Being likable and trusted

What does it take for people to like you? Well, first they need to be exposed to you and feel like you are someone they want to know. Take the time to get to know them, find out what their interests are, what their children’s interests are, and what they enjoy most from your product line. When the items they like are on sale, call them. When items you think they might like are featured or there is a good deal, call them again. Take good notes after your conversations, so you can reference those details during future calls. As you really get to know people, they will begin to think of you as their friend — as someone they really know.

To be likable to the people who know you, you must show your good personality and authentically come from a place of service, not sales. When you serve, the sales will come. Specifically, you want to be known as friendly and someone who offers solutions for people’s challenges. Reinforce your friendly image with little extras, such as throwing in free samples when someone places an order or sending thank-you notes for their order.

For someone to trust you, be someone who is reliable, who is known for doing the right thing, and who is trustworthy. You can reinforce your trustworthiness by providing superior customer service. Make sure customers receive their products in a timely fashion and answer any questions they may have. Being trustworthy in business means following up: calling when you said you would call, being on time, and gracefully handling product returns. When customers are unhappy with any aspect of your products or business, acknowledge them and support them by doing whatever you can to correct the situation. You’ll find that when people feel you are really listening to them and hearing their concerns, they will trust you even more.

Getting referrals

When people like and trust you, have good commerce experiences with you, and feel like you’re consistent, they’re more open to referring their friends to you. The bar is higher with referrals than with sales: People need “more” to go that next step and recommend you to others. When people make referrals, it is their own reputation on the line. When they feel they can trust you to take care of their friends as well as you take care of them, they will be more likely to refer their friends to you.

Being someone people will want to recommend to their friends is an ongoing goal and requires consistent behavior. Referrals can be a big part of your business, so you may want to offer gifts for referrals. A gift can never replace the know-like-trust part of the equation, but it can be a nice way to thank and incentivize your best customers to continue to send others your way.

Being systematic about customer service

Later on in this chapter, you’ll find my 2+2+2 system for placing follow-up calls with your customers and knowing whom to contact when. You’ll read about how to schedule those calls, how to balance all your follow-up calls, so that you build a balanced business, and create other good follow-up habits (using my concept of the Power Hour, also discussed in Chapter 5).

The first step to making sure you’re conducting effective, consistent, and profitable follow-up is to capture the leads as they come in. You must capture relevant contact information for calls to your previous hosts and your customer care calls through the paperwork related to your parties and your order tracking. (The Power Hour discussed in Chapter 5 is also essential for this.) With follow-up calls to your booking leads and recruit leads in particular, you need to create a habit for capturing the contact information for these leads. Many of those leads will also come from your parties, but you’ll find that as you grow your business, network, and get referrals, booking and recruit leads will come to you in other ways.

For example, imagine you’ve just come home from your party with a booking lead — or even from grocery shopping where you met someone you now consider a booking lead. What does it mean to capture that lead? It means you immediately get that person’s contact information, along with some details about the person while they’re still fresh in your mind. This collection of leads is what you reference when you are making follow-up calls. Once you get home, you will want to record in a designated area.

Keep four specific file folders or notebooks to record information that you’ll use for later follow-up — one for booking leads, one for recruit leads, one for current hosts, and one for customers. I used to come home from a party or my errands, go straight to my workspace, take my little slips of paper out, and right then add the details: name, where I met them, any information on what they were most interested in, anything they told me about their family, and so on. All the information I needed was right there, at my fingertips. For people who had asked me to call them later, for some reason, I’d include the details so that I’d be able to reference them when I called. Details like: “Daughter getting married in July. Call first week of August to book a party.”

Chapter 5 describes a good tracking system for your calls, but one method that I’ve found to be successful for people, even in this high-tech age, is to just have an old-fashioned paper system, where you just have a small index card for each customer that lists what they ordered. Store that card in a card file with tabs for the months of the year. When you call the customer in February for that third check-in call, move the card to April. When April comes and you call again, move it to June, and so on. Low-tech, but reliable and simple, so you’re more likely to do it. Even better, if all the details of what they’ve ordered are easily accessible on your computer, each data card will just have that customer’s name and phone number on it. Then you can pull up the order details on the computer when you pull out the card to make the call.

Hot and warm recruit leads

To maintain an accurate picture of which recruit leads are most likely to join your team in the next 30 days, you want to assign them as hot leads — labeled H — or warm leads — or W.

People who request information on the business or take a business-information packet at a party are definitely H’s. Write an H next to their contact information and contact the hot lead within 24 to 48 hours. If you do not follow up with them in that timeframe, they become a lot less hot. Schedule the call so you don’t forget and make sure you call them during that period, no matter what.

Here’s an example of the type of thing that happens a lot and why your hot lead can appear to have had a complete change of heart. You meet a lady who seems excited about joining, and she goes home to tell her husband:

• Hot Lead: “Honey, guess what? I’m going to join this company.”
• Husband: “Do you really have to do that right now? I thought you were taking the summer off and we’d be doing a lot of camping.”
• Hot Lead: “Oh, you’re right. Maybe I’ll wait until the kids are back in school.”

