience to demonstrate that you not only understand them. The benefit of the right case studies is that they start to grasp your experience.

Do they trust you to fix their issue(s)?

The last thing you’re probably doing already is articulating some of those initial ideas you have on how you might solve their problems. As you share your strategies, prospects get that sense that they can put their trust in you.

You’re already doing this, right?

My guess is that all of what I’ve just told you is not news. You know this. You do this. And the point of this post is to help you to win more clients. So what’s the trick?

I’m about to tell you.

But let’s talk about one more thing you’re already doing. At least I’m guessing you’re already doing it.

You’re taking notes at that first meeting or on that first call. Right? You do that because you don’t want to forget anything you heard. You want to make sure that you can reference it when you start putting together your proposal. Right?

The single trick to win more customers

I’m going to tell you a trick that I’m stealing from Zeek Interactive. (Don’t tell him I told you!)

It’s no additional work for you. There’s virtually no additional effort you’ll need to take.

And once I tell you, you’ll scratch your head, if you’re not doing it already, wondering why you’ve not made it part of your current workflow.

But I’ll tell you this – most everyone I know doesn’t do it. I’ve hired tons of companies that don’t do it.

Here it is.

Send your prospects the notes of your call or meeting.

It’s not hard. You already have them. But normally companies don’t send them to prospects. Instead, they get focused on creating proposals or quotes.

Sending proposals isn’t a bad idea. It’s great. It’s a requirement. But normally it takes a bit of time to get it prepared, right?

Sending notes is immediate. It’s something that can happen within minutes or hours of that initial meeting.

And the benefits are fantastic.

The benefits of sending your meeting notes

There are three reasons I recommend that you forward your initial meeting notes to your prospects.

It reinforces your understanding of the problem

When you send your notes, you get a chance to reinforce all of what you heard. The details in those notes tells them you were listening, and we’ve already talked about how important that is.

It reinforces your experience solving those problems

When you send your notes, with the case studies you talked about, it reminds them of what they heard. As you can imagine, some prospects get busy or distracted in meetings. This gives you a way to circle back and reinforce your experience.

It highlights your communication skills

Maybe the most important dynamic of sending your notes is that it highlights your skill at communicating. In a world of commoditization of services, price can easily be the differentiator. But that’s not always what you want. And it’s not always the thing customers want most.

Sure, they want a good price. But not always the lowest price.

What they want more is an engaged and effectively communicating service provider. And that’s what sending your notes does.

Don’t take my word for it

You don’t know me. You don’t know if I know what I’m talking about.

It doesn’t matter if I’ve had to hire service companies tons of times. Why take my word for it.

Instead, why not try it for yourself? After all, you’re already taking notes, right?

So next time you wrap up that call or meeting, send them and see if it helps you win more clients.

I know you’ll like the result.

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