You call her up 24 hours after meeting her:

• You: “Hi! How are you doing? Did you get a chance to look over that packet of information?”
• Hot Lead: “You know what? I did, but I was talking it over with my husband, and right now, I just think the timing is bad and that I’m going to pass.”

In that instant, she has gone from H to W. It’s important to engage her, acknowledge the validity of her situation, and make an agreement to follow up with her in the future so the door stays open.

• You: “I completely understand. That makes sense, and I want you to start at a time when you’ll really be able to give it the attention that it deserves. How would you like it if I just keep you updated on any relevant specials that come up? I’ll just touch base periodically and definitely reach out in the fall. How does that sound?”

You’ll find that most people you recruit will be warm leads. It’s uncommon for people to just decide to join your team after one meeting with you. The vast majority of your new recruits will come as a result of your consistent and repeated follow-up.

You want to touch base with your W recruit leads about every three months. These contacts are really just temperature reads and opportunities to reconnect, deepen the relationship, and remind the lead that you’re still around.

Have a simple conversation around questions like the following:

• “How are you doing?”
• “Just checking to see how you’re doing with the products.”
• “Is there anything I can do for you or any additional products you may need?”
• “What products might you need at the moment?”

Not every check-in like this needs to be phone call. It can even be a postcard, Facebook message, email, text, or note that lets them know you’re thinking of them, want to keep in touch, or have a great special going on. If you do get her voicemail, it is completely acceptable to leave a message with the same sentiments. You may want to alternate methods of contacting them, just make sure you are making some kind of contact every three months.

Timing is crucial when following up with recruit leads because people’s lives change all the time: job changes, moves, marriages, separations, new children, health changes — any number of things. You want to be ahead of that curve, because when they’re ready to try something different or their needs change, you want to have recently been in contact with them so that they feel comfortable calling you. You want to be in their minds when they consider earning extra income or changing their routine by starting businesses.

Exception to the quarterly call schedule: Any time your company offers a special promotion related to getting started, you want to call all your Ws to let them know. It’s a courtesy, and even if they don’t join in the moment, it plants the seed for the future and reminds them that you’re watching out for them.

In this call regarding the special promotion, acknowledge that you don’t know whether the timing is even right for them, but you didn’t want them to miss the special. Sometimes the timing of these calls will be ideal and on some of those calls the W will say something like, “I can’t believe you’re calling me today because, actually… .” Your timing is sometimes coincidentally so good, the lead feels like it was “meant to be.”

About half the guests leave a party considering your job for themselves. That doesn’t mean that half the people you meet will ultimately join your team. But it does mean that half wonder whether they can do it, whether you make decent money doing it, and whether they’d be good at it and make decent money themselves. That’s why you stay in contact with them, because there is potential there, when the time is right.

Most people are looking for ways to make more money and for solutions to their current challenges. Your business could be a great fit for a lot of the people you meet and who see the potential, as long as you stay in touch with them.

Brrr! Cold recruit leads

Let’s go back to the example of the lady whose husband wanted her to wait until summer was over before she started a business and explore a different scenario. You call her up 48 hours after you’ve met:

• You: “Hi! Did you get a chance to look over that packet of information?”
• Hot Lead: “Right now, I just think the timing is bad, and I’m just going to pass.”
• You: “I understand. How would you like it if I just keep you updated on any relevant specials that come up? I’ll just touch base periodically. How does that sound?”
• Hot Lead: “No, that’s okay. If things change, I’ll call you.”

Now, unfortunately, this lead has moved from an H to a C — she is now a cold lead. You don’t need to keep calling cold leads to bug them about signing up. You do keep their information among your recruit leads, but you follow up more generally about other aspects related to them being your customer. Call your C recruit leads when you have a new catalog, a great customer promotion, or even to see whether they want to host a party. But not to recruit.

Often your old recruit leads can still be a good source of business. Keep in touch with them about things other than the business opportunity. Often, once you’re in front of them again, it can renew their original interest.

2-day follow-up

The first call you make to each customer is two days after they place their order or make their purchase from you, whether that was at a party, online, in person, or by calling you.

The only purpose of this call is to thank the customer. That’s it! You’re not asking for anything. You make this call to demonstrate your gratitude. Simply, thank you:

• “Hi, Mary! This is Belinda, I just wanted to say what a pleasure it was meeting you at Sandy’s house, and I wanted to thank you again for your order.”

Tell her when she can expect to receive her order and make sure she knows she can call you with questions. That’s all. The call takes less than a minute, and being brief is important, because you’ll complete more of your calls, and she’ll remember that you are respectful of her time.

The reason you want to call in two days is because through the focus groups I have conducted, I have found that things stay exciting or top of mind for about three days. After that, the interest fades. This is true of a great restaurant you ate at, a concert you attended, or a cute pair of shoes you passed on while shopping. It is also the case with the party or presentation your customer attended.

Sometimes you’ll call a customer for your thank-you call two days after their purchase at a party and things will go differently. Your customer may have already been talking up your party and your products with her coworkers or friends. Maybe they asked her for a catalog. Imagine what your thank-you call sounds like in those situations?

• “I was talking to my friends and a few ladies from work asked whether I could bring in a catalog. Could you send me one?”

This is your opportunity to suggest hosting a party with you:

• “Sure, Allison, I can send you a catalog. But to be perfectly honest, your best bet would be to host a party. You already have friends who want to order, and I would much rather give you the credit for those orders instead of me just taking the orders.”

You will be amazed at how often someone like this will book a party. Suddenly your two-day customer-care call has secured another booking.

Or perhaps your customer got home and realized she wished she’d ordered other items. Maybe she gushed to her husband about an item she loved but didn’t get. And he said, “If you loved it, you should just have gotten it!” Imagine your thank-you call in those situations:

• “Is it too late to add onto my order? Because I wanted to go ahead and get _______.”

Or they say something like this:

• “I was talking about it to my husband, and I do want to get that cookware. I thought it was too much to spend, but he said go ahead.”

This is also your opportunity to suggest hosting a party with you:

• “Well, Mary, would you like to go ahead and book a party so that you can get that cookware half off?”

You will be amazed at how often someone who had second thoughts and wanted to add to the original order decides to accept your offer to host a party during your thank-you call two days later. Suddenly your two-day customer-care call has secured another booking for you.

Now, what I have found is only about 10 percent of your two-day calls will result in add-on orders, but about 20 percent of these types of calls will turn into parties on your calendar. It’s also important to understand that it’s rare for someone who has realized that they’d like to add to their order to pick up the phone and call you. They presume it’s too late. Plus, people are busy and they forget. Your two-day thank-you call provides an easy opportunity for them to update their order — and you’re already providing superior service to them.

People often ask me, “Do I have to make a phone call for every one of these 2+2+2 or can I text or use email?” I always answer that I prefer calling but other communication is fine. For the biggest impact, I recommend always using the phone for this first two-day call.

2-weeks later

The second call you make to each customer is two weeks after they have received their order. This call is to provide service. You still aren’t going to ask for an order or a booking. You are showing up to be of service to them as one of your existing customers:

• You: “I just wanted to make sure you received your products and see if you had any questions.”
• Recent Customer: “I did. Thank you!”
• You: “Are you enjoying your product?” or “How is your product working?” or “What have you noticed with your new product?” — or some other question tailored to the product she ordered.

The positive feedback you get during these calls is valuable, because you can use those stories during your presentations or when you’re sharing the benefits of your products with others. Any feedback that is not so positive gives you an opportunity to shine and address any issues. This is your chance to help her correct the way she’s using the product if it’s not optimal, or suggest a different additional product, or help her get her money back if appropriate.

Regardless of how glowing the feedback is, ask how you can help her today and reiterate that you are available and that she should feel free to contact you with any questions going forward.

Here’s the last thing you say:

• “Is there anything else I can help you with today, Carolyn?” And then: “I value you as a customer, and customer service is very important to me. From time to time, I would like to touch base with you to see if there’s anything else I can do to take care of your needs. Would that be okay with you?”

That last part is crucial, because you’re making a commitment to keep in touch, which will make it more likely that you will actually call. And you’re getting her agreement, so you can feel good about calling to provide excellent service.

Exception: In the rare case that your customer responds to your offer to touch base periodically with something like, “Don’t bother!” or “I’ll call you if I need anything,” consider it a great time saver for you. Just be gracious, agree, thank them, and move on. You may feel a little rejected, but that will pass, and you have just saved yourself a ton of time spent calling someone who isn’t interested in hearing from you (or likely any representative).

2-months later

The third call you make to each customer doesn’t have to be precisely two months after your second call, but you will want to schedule these for yourself so that you don’t have anyone fall through the cracks. In Chapter 5, where I talk about the Power Hour, you learn a system that can help you stay on track for all the 2+2+2 Methods of customer care, as well as your other follow-up calls to booking and recruit leads.

You’re checking in with a customer who now feels like she knows you better. This call is more of a free-form, touching-base kind of call. The topics are going to depend on what you learned when you originally met along with any details that came up in previous calls.

Again, this is why it’s so important to record good notes after each time you encounter them.

The more you can engage with your customers and make them feel important the more connected to you they’ll feel and the more likely they’ll be to do further business with you and refer people to you. So, in this third call, you make pleasant conversation about what’s going on in her life:

• You: “Well, I was calling to see if there’s anything I can help you out with right now, any gift-giving items or special things I can do for you?”

You can also connect it to an upcoming celebration or event:

• “Wedding season is coming up. Is there any way I can help you with that?”
• “Mother’s Day is right around the corner. Can I help you out with any of the special ladies in your life, including yourself?”

That’s it. These calls don’t take much more than about two minutes. The power is in having a systematic approach so that the calls are not random. You’re contacting people on a regular basis and are positioned to have a stronger business and a more professional reputation.

After this third call, especially if your product line is something consumable like food, nutrition products, or skincare, you will want to stick to a check-in call just like this one every two months. If your product is something more like jewelry, clothing, or home decor, you can probably stick to a quarterly call to each customer after you’ve completed the initial 2+2+2 calls.